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www.weightlossresources.co.uk - Deplorable abuse of paying customer
infoleacher
Posts: 106 Forumite
I feel compelled to write this as a warning to other potential users of www.weightlossresources.co.uk .
Weight Loss resources is essentially a website that provides a service for people to monitor their weight loss and to try to help people who have lost weight by maintaining the loss. It works by offering a place for you to log food that you have consumed thereby working out what your daily/weekly calorific consumption. You also log your activity thereby giving you a kind of in and out budget report for calories consumed. It's a simple but useful weight loss strategy. I had been using another site to do primarily the same thing, with a free to use service at www.fitday.com but because it was an American site I became frustrated at the constant need to set up many of our popular British foods, as what the site called "Custom Foods" which involved entering the information from the nutrition label found on most foods. This was not a problem for the odd item, but when you are trying to lose weight and eat more nutritionally then one is encouraged to vary their diet, which inevitably leads to more and more data entry. I searched the net and was delighted when I found a similar if not more basic site based in the UK. Although it was a paid for premium service, I decided to investigate it usefulness as I thought that if they were charging what is quite a lot of money for a simple service then it might be fair to assume that at least the database of foods (nutrition & calories etc) held within the site would be more accurate and more relevant to British users. Initially I signed up for a free 24 hour trial which started on the 31/03/09. In 24 hours I tested the site as much as I could. I found that many of the foods that I had consumed during the 1st day were listed (although I didn't cross reference their accuracy with the products label). I was reasonably pleased that the food database was an improvement on the fitday site so I signed up for permanent paid for access on the 01/04/09 at a monthly subscription at a rate of £9.74. My payment cleared on the 01/04/09. I then spent the next 9 days faithfully logging all my food & exercise and I was enjoying seeing the progression of my "stats" essentially calories consumed vs. calories spent (or worked off). I made a comment on the forum talking about my weight loss and motivation in a positive way and joining in with the general feeling of community support, not dissimilar to that of the moneysaving expert forums. After several days I started to become aware that a lot of the items in the nutritional information for the food database differed from the manufacturer’s label. These were not what I consider to be rare items as I shop at the popular common or garden supermarkets and in my opinion should have been accurate. Not only was the actual nutritional info often wrong, sometimes the foods didn't even exist in the database, sometimes they existed but not in the different pack sizes that were commonly available (e.g. a brand of beer might be listed but only one size bottle, when maybe there would be 3 - 4 different sizes available) this further complicated the process of food logging.
Rather than suffer in silence I decide to raise my concern on the websites forum. I was very fair in my evaluation but reported that I was unhappy with the amount of corrections that I had to make to foods. I really wanted to know what the weight loss resources administrators were planning to do or not do about the situation. I mentioned that for a paid for service I felt that the costs were difficult to justify if the main point of the site (the database) was often inaccurate. Before the sites help/admin team had chance to reply some other weight loss resources members pointed out that they felt I should always flag up my inaccurate foods to the admin team and they would change them. This was of course very reasonable BUT I found that most of the foods I was logging were out of date or nonexistent so I reiterated my point that for a paid for service I think there should be a better in house "managed" solution to these issues. My own opinion is that they should develop relationships with supermarkets and food producers ensuring that as and when products were changed that the nutritional information was communicated and updated. In my reply I mentioned the fitday website and compared the two, I asked for some feedback from the help team about my comments. This was about 9.00pm last night and I switched off my computer intending to see if the weight loss resources team had replied.
I attempted to log on this morning and I was greeted with a page that suggested that they were unable to take my payment and requested a new credit card detail. I checked my account and cold see that the money had been taken. It then dawned on me that I was probably a victim of some rather draconian anti truth, anti two way communicative policy. I called the company and spoke to a lady who said she recalled the post and had referred it to her manager, she seemed as shocked as I was that he then seems to have taken the decision to block my access to the site. She led me to believe that she expected him to maybe remove the post, but had not expected him to remove my access to a PAID for service and my personal data that I had created. During the course of the conversation I found out what the REAL problem was that because I had quoted the full url of the competitor site it had displayed a hyperlink when it was posted to the forum. I genuinely hadn't even thought of the implications of this and would have been more than happy to remove the actual link and rephrase my forum post. After the conversation I referred to the sites T&C's that relate to the use of the forums, they were actually very simple "Weight Loss Resources reserves the right to ban a member from the site if in our opinion their postings to the forum are offensive" . It goes on to say that "decisions like these are not taken lightly and are discussed among the member services team" (it obviously wasn't because the lady I spoke to had not expected me to be barred) and that "Where possible a member will receive a warning before action is taken." again I wasn't. More interestingly it doesn't mention that the use of hyperlinks were in any wan excluded, and in fact it mention "debate and different points of view are encouraged" again not unless you deem to question the sites validity on some way!
I think everyone should be aware that weight loss resources has;
1 - Data that I have found to be out of date.
2 - A service that can be bettered at the free website of www.fitday.com
3 - Probably the worst example of customer care I have experienced
4 - Terms & conditions to which they even the don't adhere to themselves
5 - An amount of money which I exchanged for a service that they have failed to supply and then further blocked my access to.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated, I feel that I should make a stand and I will be contacting http://www.berr.gov.uk/ along with http://www.ico.gov.uk/ on Tuesday, in the meantime I would greatly appreciate any feedback as to which direction I should take my dispute.
Weight Loss resources is essentially a website that provides a service for people to monitor their weight loss and to try to help people who have lost weight by maintaining the loss. It works by offering a place for you to log food that you have consumed thereby working out what your daily/weekly calorific consumption. You also log your activity thereby giving you a kind of in and out budget report for calories consumed. It's a simple but useful weight loss strategy. I had been using another site to do primarily the same thing, with a free to use service at www.fitday.com but because it was an American site I became frustrated at the constant need to set up many of our popular British foods, as what the site called "Custom Foods" which involved entering the information from the nutrition label found on most foods. This was not a problem for the odd item, but when you are trying to lose weight and eat more nutritionally then one is encouraged to vary their diet, which inevitably leads to more and more data entry. I searched the net and was delighted when I found a similar if not more basic site based in the UK. Although it was a paid for premium service, I decided to investigate it usefulness as I thought that if they were charging what is quite a lot of money for a simple service then it might be fair to assume that at least the database of foods (nutrition & calories etc) held within the site would be more accurate and more relevant to British users. Initially I signed up for a free 24 hour trial which started on the 31/03/09. In 24 hours I tested the site as much as I could. I found that many of the foods that I had consumed during the 1st day were listed (although I didn't cross reference their accuracy with the products label). I was reasonably pleased that the food database was an improvement on the fitday site so I signed up for permanent paid for access on the 01/04/09 at a monthly subscription at a rate of £9.74. My payment cleared on the 01/04/09. I then spent the next 9 days faithfully logging all my food & exercise and I was enjoying seeing the progression of my "stats" essentially calories consumed vs. calories spent (or worked off). I made a comment on the forum talking about my weight loss and motivation in a positive way and joining in with the general feeling of community support, not dissimilar to that of the moneysaving expert forums. After several days I started to become aware that a lot of the items in the nutritional information for the food database differed from the manufacturer’s label. These were not what I consider to be rare items as I shop at the popular common or garden supermarkets and in my opinion should have been accurate. Not only was the actual nutritional info often wrong, sometimes the foods didn't even exist in the database, sometimes they existed but not in the different pack sizes that were commonly available (e.g. a brand of beer might be listed but only one size bottle, when maybe there would be 3 - 4 different sizes available) this further complicated the process of food logging.
Rather than suffer in silence I decide to raise my concern on the websites forum. I was very fair in my evaluation but reported that I was unhappy with the amount of corrections that I had to make to foods. I really wanted to know what the weight loss resources administrators were planning to do or not do about the situation. I mentioned that for a paid for service I felt that the costs were difficult to justify if the main point of the site (the database) was often inaccurate. Before the sites help/admin team had chance to reply some other weight loss resources members pointed out that they felt I should always flag up my inaccurate foods to the admin team and they would change them. This was of course very reasonable BUT I found that most of the foods I was logging were out of date or nonexistent so I reiterated my point that for a paid for service I think there should be a better in house "managed" solution to these issues. My own opinion is that they should develop relationships with supermarkets and food producers ensuring that as and when products were changed that the nutritional information was communicated and updated. In my reply I mentioned the fitday website and compared the two, I asked for some feedback from the help team about my comments. This was about 9.00pm last night and I switched off my computer intending to see if the weight loss resources team had replied.
I attempted to log on this morning and I was greeted with a page that suggested that they were unable to take my payment and requested a new credit card detail. I checked my account and cold see that the money had been taken. It then dawned on me that I was probably a victim of some rather draconian anti truth, anti two way communicative policy. I called the company and spoke to a lady who said she recalled the post and had referred it to her manager, she seemed as shocked as I was that he then seems to have taken the decision to block my access to the site. She led me to believe that she expected him to maybe remove the post, but had not expected him to remove my access to a PAID for service and my personal data that I had created. During the course of the conversation I found out what the REAL problem was that because I had quoted the full url of the competitor site it had displayed a hyperlink when it was posted to the forum. I genuinely hadn't even thought of the implications of this and would have been more than happy to remove the actual link and rephrase my forum post. After the conversation I referred to the sites T&C's that relate to the use of the forums, they were actually very simple "Weight Loss Resources reserves the right to ban a member from the site if in our opinion their postings to the forum are offensive" . It goes on to say that "decisions like these are not taken lightly and are discussed among the member services team" (it obviously wasn't because the lady I spoke to had not expected me to be barred) and that "Where possible a member will receive a warning before action is taken." again I wasn't. More interestingly it doesn't mention that the use of hyperlinks were in any wan excluded, and in fact it mention "debate and different points of view are encouraged" again not unless you deem to question the sites validity on some way!
I think everyone should be aware that weight loss resources has;
1 - Data that I have found to be out of date.
2 - A service that can be bettered at the free website of www.fitday.com
3 - Probably the worst example of customer care I have experienced
4 - Terms & conditions to which they even the don't adhere to themselves
5 - An amount of money which I exchanged for a service that they have failed to supply and then further blocked my access to.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated, I feel that I should make a stand and I will be contacting http://www.berr.gov.uk/ along with http://www.ico.gov.uk/ on Tuesday, in the meantime I would greatly appreciate any feedback as to which direction I should take my dispute.
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Comments
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I think you need to be clear about what you want as an outcome? Do you want your membership reinstated? Or your money back?
First things ifrst I would get back in touch with them and ask for whatever it is you want. it might be simpler than going to BERR or wherever?0 -
While I can see your point of view I have used WLR a number of times in the last 10 yrs or so and found it to be brilliant.
When you input a product you always have the option to manually input a different set of figures yourself. Or even add a fresh product. I even emailed their CS with a product and they contacted the manufacturer and had the figures within a few days.
For me I found the fact I could input my own recepies and get a cal amount per serving for that far the best, most useful tool for me.
I suppose because I mostly cook my own for me the product list was less of an issue.
I occasionally noticed slight descrepancies on products, but as I said if you can be bothered you can change it anyway, and if not it evens out anyway.
I did lose weight every time and found the customers services to be really good, and enjoyed the forums. I have recommended the service to others who again have had no problems.
However I appreciate you had a bad experience and feel they should refund you for any unused part of your subscription. Defo contact them again.
BTW not having a go at you just wanted to put the position for someone who has used the site without any problems.
good luck
ali x"Overthinking every little thing
Acknowledge the bell you cant unring"0 -
I use a free site called sparks people it is great and the recipies are lovely.Life is short, smile while you still have teeth
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While I can see your point of view I have used WLR a number of times in the last 10 yrs or so and found it to be brilliant.
When you input a product you always have the option to manually input a different set of figures yourself. Or even add a fresh product. I even emailed their CS with a product and they contacted the manufacturer and had the figures within a few days.
For me I found the fact I could input my own recepies and get a cal amount per serving for that far the best, most useful tool for me.
I suppose because I mostly cook my own for me the product list was less of an issue.
I occasionally noticed slight descrepancies on products, but as I said if you can be bothered you can change it anyway, and if not it evens out anyway.
I did lose weight every time and found the customers services to be really good, and enjoyed the forums. I have recommended the service to others who again have had no problems.
However I appreciate you had a bad experience and feel they should refund you for any unused part of your subscription. Defo contact them again.
BTW not having a go at you just wanted to put the position for someone who has used the site without any problems.
good luck
ali x
Of course you are perfectly entitled to your opinion. I wouldn't shout you down just because you don't happen to agree with me or have a differing opinion (or kick you off the site like the company you are defending). You lost weight because you consumed less calories than you burnt. Simple. Just because you happened to be a memeber of weight loss resources at the time doesn't mean that you should aportion your success to them.
I also cook lot's of my own fresh foods and for generic ingredients its perfeclty good. BUT us humans don't always consume our own food in our own home and this site claims to have the "the biggest, most up-to-date UK food database on the web" I canot possibly confirm or deny that is the case. All I was doing was bringing it to thier attention that in my experience it was often not up to date and as that is what I was paying for I feel that I have every right to voice my concern.
Weight loss resources essentially showed their contempt for me as a paying custoimer by kicking me off the site WITHOUT WARNING or consultation and in direct contravention of thier own website T&C's.
These are the facts.0 -
I use to use WLT and now used Nutracheck. Fantastic. You even get daily motivational tipsTopCashback £1792.63My Little World0
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I think you need to be clear about what you want as an outcome? Do you want your membership reinstated? Or your money back?
First things ifrst I would get back in touch with them and ask for whatever it is you want. it might be simpler than going to BERR or wherever?
Thanks annie, I think your post made me recognise what I wanted. I don't want them to receive any payment for the service they withdrew and I don't want my membership with such a dreadful company reinstated. I think I have every right to a refund as I didn't break any of their T&C's? I will follw this route, my intention to share my experience with them has been met by posting here and in other forums.0 -
I use to use WLT and now used Nutracheck. Fantastic. You even get daily motivational tips
What a coincidence, I just found that website https://www.nutracheckmen.co.uk , it looks more proffesional and better programmed than the WLR site AND it's cheaper. I just joined up :beer:0 -
Just for info, WLR have just reinstated my account! The guy who was responsible for barring me was due back at 4.00 pm today, he probably got a message from the other lady I spoke to this morning and had a "rethink" of his actions! No email to tell me why.
I'm only adding this information in the spirit of fairness.0 -
I havent used the weightlossresources site but tend to use the https://www.tescotracker.com site which I find has nearly all the products I want it to have:DWeight Loss - 102lb0
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