Sunday, September 6, 2009

USANA over charges its distributors for their new Pure Rest™ melatonin sleep aid

USANA announced their new melatonin product called Pure Rest™ during their 2009 annual convention. Pure Rest™ costs distributors $14.95 and retails for $17.94. Each Bottle contains 56 tablets. Each tablet contains 2 mg of melatonin. So USANA charges its distributors 13.3 cents per mg per tablet.

Why so much?
USANA says their Pure Rest™ contains "Pharmaceutical Grade Synthetic Melatonin". I believe the high absurd price is to fund USANA's pyramid scheme.

Does anyone else have Pharmaceutical Grade Synthetic Melatonin?
A company 17 miles down the road from USANA's headquarters in Utah called WorldWide Labs. Their melatonin sleep aid costs 2.6 cents per mg per tablet, and that's the retail price!

So how does USANA's Pure Rest™ fair up with other popular brands of melatonin product? The following graph has the answers.


9 comments:

  1. All criticisms towards USANA are missing the point. The buyers who pay high prices for USANA products are technically not buyers. They are technically sales people even if the only sales they generate are for themselves. The benefit of being a sales person instead of a buyer is to deduct income taxes because you are technically running a business at home. Being "ripped off" a few hundred dollars by USANA every year will allow them to claim a few thousand dollars from the Uncle Sam. It is a scheme to rip off the US government. I know there are many "distributors" who also believe the high price is worth it, but many are in it because of the ability to deduct taxes. This is a big loophole in the tax system.

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  2. Anonymous,

    I agree, the buyers are actually distributors who are purchasing the product in order to be commission eligible.

    You wrote "They are technically sales people even if the only sales they generate are for themselves."

    Not true. They do not generate sales "for themselves" when they purchase the product. Why? Because commission is not paid to the distributor who buys their 100 PSV in order to be commission eligible. The commission from that purchase is only given to the upline members.

    You wrote "The benefit of being a sales person instead of a buyer is to deduct income taxes because you are technically running a business at home."

    False! That is illegal. Distributors cannot deduct their personal purchases if they consume or use the product themselves. Therefore, there is no benefit of becoming a distributor versus a regular customer. Also, if the distributor has no intent to make money, then they are breaking the law by deducting their business expenses. Why? Because then it is only considered a Hobby loss.

    You call this a big loophole at the end of your posting. However, there is no loophole at all. Distributors who deduct their personal purchases on their taxes are simply breaking the law, Period. But I agree with you, they are screwing the government by doing so.

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  3. How is USANA getting such much big sales out of hong kong, with little population. Will China government stop so much unapproved product going across the border did to NHTC and UNICITY? What happens to growing then?

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  4. Anonymous wrote "How is USANA getting such much big sales out of hong kong, with little population. Will China government stop so much unapproved product going across the border did to NHTC and UNICITY?"

    It appears from your question that you already know the answer. A large sum of USANA products does in fact end up in Mainland China, which is off limits to USANA. China isn't doing anything about it and neither is USANA. As long as distributors purchase USANA products, you can be sure that USANA will allow rules to be broken until an outsider points out the fraud and complains. It is known throughout USANA corporate that a lot of their products end up in restricted areas where they are not allowed to be in. China is their biggest problem. If USANA is doing anything to take care of the problem, they aren't telling anyone about it.

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  5. Still Usana is only ones listed in Physicians Desk Reference proving our 100% potency guarantee....no one can take that from us!!!!!All other products just say they have 100% but did you know the FDA will approve it as long as they have 3% of a substance.....so that's why USANA is not FDA approved but we do follow the guidelines!!!!!!!Our products continue being the best! GO USANA!!!!

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  6. No comment for that one?

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  7. Anonymous,

    I thought you were being sarcastic and assumed you were one of the critics of USANA from the Yahoo Message Board.

    There are many vitamin companies listed in both PDRs. A couple years ago USANA claimed the PDR gave them credibility. USANA was warned by the publishers of the PDR not to make any such claims. USANA then had to redo all of their advertisements and remove their untrue claims about the PDR.

    Fact is, USANA pays a substantial price to have their products advertised and listed in the PDR. USANA is the one who chose which book to list their product in. The fact USANA chose to list in the PDR for prescription drugs means absolutely nothing and does not mean USANA's products are better than their competitors.

    Why do I know all this? I contacted the publishers of the PDR 2 years ago and talked with them about all of this.

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  8. dear blog author,

    There are hundreds(if not thousand) of supplement companies out there of varying degrees of quality in their products.
    and you purposely pick out
    only a small percentage of companies and then put them along side with Usana to make your comparsion chart(in order to show the "drastic" difference to make your point.)

    I think in the future it's better if you can include also products from companies of higher quality(than the ones you selected) such as Thorne Research, Douglas Laboratories and VRP in all your comparison charts to avoid any statistics bias.

    thanks.

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  9. I think you need to check out Lyle MacWilliams' book on Nutritional Suppliments....it's a comparative guide of over 1500 different companies reasearched in the US and Canada. Seeing is believing and the product has done wonders for my family. It is the BEST! Also being a product of my product, constitutes as advertising and YES YOU CAN use that as a write off....

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