Caveat Emptor

My ears have been ringing since I woke up from sedation about ten months ago (see "Will Someone Please Answer That @#$%* Phone?", August 20th). To be more accurate, it's actually only my right ear. Thank G-d my particular case of tinnitus is not too debilitating. The consensus among the medical community is that there is no cure for this; you just have to learn to live with it. As I said, mine isn't really horrible, but it is quite annoying. Back in July, I asked my friendly neighborhood pharmacist if he knew of anything that worked. "Try Lipo-Flavonoid," he said, and proceeded to sell me a bottle of 100 for $28.00. Acording to the directions, you're supposed to take these caplets three times a day. In fact, they actually have the gall to write, "for faster results, take two caplets three times a day." If you're being conservative and take just three a day, it comes to roughly .85 per pill. That wouldn't be outrageous if the product actually did something. After swallowing the stuff faithfully for a few months, I noticed absolutely no improvement whatsoever. That's when I went back to the box and read the fine print. There's a question printed in bold type: "Ringing in the Ears?" Then in smaller letters it says things like this all over the place: "If you have ringing in the ears, Lipo-Flavonoid provides nutrtional support to improve circulation in the inner ear"...asterisk! They have asterisks sprinkled all over the box like confectioner's sugar on a bundt cake. If you examine that sentence about "improved circulation in the inner ear" carefully, you'll notice that nowhere do they claim that this will help your tinnitus. It's just an assumption you'd naturally make if you hadn't read it carefully. Pretty sneaky, huh? I went back to John my pharmacist and told him that I thought this stuff was bogus. In fairness to him (and I love John; I've been dealing with him at least thirty years), he never guaranteed results. Indeed, he seemed a bit skeptical himself when he told me about it. John informed me that you have to take it for six months before you see any improvement. I went back and read the box again. This time I read the side of the bottle too, and there it was: "for best results, use for at least six months". Lipo-Flavonoid is distributed by a firm called DSE Healthcare Solutions, LLC, in Edison, New Jersey. New Jersey. Of course. DSE probably stands for Dom, Sal and Eddie (AKA Fat Eddie AKA Eddie the Fish AKA Mister Ed) whose pinky rings alone are worth more than my car. Of course I have to take this glorified placebo for six months...I haven't even paid for Dom's latest sharskin suit yet! P.T. Barnum famously said, "there's a sucker born every minute". Now, does that count someone like me who, months after being snookered once, actually considers continuing to fall for the same scam just in case the stuff will actually magically start working after six months? Do I come under the heading of a sucker being
re-born? Two conflicting adages simmered in my tired old brain: "in for a penny, in for a pound," and "don't throw good money after bad". Well, no need to worry, faithful readers;
I stopped taking the stuff well before I got to six months.  I'm sorry Sal's son, Sal Jr., won't be making bail after all, but hey...them's the breaks.

                                    

Greatest snake-oil salesman of all time.