Teeth whitening is all the rage these days and it has been for about 5 years now. But along with legitimate teeth whitening products a lot of scams have also popped up. The reason for this is quite simple. The main teeth whitening agent in gels and whitening strips is carbamide peroxide. This peroxide is quite cheap and can be purchased over the counter or even on eBay.
So what some companies have done is take that same peroxide, put a fancy label on it, and charge 500% more than it cost for them to make. But this is not where they stop. There is something called a rebill that they like to use as well. They get you to sign up for the free trial and then will automatically bill your credit card the next month if you do not cancel. If you DO try to cancel they will run you around in circles making it nearly impossible to stop the charge on your credit card.
The FTC has cracked down on a lot of these teeth whitening scams but there are still many out there. Try to stay away from any offers that promise to give you a free trial of whitening gel and then charge you only for the shipping. You will have to read the fine print to find out if they will automatically charge your credit card if you do not cancel the next month and the product will just keep coming to your door.
When buying a teeth whitening product you really should look at what percentage the carbamide peroxide is. Anything over 25% is probably going to cause a lot of pain and sensitivity, and even though it will work a lot faster at whitening your teeth it will cause more pain than you should have to endure. Anything less than 10% is just not going to be effective and you will have to take for several weeks before you see any kind of difference in the brightness of your teeth.
These scams have cost consumers millions of dollars and you don’t have to search very far online before you find forums and blog posts with people complaining about being ripped off by a “free trial” of teeth whitening gel.
If you want to get instant results and brighter teeth right away you should go to your dentist and get ZOOM whitening which will take about an hour. Instead of taking weeks, the ZOOM whitening will give you a week’s worth of results in one sitting. You may experience some pain with the extra sensitivity that comes from the curing process, so have some pain killer on hand. You should also get some carbamide peroxide from your dentist to use in whitening trays that you can use periodically to keep your smile nice and bright for years to come.
Frank is a writer for a teeth grinding mouth guards website that offers helpful advice on putting a stop to teeth grinding and findind solutions to help people who suffer with bruxism and TMJ.
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