Doris wanted to start 2008 off on the right foot, so she made the resolution to lose weight. She ordered a free trail of Wu Yi Tea, “Hollywood’s Hottest Diet”, and decided well before her two weeks were up to cancel her order and stick to old fashioned eating right and exercise. That was in January. Four months later, Wu-Yi’s parent company Living Lean in Las Vegas is giving Doris the run around about canceling her order. Oddly, Wu Yi has this to say about fad diets on their website, “all the diet formulas have been, at best, disappointing, at worst, outright frauds.” Pot, this is kettle. You’re black. Hear more from Doris, inside.
Hi Editors,
As part of my new year’s resolution I made a pledge to lose weight like 90% of Americans do. On January 18, I ordered the Wu –Yi teas to help with my weight loss program. I was not relying on it being my salvation or miracle diet but I just wanted to try the tea. They offered a free trial on the website and was only suppose to be charged for the shipping and handling fee of $6.95. I DID read the fine print. I had 2 weeks to cancel and if not then I would be charged for subsequent monthly shipments. Well definitely within 2 weeks I canceled! Since I am not someone who balances my checkbook at the end of every month. I just noticed additional charges from Living Lean in Las Vegas for 19.95. Originally, I thought it was fraud and it is! I called the company and they are a cover for WuYI Teas. The customer service person answers the phone and refuses to give the name of the company she works for, she just keeps asking for how she can help and what service that I was calling about. When I asked for a refund (after being on the phone with her for 15 minutes) she pretends that we have a bad connection and that she can’t hear me. Disconnected. It took 4 more phone calls to get to a supervisor who needed to research my account, kept me on the phone for 20 minutes to say that she will refund me within 3-5 business days.
There are many reported cases of scam under Living Lean in Las Vegas and Wu Yi Tea or their other name Easyweightlosstea.com. I really want to bring light the consumerist readers beware of this scam! I have been fighting these charges since February..and it is now end of May. There is nothing free in life. These people cost me time and aggravation.
Doris, it’s chargeback time. You’ve tried working with Wu Yi, it’s time to let your credit card company work for you.
Diet programs, beauty regimens, and herbal supplements aren’t regulated industries, so researching the company before handing over your credit card information is essential. Searching for “Wu Yi” and “scam” yields enough scary results to make you think twice about the product.
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Anything that is described as “Hollywood’s Hottest Diet” must be real right?
C’mon people. Stop wasting money on diet fads. Get your brain together. Eat right. Stay away from McDonalds, Burger King. Go exercise. Sjoot.
@ngth:
“The SUPERSTAR, CELEBRITY microphone…”
@satoru: “The study that the AP did showed that pharmaceutical particles in the drinking water was in the 1 part per billion or even in the trillion range. Basically they had to go looking, and look really really hard to even find these things. At that range you would have to process all the water a large city does in a year, and you’d probably get only 1 pill out of it.”
Uhh… this is wrong. I used to do trace quantity analysis for PCB and BDE and you can bet your backside that constant exposure to trace quantities, even in the parts per trillion range, can have an adverse effect on your health. Especially if you run across a fat soluble molecule that bioacumulates. You basically said that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. That’s pretty damn stupid. Good luck with that.
And that, amigos, is why America is the greatest nation on earth. Freedom of Choice. I am free to reject the vast majority of what passes for medical sceince (which I consider gross malfeasance) and you are free to embrace the medical establishment. That … is a great thing. Isn’t it? Isn’t it great that you can have what you choose and I can have what I choose so long as what I want doesn’t infringe on your choice? And vs. vs.?
And it’s dumb, just plain dumb to whitewash an entire profession with the brush of slander, isn’t it? My slam on the medical profession is just as useless as calling all natural health practitioners ‘quacks’. I sincerely hope the point is understood.
@BlackFlag55:
All naturopaths are quacks.
It is not OK to allow anyone to denigrate medical science. When children die because their parents refuse to have their treatable diseases diagnosed and… treated… with modern medical science, that’s a huge problem.
Medical science is not infallible, but homeopathy is crap.
No, wait, actually… homeopathy is a huge, massive, gas-giant sized load of the most fetid, steaming horseshit that has ever been generated in the history of mankind ne reality itself. And that still doesn’t even begin to describe the concept.
Homeopathy does not work. It has never been shown to work. Absolutely no results better than placebo, ever, in any properly conducted study. Even the concept is idiotic. You cannot dilute a substance to the point where not even a single molecule of the original substance remains in a pool of water the size of a galaxy and expect it to have some effect.
It is dangerous thinking – not because it might “upset” some belief in modern medicine, but because it encourages people to eschew proven, effective cures and treatments in favor of poorly researched, if at all, unproven “medicines.”
@guymandude:
“One part per trillion” is obviously not going to cause harm – you’re unlikely to ever consume enough of the substance in one human lifetime to have any effect, let alone an adverse one.
That said, it is entirely possible to get the short end of the stick, and be the person who always gets ten parts in everything you consume. The universe isn’t fair, unfortunately.
I know this is an old article, but I thought I might add: the Wu-Yi website has a form at the bottom to put in name, height, weight, goal weight, and age to see if you are a “good candidate.” I suspected it would accept everyone, so I put in ridiculous info to see and got this message:
Hello person,
Based on your goals of moving from 101 lbs to 100 lbs, your height of 5’6″ and the fact you are 13 years of age, you seem like the perfect candidate for one of our remaining weight loss packages with 14-day Free Trial period.
So yes, everyone, even anorexic 13 year olds who want to lose 1 pound, are “perfect candidates”
This Tea is ridiculous. I tried to cancel within my “30 day Free Trial” it did not cancel b/c the company number listed with the tea no longer affiliated with the company. So I now have two charges of $59.99, the tea and a headache from trying to find the correct customer service number to cancel the charges and auto shipments.
We here at Living Lean are very sorry for the poor customer service you have experienced recently regarding your purchase of Living Lean through Wu-Yi Source.
Our company is not charging you for your participation in Living Lean. You are being charged by Wu-Yi Source. We no longer work with or do any business with Wu-Yi Source. The number they have provided to cancel your transactions with Wu-Yi Source is 866-396-5711.
Hundreds of thousands of people have chosen Living Lean and our other programs and have gone on to achieve their goals in many areas of lifestyle change, whether it would be to quit smoking, start exercising or for assistance with weight loss.
Please write directly to us with any problems you have encountered and we would be glad to help you resolve any issues you may have with Living Lean. We are a very reputable company; we take pride in our customer service and have delivered the number one cognitive behavioral weight loss system in the country on-line for over ten years.
Again, we here at Living Lean apologize for any inconvenience.
Please feel free to write us at support@selfhelpworks.com
Wu-yi tea not only a scam but they are fraud . They rip me off
for 38$ unauthorize extra for a 6$ trial gimmick. For a 60 regular
chinese tea bag cost me 44$ and of corse they refuse to refund
the unauthorize over charge. instead of dinking I think Iam going to rool it and smoke it. This case is now in the hands of Maryland
police fraud section and I think if you been rob by these FMF
you should fight back they won’t get away easy.
Wu-Yi Tea is a rip-off. Go to http://www.wu-yisource.com and click Live Chat to cancel your order. They’ll tell you to return the unused portion of tea (return the empty box!) to Wu-Yi USA, Army Post Road Distribution, 3600 Army Post Road, Des Moines, Iowa 50321 via UPS. Ask for “Delivery Confirmation,†and get an RMA number from Live Chat which you must include with your correspondence in the package along with your reason for returning the tea. Write the RMA number on the outside of the package. You’re supposed to do this within 14 days of receipt of the useless tea, for which they charged $59.95 U.S. If it’s after 14 days, you’re stuck with the tea.
Then call 1-866-279-6513 to cancel your surprise subscription to Insider Secrets to Weight Loss. These people will NOT refund your money ($4.95/month), but at least they’ll cancel your “subscription.â€
Then call 1-800-989-5907 to cancel your surprise subscription to Comprehensive Weight Loss E-book Package. These people also will not refund your money, but did offer me a “courtesy†refund of the most recent charge of $9.95 U.S.
Good luck!!
11th February 2009
In November 2008 I was browsing the web for inspiration to motivate me to lose a few pounds in weight. I do not believe in quick fix, lazy methods and I know that a healthy diet and plenty of exercise is the only way to achieve your goals – No pain, no gain! But I stumbled across this Wuyi Tea and they sell it so well on the website that I thought I would give the free trail a go. With the money back guarantee, as they say, ‘what do I have to lose’…..I’ll tell you.
Firstly, I am on a site that claims to be for the UK and ends in co.uk. Clearly everything on the site is in USD but I figured that they must have a UK distribution as well.
You have to enter your name, your current weight, your goal weight, your height and gender for them to calculate whether or not you qualify for this product as they say it is not for people who just want to lose a few pounds. This is funny because I have since entered a fake details of someone very tall and underweight wanting to lose just 4lbs and it says they qualify despite displaying this fake person’s BMI as dangerously underweight.
On the next page it tells you that if you do not fill out your details within 4 minutes it will time out. How is this fair trade? Surely you should be given as much time as you need to read all the details carefully? Anyway, if you read fast enough, this page does tell you about two supposed bonus offers they will give you which are ebooks. Personally I did not read this first time round and after 3 months of credit card bills have finally noticed they have been charging me monthly for these two ‘bonus’ offers which apparently you have to revisit their website to download. I didn’t even want these, never had them and yet have still paid for them.
So once you have rushed through that page and entered your name and address, you are taken to the page that requires your credit card details. There it states that you are just paying for the shipping fees of $4.95 and then if you are happy with the product after 14 days they will bill you for it later (monthly). It does not however, say anything about the shipping costing more if you are outside of the USA. I would have expected it to as common sense tells you that you would pay more to send something overseas but then I am on a .co.uk website so maybe not? You enter your credit card details and it asks you to confirm that you are happy to proceed to pay what was around £2 at the time. This is stated on the page in GBP so seen as they had converted it automatically, I was pleased to agree to pay that small amount for shipping to give this thing a go. The next page pops up saying that you for paying us $24.95 at which you can imagine my shock. At no point did I agree to that. For postage of £16.87 I probably wouldn’t have bothered. There is another page somewhere on the site that tells you in small print that outside of the USA the shipping costs more but it had not been shown anytime prior to this stage of the process and I was not happy.
I got in touch as soon as possible to cancel everything and tell them it was a mistake but they said it had already shipped. I’m sure this was a lie because it took a long time to arrive. They said all I could do was return it once it arrived and then they would refund it. I thought that would be okay so that is what I did. They asked me to send it by UPS or similar but for the cost of over £50 I decided to send it recorded via Royal Mail at just over £10 because they were not going to pay the postage for me.
Assuming I would just be around £10 out of pocket I was annoyed but relieved to think this was almost over. No such luck… They would not refund the initial $24.95 for postage overseas to send me the product I did not even want and had asked not be sent to me. They then took a further $59.95 from my credit card for the product as if I had kept it. I had to get in touch again and this was refunded. I asked them to remove me from all records and never charge my credit card to anything again.
I thought that now close to £30 out of pocket, it was all over and I could put it down to a learning experience. Today I saw my online credit card statement showing two payments having been taken yesterday. One for $4.95 and one for $9.95. I looked back and saw that these same two payments had been taken at the beginning of January and the one for $4.95 had been taken another time in December also. That is a total of $34.75 between December and February and I had no idea.
I contacted the credit card company who said they would dispute it for me and once they told me who was taking these fees, I contacted the WuYi Tea people yet again. This time I was given two USA phone numbers to call to cancel these two subscriptions. I did this and they said that although I would make no further payments, they would not refund anything. Am I going to find anymore hidden traps in this in the months to come?
This whole episode has cost me around £50 now and I have had absolutely nothing for it. No product, nothing but stress, aggravation, time wasted and money lost. I think it is outrageous that anyone can operate in such a way. It is not only misleading but I am certain that they actually lie on their website. I don’t know if there is anyone I can go to to claim any of my loss back but I really want to stop other innocent people from falling into the same series of traps with these people.
Yes, unfortunately i got taken in by the scam too! My husband noticed the $59.99 charges twice this month for something that was supposed to be a FREE SAMPLE!— nothing free about this product. Can your (my) bank stop any further charges on your debit card from happening from this company?