Diet website promising a 'personalised service':
a)The service is not "personalised" at all, despite what is stated in the advertisements. They provide computer generated messages based on answers given to a multiple choice questionnaire, with absolutely no opportunity to provide information about the person's real status.
b)The information provided on the UK web site is an atrociously poor translation out of the French. It appears they have used a machine translation. Taking a quick look at the UK forum one can see the constant confusion caused by this attempt at economy.
c) The team that is supposed to support people on the UK web site has obviously not received much training in the principles of the diet nor been kept up to date with changes made to the diet. A quick trawl through some of the chat histories will reveal glaring inconsistencies in what is being said about permitted foods and the quantities. Also, members at large, not all of whom will have the time to go through every chat. For example, a member this week has mentioned limits on the amounts of sweetener and sweetened soft drinks. This has never been stated before. The impression has always been given that sweeteners are unlimited and soft drinks unlimited up to the overall daily limit on fluid intake. Failing to provide this information leads to the forum being full of statements that may or may not be correct, leaving people confused and insecure about what they should be doing.
d) A warning about the diet not being suitable to people with clinical conditions, is not clearly visible. Even people with eating disorders are able to register and join the site . It is evident from the chat records that the team is not very proficient in English and has little knowledge of what is available on the UK market. Perhaps some of the pat semi-answers they offer people are due to the fact they do not understand the question, although I suspect in many cases they do not know the answer either!
e) Addresses for refunds are confusing and ambiguously incorrect.
f)Despite the team being unresponsive to questions, they nevertheless find time to patrol the UK forum and censor messages at whim. Apart from myself, I know of at least six people who have been censored in this fashion. Amazingly, among the messages removed are those which give legitimate contact details for your organisation!
These were put in the forum to help people who wish to make formal complaints and express their dissatisfaction concerning the lack of service.
In sum, Dukan Diet UK is denying the clients the service they have paid for, including the proper use of the website, as internal email, confusingly only works for half a day, Monday to Friday, and it takes a minimum of 3 days to get a reply from the team. Thus an urgent question sent on Friday night, may not get a reply until late the following week.