Reply from Lipotrim to the letter!!

JanD

maintaining since June'09
I'm still digesting this, I only opened it a couple of hours ago when we got back. I'm very interested to hear what you think. One thing's obvious - they don't think much of forums (fora?) xx

It's an OCR scan (don't ask me .... DH does these things) which is apparently why it hasn't recognised the signature as text so you can't see it. DH also removed my surname and our address, other than that it's in its entirity (although the spacing & stuff isn't right on the 'preview post' screen but looks okay in the edit box so I apologise but I'm sure you can manage!)


Lipotrim



17/06/09
Dear
Thank you for your letter. You have put considerable effort into communicating a selection of negative experiences with the support structure associated with Lipotrim, which I have to assume come from an online forum. While we regret even a single instance of poor communication between people dieting or maintaining their weight with Lipotrim products, and the medical, pharmacy or even help line staff, we do have an overwhelmingly positive feedback experience. A lot of problems actually derive from online chat rooms, such as Lipotrimusers.com, which are nothing to do with us and full of incorrect information.


Our pharmacy training programme was recognised by the pharmacy
experts and continues to generate major commendations from the ->
pharmacy staff we train. In addition to on site training of the pharmacist
there is considerable written and DVD material provided. Where
necessary due to staff changes, follow up training on site is often
provided . The training is done by the research scientists who
developed Lipotrim and have at least 25 years experience with its
medical and pharmacy use. The help line for pharmacy and medical
staff is used constantly as queries arise.
There are currently about 1000 pharmacies in the UK and Ireland and many hundreds of GP and also hospital programmes. When you consider the number of people involved in delivering the information and support, likely in excess of 10,000, you must realise that there can be some variation is their interest and capabilities. That is why we provide a considerable amount of written literature, and DVD and CD material to patients along with a freephone helpline that when possible is manned by our scientific and nutritional professionals. All serious calls are taken by the experts. Calls about which teas they can have or how do they handle a birthday cheat, are at times answered by others.
Some people confuse information they have read in chat rooms with the advice provided by Lipotrim. There are NO authorised forums and all the forums we have monitored contain wrong and sometimes dangerous advice. Everyone is provided with a carrier bag that is printed with almost all of the information required for safe and effective use of the diet. The DVD is available from the pharmacy and is also available on the homepage of the Lipotrim website. It is important that people watch the film.



We will try to deal with some of the issues you raise, but we maintain that the information we provide is based upon over 30 years of scientific, nutritional and medical experience and 23 years of medical use of Lipotrim in the UK. Our maintenance programme is the first physiologically based innovation for this purpose available anywhere in the world
We encourage people to call and tell us which pharmacy they have had a problem with. We do this currently and get both sides of the story and act accordingly. Clarification of the facts (they are not always as presented) and retraining pharmacy staff if necessary. All pharmacy staff are part of a professional team under the guidance of the pharmacist. All services in pharmacies are governed by standard operating procedures and following the standard procedures for Lipotrim are the responsibility of the pharmacist.
The recommended retain price is £36 female and £48 male per week. It is unlawful to fix a price. We cannot enforce prices for Northern Ireland and Eire.
Most queries arise from the use of the maintenance formulas which are designed for several uses. They are used a part of the refeeding week, for weight maintenance and can be used with food for weight loss. Information varies depending upon usage, as does the relevant information for an individual person's needs. With 25% of overweight people suffering additional problems with insulin resistance, guidance not to snack is given to those, but may not be relevant to another individual. There is no 'one size fits all' answer as we are dealing with individuals and the information we are given at the time.
Standard diet recommendations are to consume about 60% of calories from carbohydates. Day 4-7 on the refeeding builds on day 1 -3, so all normal meals need to include foods from the carbohydrate group. Our paperwork has proved very successful and we get very few people who do not understand it, but there will always be some who need extra clarification. The programme was developed by a UK registered nutritionist.
We have considered making breath strips, but this has proved difficult as the reason brand name products have been discontinued, is that manufacturers are not prepared to produce small volumes.
Emails are responded to. Sorry that you feel that they are abrupt, but this is not a good mechanism as the questions are often not conveyed with enough detailed information to supply a definitive answer. We also get an incredible number of emails that simply overload our inbox with uninterpretable or incomplete queries. Important and complex emails are most often requested to contact the help line for a proper answer and to assure the answer is understood.
We are well aware of all of the issues you have raised and would like you to accept that not all the postings in chat rooms represent a true and accurate description of reality. Many comments are based upon prejudice, bias or simply hearsay. Some are influenced by groups with their own agenda. All of the information we provide is based upon solid research, and a long history of experience.



The scientific programme at Howard Foundation Research Ltd, (Lipotrim) was recognised by the expert committee evaluating Very Low Calorie Diets for availability throughout Europe. Their acknowledgement follows:

From

Reports on tasks for scientific cooperation (SCOOP)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Task 7.3 - Collection of data on products intended for use in very-low-calorie diets.
Report September 2002
Reports submitted on behalf of the VLCD European Industry Group to the SCOOP working group on
very-low calorie diets between 1998 and 2001, consolidated 2001.
by , •-;; - ..... - . - •
John Marks MA, MD, FRCP, FRCPath, FRCPsych Life Fellow, Girton College, Cambridge CB3 OJG and
Jaap Schrijver . Manager Corporate Regulatory Affairs for foods for particular nutritional uses (PARNUTS) - Royal Numico NV Acknowledgement
I want to express my particular thanks to Dr Stephen Kreitzman and Valerie Beeson of Howard Foundation Research Ltd., who undertook a substantial proportion of the original research on which Section III, the 'Recent Scientific Studies' is based. Not only did they make available to us copies of their published work, but also shared with us much of the basic data so that we could convince ourselves that their results, which demonstrated substantial misunderstanding in much published metabolic work, could be thoroughly checked. On the basis of this, we were not only able to confirm the validity of the Kreitzman and Beeson studies, but from their bibliographies undertake cross checks of the errors or omission in the earlier work.


Once again, thank you for your comments.









I Biochemistry)



Dr S. Kreitzman Ph.D
R.Nutr (UK registered Nutritionist)
 
Well, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They didnt seem to answer any questions that were asked!

Quite disappointing really, dont you think Jan; thank goodness for this forum, that is all I can say. I would have thought they would recognise that people need support and there are many mediums, this being one.

The letter has an air of superiority.

Oh well, at least we tried, but not terribly helpful at all.

Just as well we all love this diet and know it works or we would all boycott it :mad:
 
You know what that reply sounds like to me? something like this "blah, blah, blah, blah, load of - b****cks"! They are not very helpful at all in answering any of the questions we wanted answering, they even blame the forum for incorrect information - well if they provided more support and didnt give every1 different answers then we wouldnt need a forum in the first place apart from to socialise! Duh, who are these fools that work at LT???!
 
Good God,

Did they not read the 1st paragraph of the letter at all, which praised the LT programme.

I want to write and ask them why they didnt acknowledge the positive?? Well, obviously they are not communicating with phamacies that well 'cos my pharmacist insists they will have their own strips in a few weeks!!!!

They also seem to have made an assumption about which forum the quotes/questions came from.. They should pop in here and see the very positive work being done by the people who pay their salaries in support of LT...

Would like to be really cross with it but have had amazing news tonight.... will post on new thread!..
 
An absolutely pathetic response. If it wasn't for the forums, it's likely a lot of people would have given up without the support they've gained from others, myself included.
 
and THIS is why they need some serious PR advice!

On the positive - they responded and.... well, that's about it for positives!

Don't say you don't provide a forum and then get sniffy about the ones that DO exist!!
 
I'd like them to nip into the pharmacy in my village and just watch their trained advisors. They've never been trained. I go there get weighed buy my shakes and then take advice from here cos they are useless and more to the point not interested.
 
ha the tone of that letter is sooo cheeky!!

Agreed!!

What a load of cobble wobble!! They are basically just telling us what gets fed to us when we start LT with the pharmacy.

And as for their views on forums - ha! pathetic!! This forum is the best weight loss forum i have ever been on - always helpfull, friendly people and always someone around when you need them - unlike LT!!!!

I feel like they havn't really responded (but atleast they actually replied).
 
I agree, what a load of Pants!!

Just being fobbed off,as per usual.
But well done Jan on doing the letter in the first place and spekaing for a lot of us here on mm.
 
just like politicians.....i think they must go to the same place so they learn how to evade answering direct questions...

what a waste of bloody time...why quote stuff when all we wanted were answers?! lolol

btw did you all know that the cambridge diet is manufactured by the same people? ive always wondered why they dont offer the same maintenance advise with LT like they do with that?
 
Holy crap!!!

Im shocked at how they responded to you letter :grumble:
And my eyes hurt from reading all the length of it!

You think they would apprecite the fact that the soo many people that are doing LT who are concerned about the incorrect/conflicting information they have received that they wanted to contact THEM instead of just giving up - while STILL handing over the flippin £36/£48 each week.

And to just dissmiss support forums WITHOUT even acknowledging this successful one??? :rolleyes:

"A lot of problems actually derive from online chat rooms, such as Lipotrimusers.com, which are nothing to do with us and full of incorrect information"

I couldnt ask for a more informative and supportive place than here on Minimins and i would be lost and alot heavier without it!
:grouphugg:

Ahhh well, sod em!!! :whoopass:

:thankyou: Jan for contacting them, shame they couldnt return the same courtesy and actually ANSWER your questions!!

:bestwishes:

Lei xxxxx
 
Its a great product, it works, we know this shame about the PR but hey doesn't stop us from shifting those lb's, perhaps we need to concentrate now on just getting on with it and with the brilliant support of this web site :)
 
You have put considerable effort into communicating a selection of negative experiences with the support structure associated with Lipotrim, which I have to assume come from an online forum.

That line gives us the answer, they didn't need to write any more, once they has associated the letter with online forums, it gave them all the ammo they needed to send a return letter of that effect.

I am tempted to say well lets just email them every query we now have and add on the bottom " we could have got the answer from an online forum but decided not to!"

I am still chewing on the rest but this reply is one thing, it's disrepectful to Jan who has completed her journey on Lipotrim and that isn't sitting well with me at all.....
 
Totally agree with your Colette. Very condescending letter I thought.
 
HI JanD and all,
I read the letter yesterday but needed to reread it today to try to digest it, not wholly able to but enough to feel I can comment somewhat. It is with trepidation I post this as I am probably going against the general tone of what others have experienced when they read it, but here goes, my ramblings on it .....
The tone of the letter is unfortunately defensive which can get my back up initially and therefore not allow me to read it properly. However that's why I slept on it and reread it today as more of an information sheet, taking the personality out of it, so to speak. At first reading it looks like they addressed none of the issues but I copied and pasted some areas which I am able to comment on.
The letter did have an element of abruptness to it, which was uncalled for. However they have, in their unfortunately officious manner, addressed some points which are interesting, if not delivered as well as they could be.

They said:
There are currently about 1000 pharmacies in the UK and Ireland and many hundreds of GP and also hospital programmes. When you consider the number of people involved in delivering the information and support, likely in excess of 10,000, you must realise that there can be some variation is their interest and capabilities.

This I can agree with as information unfortunately gets diluted when passed on.

We encourage people to call and tell us which pharmacy they have had a problem with. We do this currently and get both sides of the story and act accordingly. Clarification of the facts (they are not always as presented) and retraining pharmacy staff if necessary. All pharmacy staff are part of a professional team under the guidance of the pharmacist. All services in pharmacies are governed by standard operating procedures and following the standard procedures for Lipotrim are the responsibility of the pharmacist.

We may take exception to the (they are not always as presented) part of this paragraph however the naming of pharmacies which are not up to standard is no bad thing. People may fear the pharmacy may no longer carry LT if they do so, but surely it is worth trying to get all pharmacies to sing from the same hymn sheet so to speak.

There are NO authorised forums and all the forums we have monitored contain wrong and sometimes dangerous advice.

No company like this could been seen to endorse a forum where they could not have control over what is said. If there is misinformation given there could be serious repercussions for the company. However that does not negate the need for a forum like this one as it is a life saver to all of us on here.

a freephone helpline that when possible is manned by our scientific and nutritional professionals. All serious calls are taken by the experts. Calls about which teas they can have or how do they handle a birthday cheat, are at times answered by others.

I though this was an interesting paragraph as it teaches me to ask the professional qualification of who could answer the phone if I have a query.

Most queries arise from the use of the maintenance formulas which are designed for several uses. They are used a part of the refeeding week, for weight maintenance and can be used with food for weight loss. Information varies depending upon usage, as does the relevant information for an individual person's needs. With 25% of overweight people suffering additional problems with insulin resistance, guidance not to snack is given to those, but may not be relevant to another individual. There is no 'one size fits all' answer as we are dealing with individuals and the information we are given at the time.

I believe this is a good point, however I do not know how you can diagnose those people who they refer to as With 25% of overweight people suffering additional problems with insulin resistance
does the chemist do a test or is it based on how you lose your weight, is it something like underactive thyroid, diagnosed previously ?

We are well aware of all of the issues you have raised and would like you to accept that not all the postings in chat rooms represent a true and accurate description of reality. Many comments are based upon prejudice, bias or simply hearsay. Some are influenced by groups with their own agenda.

This I felt was an interesting point as it leads me to believe there could be sabotage referred to. Are there really trolls out there trying to get us to abandon LT, can't say I have ever felt that on this forum.

I know this has run on but without standing up for lipotrim I feel I wanted to dissect some of what they said, to show that Jan's letter wasn't in vain and to work it out for myself mainly.

Without letting LT off the hook completely I am left with the feeling however that pharmacies are a lot to blame. They are given the training (we are led to believe) but yet don't deliver the programme fully to the customer. There are constant queries on here regarding how much water to drink, what you can mix with soup, shakes, recipes etc, which do not seem to be endorsed by LT (save the strawberry mousse one, which is odd) If the pharmacies did their jobs properly there would be no need to have to ask these questions. All of us would be properly informed and properly supported by the people we pay our money to each week.

Sorry for going on. I sit here waiting for the missile attacks sent my way and before anyone even thinks it, no I don't work as an undercover LT spy or anything.

Doirin
 
I don't think there's anything wrong with your response Doirin! ... I haven't made my own comments yet as I'm STILL digesting it. Thanks to everyone else for what you've said too :) .

I find the tone a little defensive, almost annoyed!

They have responded to several of the points made - and that's great.
I DO feel that the quoting of the science and the research and the award at the end etc are irrelevant. I made the point that we love the plan and know it works, so defending it wasn't necessary at all.

I am going to respond. I'm not sure what the full content will be yet but it will be comparatively short, will make the point I made above and will certainly include something about a good, supportive forum being a lifeline - not only to try to clear up confusion, but to help with the emotional and psychological issues involved when someone finds themselves desperate enough to try a VLCD.
Help and support with them can often mean the difference between sticking at it and not ie. success & failure. At the end of the day it's ALL about the headstuff, which is not addressed anywhere else as far as I can see.
I would hazard a guess that nobody there has been in our shoes.

I think the most telling phrase in there is "We are well aware of all of the issues you have raised.... "
So does that mean they are sorting them out? Hmmm.

I'll ponder some more .........

Thanks again x
 
Agreed!!

What a load of cobble wobble!! They are basically just telling us what gets fed to us when we start LT with the pharmacy.

And as for their views on forums - ha! pathetic!! This forum is the best weight loss forum i have ever been on - always helpfull, friendly people and always someone around when you need them - unlike LT!!!!

I feel like they havn't really responded (but atleast they actually replied).



im just new to this but can i just say you look absolutely amazing from your before and after pictures well done girl.. this gives me a lot of inspiration just to go for it and shed the weight!!
 
I cannot acertain from the reply what the initial question was? They just liked blowing their own horn on how great and experienced they all are.

Amazing how most of their pharmacys are useless! Said my BF should go on female LT. Dont know how many times I've corrected him!

Suggested drinking LOADS of coffe until I pointed out it contained carbs and also... if he had forgotton, is addictive!!!!
 
I dont know what the original letter was asking but nothing I found in the reply was very helpful at all. It almost had a tone of 'don't be so stupid!' about it!

How lovely they are! ahem.
 
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