Health

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Weight Watchers: Get Paid $100 to Lose Weight?

Did you see the Weight Watchers commercial last month that promised to pay people $100 to lose weight? Really? What’s the catch?

Weight Watchers make $100

*MOUSE PRINT:

The $100 offer stays on the screen for exactly two seconds at the end of the commercial. In that time, never mind trying to read the mouse print, you can’t even read the large print, which says to qualify you have to lose 10 pounds in three months and that a purchase is necessary.

The reasonable consumer might therefore believe you have to buy a membership for at least three months, and then you qualify for the money back. Not so. You actually have to remain a member and pay membership fees for six months — twice was long as what some might have expected.

So how much do you have to pay to get back $100? The company has several membership plans, and the pricing varies by region. In Boston, the online only membership plan works out to $3.07 a week (or $79.82 for six months); the in-person meetings plan is $6.92 a week ($179.92 total), and the “coaching” plan is $12.69 ($329.94 total). [Note: These plans incorporate a discount because they are being purchased on a multi-month plan.]

So if you pick the online only plan, they literally will be paying you to lose weight because you will come out ahead by $20. For the other plans, the $100 rebate is a significant reduction from the regular price.

Other than potentially leading consumers to believe they could quit after three months, Weight Watchers seems to be doing exactly what they promise. How novel!

But not so fast. We asked their PR folks to confirm that a member choosing the $79 plan will in fact get back $100. We got no reply. Twice.

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RXBARs: Simple Ingredients, Simply Incomplete Ingredients List

Our friends at TruthinAdvertising.org discovered an interesting fine print issue that we want to share with you.

There are many “health” bars on the market that frankly look like glorified candy bars except they are made with healthier ingredients. On such product is called RXBAR:

RXBAR

They came up with a brilliant marketing gimmick to put a big and bold ingredients list on the front of each package to convey its contents. Their slogan is, “We tell you what’s on the inside on the outside.”

Shoppers may well grab this bar or one of the other varieties thinking that the four or five ingredients shown are the sum total of the contents.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The ingredients panel on the back of the package lists all the ingredients in the actual order of predominance:

Dates, Peanuts, Egg Whites, Natural Flavor, Sea Salt.

While the number of missing ingredients was minor for this flavor, the other bars that the company sells can have up to nine total ingredients while only four are shown on the front.

rxbar varieties

Even their television ad seems to acknowledge that prospective purchasers could be misled by the ingredients list on the face of the package because they inconspicuously make the following disclosure at the end of the commercial:

*MOUSE PRINT:

disclaimer

A company spokesperson told TruthinAdvertising:

“We do not claim that the front of the packaging represents all ingredients in the product.”

What do you think? Are the RXBAR packages potentially misleading?

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It’s Open Season on Befuddled Health Plan Shoppers

Once again it is open enrollment time for those choosing a new health insurance plan. In searching around for a new plan for MrConsumer’s friend in New York City, he came up with what looked like a dream plan — a new national plan that tapped into Cigna’s national network of 500,000 providers. (Most individual plans in New York have very limited networks except for Empire Blue — and even Empire is not all-inclusive.)

The plan is from MVP Health Care called “Platinum National Embedded.” It is considered a non-standard plan and therefore is “off-market” — not on the New York “Obamacare” health exchange — and is sold individually directly by the company.

A handy map shows which counties in the New York City region are covered:

MVP map 1

A quick look makes it appear that all five boroughs of New York City are covered as well as two northern counties. When using MVP’s online plan lookup feature, entering my friend’s Manhattan zip code kept triggering an error. How could that be?

*MOUSE PRINT:

MVP plan map

A closer look at the fine print asterisked footnote reveals that MVP is not licensed to sell these plans in any of the five boroughs of New York City, despite them being listed above as “included.”

We asked the company why it used such misleading representations and whether it would fix the distortions. They have yet to respond.

Finding the right health plan is hard enough without shenanigans like this.