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For this report, KOIN 6 News spoke with shoppers Allison Hale, Karen Chaivoe, Kathlene Kelley, Jill Slansky and a woman named Bev. None of these women know each other but they all have similar stories about a different skin care store.
What follows is their stories of what each experienced at BH28 Skincare Consultants in the Vancouver Mall, Green Spa at Washington Square Mall and Bee & Company at Clackamas Town Center and on Northwest 23rd.
“This is everywhere,” Hale said. “It’s all across Oregon. It’s all across Washington. It’s nationwide. This is an issue,” Hale said. “This goes well beyond high pressure sales. What I experienced was coercion. It was deception, it was threats, intimidation, lies.”
“They prey on people like me,” said Bev, 74.
“I was just a target, and they were going to try and sell me as much of their product as possible without concern,” Chaivoe said. “It’s basically buyer beware.”
The women in this story spent between $300 and $22,000.
How it begins
“I was just walking in the mall and someone comes up and says, want to try this face cream?” Bev said.
“I walked out of Nordstrom’s into the mall and there’s a kiosk there, and this girl waved at me,” Slansky said.
“And when I walked by the kiosk,” Hale said, “She was handing out samples.”
“They had a couple of young people standing outside on the sidewalk that were calling out to people and complimenting and offering free samples,” Kelley said.
“And he says, ‘Oh, would you like a free sample?'” said Chaivoe.
The free sample often leads to a sales associate testing out eye cream on the customer, they explained.
“It was amazing. It took 20 years off my eyes,” Hale said.
Slansky said “she puts stuff under here and then used a little fan to dry it real quickly and you could just see all the wrinkles go away.”
It looks good at first but the women said, it later gets crusty and flakes off. However, before they realized that, they’re sold products for hundreds of dollars and whisked into what they’re told will be a “complimentary” facial or taken to a spa to get a voucher for a free facial later.
“She takes me to this back room,” Hale said, “which is a very tiny room. It was probably smaller than a jail cell.”
“Now we get to this little back room that was really creepy,” Slansky said.
Chaivoe described “the VIP facial room” was more like a “a converted closet.”
The hard sell begins
The “complimentary facial” turned out to be a hard sell. In each of their stories, a man tried to get them to buy a red light therapy wand.
“In my head I’m saying, ‘I want to get out of here,'” Slansky said. “But that wasn’t an option because the door shut and there’s no way you could get out of there.”
“I kept saying, ‘I don’t have time,’ but it was so hard to turn around and just walk out,” Kelley said.
Hale said the same thing. “I keep telling him, ‘I don’t have time for this. I want to leave.’ But he’s blocking the doorway.”
The red light therapy products and services are said to cost thousands of dollars.
“How much is this? And he started out as something like $9,000 and some dollars, and he dropped it down to $5,000,” Kelley said.
“The guy continues to kind of tell me about this product, and I’m like, ‘How much is this?’ He says, $5,000. I just laughed. I was like, ‘I’m not buying this,'” said Hale.
Chaivoe said she was told it cost $4,000. “And I went, ‘What? $4,000? I don’t have that kind of money to spend, especially at this time of year. I think I need to leave.’ (He said) ‘Oh, what if I drop the price to $2,000?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.'”
Another sales technique
“I started to get up and he became upset. ‘Wait, wait, wait just a minute.’ And he comes back with a box that has the lid kind of torn and goes, ‘Oh, this product got damaged in shipping, and I will give it to you for $1,000,'” Chaivoe said.
Slansky said she was getting nervous about it all. “He walks out and comes back with a package and the cellophane on the outside is torn. And he said, ‘Every once in a while we get a package like this. There’s nothing wrong with what’s inside, but we can’t sell it the way it is, but you have to promise never to tell anybody that I made you this offer.'”
It was the same for Hale. “He was standing kind of next to the door and he goes, ‘I found a box in the back that’s damaged. You can have it for $700.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, we’re done.'”
The women said the salesmen wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I realized the only way I was going to get out of there was to buy the product,” Kelley said. “And I thought, OK, I’ll buy these products and then I’ll just return them later.”
Hale said she believes the tactic “is holding people hostage, basically. And then at this point you’re like, I will pay anything to get out of here.”
But there was a problem they wouldn’t realize until later.
“When I got the receipt, it said ‘No Refunds.’ I felt sick,” Kelley said. “I thought how at my age—at 67 years old—could I let someone so take advantage of me? How did I let that happen? And I felt ashamed.”
The tactics worked because, as Bev said, “he would really butter you up, try to be really nice.”
Chaivoe said there was “the overt friendliness,” Slansky said it was the “whole thing about flattery” and Hale described it as “cognitive overload. It’s this rapid fire questions.”
Small rooms can create a sense of being trapped or confined, which can intensify feelings of pressure, especially in a sales situation. The confined space might also trigger a psychological response where individuals are less likely to voice objections or disagree, as it can feel more confrontational or less comfortable.
The women also talked about things that are too good to be true, like free refills or services for a lifetime.
“They were saying, ‘Well, we are having this thing where we’re paying upfront and you can have it for the rest of your life. You don’t have to reup it,'” Bev said. “So I put in this ridiculous amount of money — $16,000.”
There were other claims, too: “A cream that is permanent Botox,” Slansky said. “Claims of how their products can help or cure diabetes and certain cancers,” Kelley said.
Chaivoe said she saw “before-and-after pictures of several clients, and of course the first one, everybody’s kind of wrinkly and pinched looking, and the next one, it’s like, wow, did you have facial surgery?”
Another similarity in stories
Hale said she ” immediately recognized her as Israeli. I lived in Israel, I speak Hebrew.”
“He said he was Israeli,” Slansky said. “And then he gave me this story about how I might not see him again. He has to go back and fight because of the war – and I’m Jewish, so I got sucked right into that, of course. And he did have an Israeli accent.”
Chaivoe said she forgot “where he told me he was from, but he says, yes, I lived there for a long time, but now I live here and my family is Jewish.”
“Apparently, he was Jewish,” said Kelley. “At least that’s what he said.”
Bev said the owner of the skincare store at the Vancouver Mall was also Israeli, which court documents later confirmed.
Law enforcement
The FBI and US prosecutors have targeted this foreign multi-billion dollar industry in the past. A class action lawsuit in Hawaii is set for this July calling out companies for these predatory skincare businesses. A Forest Grove woman is the lead plaintiff.
According to published reports and leaked cables from US diplomats, based in Israel, the companies recruit ex-military draftees to aggressively sell expensive cosmetics to middle-aged and elderly women worldwide.
Following a complaint in October, emails show Washington Square Mall chose not to renew Green Spa’s lease.
The owner/operator of Washington Square Mall, Macerich, told KOIN 6 News, “We can confirm the tenant is no longer at the property. We’re not able to provide comments regarding tenant leases.”
In a statement, Tracy Peters, the senior general manager at the Vancouver Mall said:
“Mall management has fully cooperated with the efforts of local law enforcement as they conducted a criminal investigation into the activities of a former tenant of the mall. We appreciate the efforts of the Vancouver Police Department as they work hard to help keep the Vancouver community safe.”
We confronted employees at Bee & Co. in person about customers’ complaints. We left our business card asking for the manager to contact us. A man who went by the name of Avi called us back, but he would not share his last name. He said in part, “I’m sorry about it and I’m happy to help solve. I’m not here to hurt, I’m here to help.” He claims he’s willing to give these customers a refund.
Meanwhile, Clackamas Town Center didn’t respond to our request for comment.
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