Things I am hating right now...

Two months ago while driving on the 5-North en route to Los Angeles, I noticed that there are an unusual number of billboards for "Lap Band Weight Loss" or "1-800-Get-Thin". They caught my attention just by their overwhelming quantity but also because the billboards are painfully tacky and tasteless. I spend most weekends in LA and it seemed like on each trip I noticed and more and more of these terrible billboards. They had taken over the freeways and cities and struck a nerve in me that made me angry every time I saw them. Here is the worst part- THEY HAVE MADE THEIR WAY TO SAN DIEGO. My beloved city is now littered with these awful things and I pass three of them in my 20-minute drive to work. I hate them. 

Here were some of my thoughts and questions:

1. "Holy crap, this must have cost a fortune... how can a medical procedure afford to advertise like this? Most major hospitals can't afford to advertise this ferociously, how is this Lap-Band Procedure making enough to spend this much?" (Things I've learned at BG: Good placements cost good money.)

2. "Goodness these billboards are ugly... if this group can spend so much on billboards, couldn't they spare a few dollars to make a billboard that isn't so basic, tacky, and unappealing?" (Things I've learned at BG: It is always worth it to make sure ads look outstanding.)

3. "There's no way this is legit... very few people can even qualify for a gastric-band procedure so it must be a scam if they can afford to advertise this much to everyone."

That third thought is what motivated me to do some research on this product and company (Things I've learned at BG: research is the key to everything). Here is a brief summary of my findings:

The Weight Loss Centers is a part of a medical group in Beverly Hills called Top Surgeons that is owned by a pair of brother doctors that were featured on Dr. 90201 a few years back. Only nowadays, both of them are no longer doctors because their California medical licenses have been revoked: one for lying about attending UC Irvine (because he was expelled from UCI for stealing exam papers) and the other for negligent practices for unsafe liposuction procedures. The LA Times revealed that a majority of the people involved in this "Lap-Band Miracle" are former doctors with revoked licenses.

The billboards claim that insurance will cover the procedure when, in reality, most insurances only cover gastric-band surgeries for individuals that qualify as morbidly obese on the BMI scale. For anyone who is not covered by insurance, the Top Surgeons company offers a Care Credit Card to put the bill for the procedure on... with an incredibly high interest rate. The company has been scamming people by charging them outrageous fees even if they don't go through with a procedure; there have been a tremendous volume of lawsuits against the company for fraudulent billing, breach of contract, and violating the state consumer protection law. Violating state consumer protection laws is when a business fails to tell you relevant information or misleads you in any way about their rates, return, or warranty.

I feel satisfied in discovering that I was right in all of my assumptions about these billboards- most importantly that this business is a scam. As satisfying as that is, it makes me hate these billboards even more. Not only is it luring desperate people into an serious medical procedure while scamming them out of money, it is this kind of garbage that gives advertising a bad name. So many advertisers like Bailey Gardiner create beautiful, effective and tasteful ads for good clients and it's infuriating to see companies like this use advertising to deceive people. I hope people start realizing how shady this Lap-Band Surgery is and how disreputable Top Surgeons group is so that they can go out of business and I never have to see their awful advertising ever again.