Consumer Alert: Avacor and Folliguard Products

Article by HairlossTalk.com

One doctor said that the company appears to be using a new tactic to sell what he described as "snake oil."

"This is a new technique that, that is being used to sell products that I used to refer to as snake oil because they didn't work, but now they have minoxidil so now there's snake oil with minoxidil," said Dr. Michael Reed, a hair loss expert at New York University Medical Center.

Only Two FDA-Approved Ingredients

The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of making sure hair regrowth products are safe and effective. The FDA says only two drugs are proven safe and effective for growing hair. One is minoxidil, and the other is a prescription drug sold under the brand name Propecia, which is only approved for men, as one of the active ingredients may cause a specific kind of birth defect.

But even these two drugs are limited. They don't work for everyone, and they don't work on all areas of the head. Both are far better at maintaining the hair you still have rather than re-growing new hair on your bald spot.

Minoxidil works as a baldness treatment, but Reed says the Jungle MD Web site is exaggerating when it says minoxidil is "proven to rejuvenate hair growth in more than 90 percent of people who use it." In fact, as FolliGuard notes in the fine print on its own packaging, clinical studies show only 26 percent of users get moderate to dense re-growth.

To the best of his knowledge, none of the FolliGuard ingredients, with the exception of minoxidil, can re-grow hair, Reed said.

FolliGuard claims another ingredient, saw palmetto, is also "clinically proven to encourage hair re-growth," but the experts who Good Morning America spoke to dispute that claim.

The cost of FolliGuard is also prompting questions.

"That's a big rip-off quite frankly, economically speaking, because you can buy minoxidil for $15 a month, you know, generically in any pharmacy and it'll do the same thing as, as, as what FolliGuard does," Reed said.

Money Back Guarantee?

The words "risk-free" and "guarantee" appear six times in one FolliGuard print ad, and in the TV commercial, the announcer says, "It's the answer you've been waiting for. Guaranteed, call now!"

But Krainock said he was not able to get his money back, despite the product's money-back guarantee.

"I didn't get anything back at all," Krainock said.

Farrand had the same problem.

"They had a money-back guarantee that they refused to honor," Farrand said.

Bob Williams, of the Better Business Bureau, in Eastern Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, said that guarantees can be risky.

"The money-back guarantee is only as good as the company giving it," Williams said.

The Better Business Bureau says Jungle MD has an unsatisfactory record, and a pattern of complaints it has failed to correct, including "failure to deliver product, failure to honor on a timely basis, or honor at all, money back guarantees."

Farrand said that if she could sum up her experience with a phrase, there is just one.

"Taken advantage of," she said.

- Legitimate Proven Treatments for Men: Overview
- Legitimate Proven Treatments for Women: Overview

HLT

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