Weight Watchers On-line
Written: Oct 26 '04 (Updated Oct 27 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Can lose weight, on-line recipes
Cons: Customer Support, Poor User Interface & Slow Web site, Points hard to calculate
The Bottom Line: Use this if you have a high connection speed. Otherwise, purchase some good diet software that runs on your computer. Avoid contacting customer service.
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| jisabella's Full Review: Weight Watchers 1-2-3 Success At Home |
Initially I was excited to join the program and lose those pesky extra 10 pounds. It was fun to document what I ate. However, I found the process of documenting via the Web to be painfully slow. Also, contacting customer service is painful.
When I started to program I was diligent about staying at work late to enter in the food I consumed as well as the exercise I did. This was done at work because my connection speed at home made it painful to access and browse the site. There are a lot of server side actions which means when I want to look-up or add a food item I had to wait for my computer to talk to the Weight Watchers computer before completing the task. A part of me would think that I should just spend the time exercising rather than sitting at a computer. I also decided that there might be a software package that does something similar and would take less of my time.
I did like the on-line recipes. There were some good and yummy ideas. It was easy to look up a recipe for the number of points you wanted to eat at a meal.
I should also take some time to describe the diet plan I was on. I did the traditional Weight Watchers plan. Each day I had 20 point of food I could eat The Web site has an area where I could check how many points food was worth. For example, an apple is 1 point. If I ate healthy food then the portions were fine and I was satisfied. If I slipped and ate a hot dog with lots of cheese and french fries then I would have a slight panic attack because most of my points would be gone. However, I could also increase the number of points I was allowed to eat by exercising. So, if I went out and mowed the lawn with the push mower then I could eat something indulgent. The system was pretty easy and I enjoyed being able to eat what I wanted while loosing weight.
I would have enjoyed the on-line version more if I could integrate a hand held device. I had to either write down or recall what I ate each day. It would be nice to write this down in my hand held and have this sync with the site. This also would have saved me some time. On a couple of occasions I would enter in everything I ate and then go to another part of the site without hitting save. This meant that an entire days entry was deleted and I would have to start all over again. That was frustrating.
OK, now on to customer service. The Weight Watchers on-line customer service is the worst I have encountered in a while. They can only be reached via e-mail. I spoke with someone at the Weight Watchers corporate office and the person admitted that they can only reach the on-line office via e-mail. I did get a hold of a number (212) 817-4400 but only a machine picks up. Perhaps the office is run by robots or computers ;-)
I was contacting customer service because of a miscommunication regarding my cancellation of the program. I sent in an e-mail canceling my subscription and it got lost so I got charged. The folks at the corporate office are helping me resolve the problem. However, I have spent a week sending 8 e-mails and making 5 phone calls for this to happen. Weight Watchers needs to do something about the inability to reach a live person for the on-line service if the company wants this area to grow and generate revenue.
I should also note that this program did help me with my overall diet. I have never really paid attention to what I eat and now I am more aware of what a proper portion is and how to reduce calories in my cooking. However, this is also the first diet I have tried.
Recommended:
No
Approximate Monthly Cost (US$) 15.00
Food Variety Restrictions You eat any food you want
Restrictiveness of Portions Satisfying
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Epinions.com ID:
jisabella
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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