Bowtrol is one of the most heavily marketed colon cleansers on the market today. There are many advertisements for the product as well as many websites that are promoting it. But what really can you expect from Bowtrol? Unfortunately, Bowtrol isn’t much better than many of the other colon cleanse scams that we see. The following is a brief overview of my Bowtrol Review. First I look at the product itself and then I focus on the business practices of the company behind the product.

Bowtrol, as a product, actually looks about average. They provide a full list of their ingredients (thank you Bowtrol), which more than I can say for some other companies in this industry. Even more, Bowtrol actually gives a little bit of information about each ingredient that is included. This was a pleasant surprise. As mentioned, the ingredients to be your average colon cleansing ingredients so it should be relatively effective (but certainly not more effective that the other products on the market).

The business practices of Bowtrol, however, are certainly worth pointing out (in a bad way). Bowtrol uses a free trial offer to get you to sign up for their autoship program (which is detailed in the very fine print that most people wont read). Basically, if you don’t cancel the program within 21 days, they will automatically charge your credit card $89.90. They continue to charge you every 2 months and mail more shipments to you. What’s even worse is that I found a number of people complaining on the complaint boards that they were having extreme difficulty getting the company to cancel the autoship, refund their money, or even answer the phone. This looks like a classic scam to me.

The bad news continues. In their fine printed terms and conditions, you’ll also find their “privacy” statement. In actuality, there’s not much that’s private about it. They state that they will use your information and sell it to third parties. These third parties are often companies that want to market to you. So you can be sure that your spam email will increase as well as your junk mail and telephone solicitations. I wouldn’t give these guys a syllable of my info.

At first, I was impressed with Bowtrol’s money back guarantee which is a whole 90 days (very good in this industry). Again, the fine print made me a little more cautious. If you return your product (which can only be the unopened bottles) they still charge your a $10 restocking fee. They also make it more difficult to actually return your product because they require a return authorization that you can only get from their website (not to mention a few hoops that you have jump through). I’d feel pretty safe saying that you probably shouldn’t count on getting much, if any, of your money back.

Another surprise came when I looked up the company on the BBB website. They rated the Bowtrol Corporation as an A-. They had zero complaints. How could this be? I eventually found the filing date for the company in the Sate of California. It was 1/8/2009. So it’s only been around for a couple months. This certainly isn’t much time for people to file complaints with the BBB. I assuming that their rating will come down in the next little while.

In summary, Bowtrol is a scam. Plain and simple. They use the free trial to sucker you into their autoship, after which they can start automatically charging your credit card (and will likely make it difficult for you to stop the charges). Unfortunately, many people will ignore the fine print and completely taken off guard by these charges. Their guarantee looks good on the surface, but has it’s hidden requirements as well. Unless you like losing money, I’d say stay away from Bowtrol.