Usana Health Sciences sells vitamins and nutritional products that are priced 100% to 300% higher than comparable products from other companies.
In March 2007, a report on Usana Health Sciences was released by the Fraud Discovery Institute. Barry Minkow and team (yes, that included me) laid out the facts behind Usana’s material misrepresentations to investors and distributors, as well as material non-disclosures.
One of the main criticisms of Usana was that the products are hopelessly overpriced and Usana lies about this. Usana’s website and marketing materias claim that Usana vitamins save users 75% over traditional retail. The company explains that by cutting out the “middle-man” and shipping directly to distributors, consumers save lots of money.
We clearly demonstrated that such statements are false. In fact, some of the products are priced upwards of 100% to 300% higher than comparable products available in stores and on the internet.
And here we prove it again. Barry Minkow went to vitamin stores and asked them to give him products that are comparable to the Usana Health Pak 100. Each store found at least 3 products that were comparable. (Usana may claim that they are not of comparable quality, but in fact they are. That argument is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors to divert your attention from the real fraud. You can find products that are comparable, if not exactly the same. Vitamin C is Vitamin C!)
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The fact is that people don’t buy Usana products because they are so good or because they “save you 75% off retail” as Usana falsely claims. People are buying them primarly because they’re members of this pyramid scheme.