Zerona Scam - San Ramon, CA
DON'T DO IT!!! I wish I had listened more...
DON'T DO IT!!! I wish I had listened more carefully to the negative reviews on here. Instead, I went into the clinic hopeful... and now, 4 weeks later, walked out without any inch loss. Hugest scam I have ever heard of! I was hoping I would have a wonderful review of the Zerona product, but it was a huge waste of time and money. It's a silly laser for heavens sake! I should of known better =( Trust me, DO NOT DO IT!!!
I am typically a smart person, I am a grad student after all, and I fell for the hugest scam of all time. I feel like a complete dumb-ass, but I guess I learned my lesson. So, originally, when I went in, I met with Jenna, the sales gal. She is nice, and sweet, and convinced me to give them a try, (for over $2,000). She said that I should not need more than 6 sessions since I just have one problem area and am not largely overweight. So, I trusted her (huge mistake) and signed on the dotted line. I went in for the first session, where the 2 staff members, Jenna and Leticia, measured me. I then lied under the laser for 20 minutes on my front and 20 minutes on my back. After the 40 minutes, they remeasured me and tried to tell me that I lost an inch or so. What really happens is that they measure a little lower on the thighs, so the circumference is slightly smaller. DUH! Anyone should be able to figure out this little trick.
So from there forward, I made sure to do the measurements myself in my problem area, that I know very well, and measured the exact same circumference each time....And of course it was 37 1/2 each time. So, after the first 6 sessions, I kept getting reassured by the girls (mostly Jenna) that I would see results. Jenna even told me that she started seeing results around the 6th session.
So, at this point, they gave me some additional sessions since I had not yet seen results (which was actually nice of them). Overall, I had 10 sessions, and the last few were for one hour as opposed to 40 minutes. I even talked to the "doctor" around session 6 or 7, and he assured me that I would see results.
By the way, the "doctor" is really a chiropractor, and I would be highly surprised if he was an actual M.D. He came across as a 35 year old frat boy... but that's besides the point. So after all 10 sessions, I met with the "doctor" and he originally said he was sorry that I did not see results and said he could not refund me any money since I had used all 10 sessions. He tried to pull something about the laser time costing $3,000 a month to lease (details that I could of cared less about), but then at another moment he told me how he owned the lasers.
Talking to the "doctor" was an interesting experience because he kept contradicting himself, and was super nervous and did not know how to professionally handle my complaint. He said he could only refund me "non-used" sessions, which is funny because they kept giving me more sessions to use so of course there were no un-used sessions! The freebie sessions are given out freely, since there is no additional cost associated with using the laser that they have already purchased (even though the "doctor" tried to tell me how expensive it is to use the laser each time). I'm pretty sure that the zerona laser is the same type of laser that you see in the grocery store scanners.
The "doctor" tried to tell me to do more sessions, but I told him it was not worth my time or his staff's time. All I wanted was a 50% refund, which he refused. He tried to tell me that he would comp 3 sessions for a friend of mine, but why in the world would I want a friend to give him any business? The whole situation was completely absurd.
The funniest thing is that one of the girls kept telling me that I would get a refund if it didn't work.. HAHAH!! I ended up getting a 20% refund in the end, so I do give them a little credit for that, bit he still kept my additional $1,600.
Replies (19)
Some insight, the doctor kept talking about the machine because he's leasing it. As part of that agreement, he buys packages of 6 sessions for X amount of money. Another part of that agreement is that they measure you and if you don't get enough inches, they send it over to the company and they will give the clinic another free package for you to use. I don't know the full details of that agreement because i don't lease but they told me that if it doesn't work after X amount of packages they will refund you the money.
Not sure how you suppose to know that without the doctor actually telling you all that but the end result was that you "quit" and he didn't have enough to give the company to get you a full refund.
By the way, that is why i don't lease my machines, I should be the one deciding when it's ok to give more sessions or when it's ok to give the money back, when you depend on a 3rd party, it makes things very difficult and then a situation like yourself happens.
I own my machines and I sometimes give people even 18 sessions because on some people it takes longer, so I asked SBMI what happens if it's been awhile and the person still doesn't get any results (from experience, that only happen at about 5% of the cases) and they told me they will give a full refund.
As I said I don't like that 3rd party dealings so I own my machines and if someone is struggling, I give them more sessions, if it's been quite some time already, I give the money back.
Also as a side note, we care very much about our clients so common results at our clinics are 6-16 inches.

Welcome to RealSelf and thanks for sharing your experience with Zerona. I'm wondering if your contract said anything about "guaranteed results" or if that's just what the staff said?
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