1. A price with no unit attached
Two services in our comparison both charge $114 a month. One of them is five doses.
That is the single biggest distortion in this category. A monthly figure tells you almost nothing until you know what it divides by, and pages that sell in packs of five while quoting a monthly rate are relying on you not doing the arithmetic. Work out the cost per dose before comparing anything. We ranked every service that way.
2. The advertised price that needs a five-month commitment
A headline of “from $1.64 a pill” sounds competitive. Then you find the $1.64 applies to a 150-pill pack, and a single month works out nearer $2.97 — roughly 80% more than the number in the advert.
This is not lying, and the smaller pack is usually shown somewhere. But “from” is doing heavy lifting, and the price most people will actually pay is the one that is not in the headline.
3. The struck-through price that was never charged
One service shows $114 against a $179 “retail” figure. Another shows $114 struck through from $175. A third advertises 25% off, permanently.
A crossed-out number is an anchor — it exists to make the real price feel like a decision you have already won. The only figure that matters is the one that will be charged, and a discount that never expires is not a discount, it is the price.
4. Ingredients named, quantities missing
Nineteen of the thirty-one pages we have audited name their active ingredients and publish no strength for any of them.
Watch for the phrase that replaces the number: *“personalised by clinician”*, *“optimised for you”*, *“custom compounded”*. Per-patient dosing is a legitimate model and a reasonable thing to sell. It is not a reason the page cannot tell you what a typical dose looks like, and it is not a reason you should not ask the prescriber for the figure in writing.
5. A dose that only exists in the URL
This one caught us out, so it is worth flagging carefully.
A product page showed no milligram figure anywhere in its copy. Its order link, however, contained the product code `sil20tad20`. Our first audit recorded that as the published dose and gave the page a pass. It should not have. A code in a URL is not something a buyer reads, it carries no units, and it is not a claim the company has made.
We corrected the review and dropped its rating. The lesson generalises: if the only place you can find a number is the address bar, the page has not published it.
6. The wrong disclaimer
There are two very different sentences, and one of them is being used to do the other's job.
| The right one, for a compounded drug | The wrong one |
|---|---|
| “Compounded drugs are not FDA-approved. The FDA does not verify the safety or effectiveness of compounded drugs.” | “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” |
The second is the dietary supplement disclaimer. It belongs on a vitamin bottle. On a page selling a prescription drug it is the wrong instrument, and we have found it on a product page for a compounded prescription product whose own advertising destination carries the correct wording instead.
7. A guarantee with no policy behind it
“60-day money-back guarantee” is a strong claim. It is worth checking against what happens when people try to use it.
One company advertising exactly that has a public complaint file in which refunds are refused, in one case on the stated grounds that *“the product being a prescription medication”* prevents it. A guarantee that does not survive contact with the nature of the product is not a guarantee.
The same applies to “cancel anytime” with no cancellation process published anywhere. Nineteen of thirty-one pages publish no terms at all.
8. One landing page per advert
The subtlest of the eight, and the one most worth knowing.
One company in our comparison runs at least three landing pages for the same product. One carries a full safety block — the nitrate interaction with its mechanism, riociguat named, alpha-blockers flagged, the four-hour rule, vision and hearing loss. Another carries almost none of it and uses the dietary-supplement disclaimer instead. A third is a sponsored advertorial.
What you are told depends on which advert you clicked. That is why every review on this site names the exact page it read and the month it read it — and why we score the destination the paid advertising points at, because that is where the money actually goes.
What is not a red flag
Worth saying, because a suspicious reader can overcorrect.
- Compounding itself. It is legal, often appropriate, and the honest ones say so plainly. The flag is hiding it, not doing it.
- A subscription, if the terms are published and you can leave. The flag is the silence, not the recurrence.
- A questionnaire instead of a video call. Thin intake is a real concern, but plenty of legitimate services work this way and screen properly once the form starts.
- Testimonials, if they carry a disclosure about whether results are typical and whether reviewers were compensated. One service in our set does this properly, which proves it is possible.