Fitbug

susie1

Anyone thinking about signing up for fitbug needs to read every word on the website very carefully. One year ago I paid about £84 for a year's subscription. I found the step counter useful to monitor my exercise but found recording my food intake complicated and time consuming; recipes weren't updated particularly regularly, the web page is quite difficult to negotiate so overall I was disappointed but hey, ho, some you win and some you lose so having paid for a year I let it ride. However, I checked my bank account yesterday and found that fitbug had taken out £6; I didn't have a direct debit agreement with them and I checked back through all my emails to see if I had overlooked a communication informing me that they were going to withdraw money from my account - I hadn't.
I telephoned fitbug and was informed that on the original application there was information saying that following the year's subscription monthly installments of £6 would automatically be taken out.I'm normally quite careful about such things and I don't remember it but I have no way of proving if that was there when I took out my subscription or not. However that misses the point that informing customers prior to withdrawing money from their bank would be GOOD PRACTISE, and taking money without communicating with your customers is BAD PRACTISE. It might technically be legal but that doesn't make it right.
Fitbug may suit you as a way of improving your fitness levels but it didn't suit me and frankly who wants to be a customer of a company that can't be bothered to communicate with you before withdrawing money from your account.

susie1

Thank you for the reply and link showing the clause is indeed tucked away as part of the detail in the small print.
My main point is that taking money from a customers bank account without any communication a year after the inital agreement was made is not courteous, it does not encourage good customer relationships and as such it is poor business practise.

crazyguy

If its a direct debit they must notify you in written format prior to any monies being taken from your account !

susie1

No there was no direct debit agreement - I thought I was making one payment for a fixed period of a year; however I ticked that I accepted the terms and conditions and unfortunately I hadn't read the small print carefully enough to notice a clause that said the subscription would continue at the end of the fixed period.
Lesson learnt to read the small print as well as the big print.

browneyedbazzi

crazyguy wrote: »

If its a direct debit they must notify you in written format prior to any monies being taken from your account !

This is far worse than a direct debit...it sounds like a continuous payment authority which doesn't come with the benefits of the direct debit guarantee or the ability for the consumer to cancel - only the company can cancel a continuous payment authority. Most people don't realise they are signing up to a cpa at the time because details are hidden away in small print etc unlike the explicit consent required for a direct debit. I honestly can't figure out why this type of payment is allowed to exist because it seems to be used primarily in situations where a consumer is mislead and trapped.

susie1

It's such a shame that there are still unscrupulous companies tucking information away in the small print, probably knowing that a lot of people will trustingly just tick the 'I accept the terms and conditions' without clicking through to the appropriate page and reading it throughly. It's just another learning curve!

Fitbug

I’m responding on behalf of Fitbug. I’m the CEO here & may I firstly say that it’s great to hear that you found the ‘Bug’ a useful device to help record your activity and motivate you to do more. That said, it is a huge shame to hear how disappointed you are with the nutritional aspect of the service and also the ongoing payment aspect.

We work hard to try and provide a variety of resources to help members achieve a healthy diet – each week we have a recipe of the week which is created by our nutritionist, and our weekly content usually contains at least one nutrition based article. Our health editor also discusses new research and health news in her weekly letter – in recent weeks she has covered research around the importance of behavioral change in weight management, and the impact of diets high in added sugars. We also post health news and articles of interest on our twitter and facebook accounts.

We are aware that tracking nutrition intake is much more time consuming than tracking activity, which is easily achieved by wearing the Bug. However, we find that most members who do engage with the nutrition side of the service do so very actively at the start of their membership to identify areas they may need to change – for example keeping a food diary quickly shows them whether they are eating more than the recommended number of calories – and they can then make changes from there.

We do also appreciate that our nutrition database is not as extensive as we’d like – and sadly it has proved difficult to encourage manufacturers to share their nutrition information. However, we’re currently working on an enhancement whereby members can share their manually entered items with others, which should help with this.

We are also going to be implementing some more communications to point members in the direction of additional articles they will find helpful – so for weight loss this may be portion sizes, or the importance of resistance activity.

All of this said, however, as a result of your feedback we are currently investigating whether or not we are managing to clearly communicate to all our members the various information mediums available to them.

With regards to navigation of the site, we do indeed include a comprehensive range of information but we endeavour to make this as easy to access as possible. We include an online guide to the site and also a video tutorial when you sign up. We are currently looking at ways to ensure that these tools are utilised by everyone when they first sign up to help avoid any future problems.

On the subject of ongoing payments, we are sorry that you feel we have in some way hidden the fact that monthly payments will continue to be taken after a 12-month subscription comes to an end. It is certainly not our intention to mislead anyone on this point. Indeed, if you take a look at the sign-up page on the website it clearly states under each subscription fee – as opposed to just in the small print - that the said amount will be “followed by £9 a month until you say stop”. We simply ask for 28 days’ notice and will then cancel any further payments without any quibble.

All our members are highly valued and it’s a huge disappointment to lose anyone. We take your feedback very seriously.

marywooyeah

you need to ask permission from MSE to post in a capacity representing a company, I suggest you do this before posting again.

jmf293

I used Fitug many years ago. I cancelled my membership about four years ago. Today I recieved an email from them saying that they had tried to take membership fees of £225 from my debit card, but were unable to. This is because the card has expired.

Why they think I owe them this money is beyond me. This is the firet commnication I've had from them for several years.

At first I thought it was a 'phishing' email, but it does link back to the website.

I've sent them the email below. Let's see whay their reply is !!

Sirs,


Today I received an email purported to be from yourselves asking for a membership payment of £225.


I cancelled my membership of FitBug several years ago and have not used any of the services in that time. Therefore, I do not understand why you have asked for this payment.


I have tried to access my old account on your website today, but when I log in I get the message “This account has been cancelled”, which – as I cancelled my membership – is the message that I expected.


Suffice to say, I shall not be paying this claimed amount – which I note you have tried to take from an expired card, without giving me any notice.


Should you wish to contact me about this matter, please call me on *********** tomorrow (20th September 2011).

Yours,

jmf293

essex1990

jmf293 wrote: »

I used Fitug many years ago. I cancelled my membership about four years ago. Today I recieved an email from them saying that they had tried to take membership fees of £225 from my debit card, but were unable to. This is because the card has expired.

Why they think I owe them this money is beyond me. This is the firet commnication I've had from them for several years.

At first I thought it was a 'phishing' email, but it does link back to the website.

I've sent them the email below. Let's see whay their reply is !!

Sirs,


Today I received an email purported to be from yourselves asking for a membership payment of £225.


I cancelled my membership of FitBug several years ago and have not used any of the services in that time. Therefore, I do not understand why you have asked for this payment.


I have tried to access my old account on your website today, but when I log in I get the message “This account has been cancelled”, which – as I cancelled my membership – is the message that I expected.


Suffice to say, I shall not be paying this claimed amount – which I note you have tried to take from an expired card, without giving me any notice.


Should you wish to contact me about this matter, please call me on *********** tomorrow (20th September 2011).

Yours,

jmf293

I had a similar experience with lovefilm 6 months after cancelling out of the blue i get an email saying that they tried to take money out of my account but couldn't because the card expired. One telephone call to them and they soon refunded all of the money they had taken in the previous months - apparently they didn't get their dvds back - i called !!!!!!!! and they 'waivered' it.

FitbugLTD

Hi Jmf293,

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. One of fitbug.com's Member Service Representatives will call you shortly to ensure that we remove any outstanding charges from your account and you receive no further emails from Fitbug.

Kind regards,

Danny
Fitbug.com Member Service Representative