As many of you would know, I recently (on behalf of the Free Society Institute) submitted a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding PowerBalance bracelets and their particular brand of woo. Next up should surely be the scamsters who sell T4 ProBalance bracelets, who offer you 4 “technologies” in their magic bracelet. Four whole technologies, starting at just R369! Here’s what you get:
- Bioenergetic scalar energy
- 1200 negative ions
- 100% surgical silicone
- Antitstatic [sic]
That “antitstatic” alone is surely worth the price. But if you’re still not convinced, take a look at what the “benefits of T4 Pro Balance bracelets are“:
Alongside “power”, “focus” and “recovery”, they offer “burns”, “allergies” and “fatigue”. Oh, and don’t forget that “depression” you’ve been yearning for. Their website is a bit light on independent double-blind studies (i.e. there are none), so it’s unclear whether these bracelets are a good thing to wear on balance. But I suppose we have to assume that you get enough of the good stuff to outweigh those scarier-sounding “benefits”.
Or, alternately, what this shows is that they are simply too lazy, exploitative, incompetent or stupid to worry about details like having a poorly edited website. When you have fans defending the product saying things like “mabey [sic]you should look into something called science”, it seems that it doesn’t really matter what the website says. As P.T. Barnum reminded us, “there’s a sucker born every minute”, and those who sell these magic bracelets will keep on shamelessly exploiting those suckers for as long as they are able.
