Note: the following comments are not from a physician and are the author’s opinion. Consult a health care professional before taking any nutritional supplements.
I wanted to write briefly about these products. One is called “Beyond Tangy Tangerine®” and I find it to be a good overall supplement. Steady low dosage of this (i.e. diluted at about 2 times the recommended concentration) along with frequent exercise led to an increase in energy level and weight loss. There was a definite difference in these results compared to other supplements (at least in my case). The supplement tastes good and in my opinion should be easier for your body to uptake since it is already solubilized. One thing that I have noticed is occasionally insoluble material will still remain (although it is minor) and this appears to be Mg(OH)2 if I had to give an educated guess (no I didn’t try to analyze it). The other Youngevity product I like is Osteo-FX plusTM. It tastes good, has no sugar or other harmful sweeteners, and mixes well with both water and milk. I would highly recommend this to anyone with young children or older adults who absolutely need to support healthy bones. I’m also guessing that this would be an excellent supplement for pregnant women as well (again, consult a doctor first).
Given all that, I need to comment on two negative aspects of this company. First is the high price of the products and second is their terrible customer service. As for the first I believe you get what you pay for (usually). So with that line of thought, superior supplements should (potentially) come at a higher price. As for the second, I absolutely do not understand how a company can offer such high quality products and yet have such sucky (excuse this adjective; however, it adequately describes their service) customer service. Here is just one example of several interactions I’ve had with them. Not long ago I requested my auto-ship to be sent to a new address. I went online and changed this myself and then I called Youngevity® and was told by their customer service that everything was good to go with the new address. Well, guess what? The package went to the old address. So I attempted to contact Youngevity® by email (to both their customer service as well as Dr. Wallach). Both emails bounced back due to problems with the mail accounts as provided on their website! I then called Youngevity® and got a recording saying that it was outside their normal business hours and to leave a message. So I left them with all my information and requested a return phone call but never received one. When I began to explain this to the customer service representative (on my second call some days later) there was no sympathy, apology, or attempt to correct all these wrongs. The best they could do was arrange for UPS to pick the package up to where it had been incorrectly delivered and reroute it to me (at my own cost of course). So, if someone knows of a company that offers similar products at similar or lower cost with better customer service please let me know and I’ll review them as well.
Your experience sounds identical to mine. I’ve been buying products from YGY since 2011, and even tried to build some sort of business, but they make it too difficult. I do buy a decent amount of the supplements, and like you, I really enjoy them and some have worked wonders. But the customer service is beyond deplorable. I would say I get a decent result with customer service less than 25% of the time. I had a shipping situation last week and ended up speaking to 5 people. They were all unprofessional. They were all unapologetic. I was left holding the line for 10 minutes or more each time. They did not offer to correct anything. Their final response was that because I had placed an order so close to the end of the month, they were just too busy to get around to it. My direct upline in the company also offered them an excuse in that (once again), they are partnering up with another company and are having to train too many people. So? Is this my problem? I’m the customer and a customer who is paying $10 for shipping. Honestly I will probably just buy the products from Ebay or Amazon from now on. At least those people care about making money.
I just want to add to this, not only are the prices of mr wallach product expensive, and not only does the customer service suck beyond belief, but i don’t think any of the employees can read OR perform shipping task correctly. Here i am again, in the same position i was about 2 months ago. I purchased product, paid for 2 day shipping, it’s day 4 and NOT PRODUCT. This is my 2nd attempt at purching his product AND THIS IS THE LAST. Until he hire SOMEONE with a BRAIN, i will NOT do business with him and i WILL call the BBB and report this issue along with call the California Attorney Generals Office. I will make it my goal to have his doors shut FOR EVER!!! NO ONE screws with the Digital Cowboy!!
I want to comment more on this. The past several times I have called this company they were able to get things squared away pretty well for me. So in terms of customer service I’ve had more positive results than negative. The products are unique and of good quality. Pricing no doubt is reflected by the fact that the company is operating out of a tax laden state and my guess it is somewhat energy intensive to make some of these products in addition to sourcing ingredients that are primarily natural in terms of their precursors. Also, my experience is that calling your attorney general’s office is an absolute waste of time and BBB won’t be much better. The entire system is rotten from the head down to the lowest rung and there is no accountability. One more thing I’d like to add; as the U.S. has transitioned into a service economy, customer service has not improved but instead only steadily degraded. A good example are my experiences with AT&T. You will most likely spend 20-30 minutes on hold and sometimes even longer just to speak to a person and don’t be surprised if they won’t resolve your issue. So my response to you in getting unscrewed is good luck…
First of all, thank you to everyone who had the GUTS to honestly express their experiences with Youngevity. I just wish I would have read your comments before forking out hundreds of dollars to sign up.
Dr. Joel Wallach is a good and a decent person. His motives for wanting to help people recover from their health challenges is commendable, but since he is the Chairman of the Board, he is ultimately responsible for the poor customer service that I received.
Here’s my story.
I am a disabled 57 year old male. I began to see positive results while taking the Youngevity products. My wife comes in to see and she hands me a stack of 4 months of bank statements showing that she had been billed four times she did not authorize.
I call customer service (OUCH!) and they tel me they nee me to fax them bank statements from both my wife and from me, because there were 4 charges to her account that she did not authorize, or know anything about. The thing is..is I din’t either. All products I ordered using my bank card were shipped and received as requested.
Last Friday I faxed to Youngevity the bank statements they requested. No response from the company. Monday, I called the company and asked to speak to a manager. She’s in a meeting, now, so leave a message on her voice mail. I did…no response. I called back today and demanded to speak to a manager. I got through. She asked me to refax the bank statements once again.
She calls me back and she says that my wife will have to contact her bank for a refund. They won’t give me a refund of the money that they fraudulently took from her account.
Sweet company, great customer rapport!
Are you kidding me, if this were a well run company, it would not have these problems. This company is more interested in bottom line dollars than they are in fixing customers problems.
I had high hopes for this company. Now I can’t recommend it anyone because, there is a chance that problems may arise someday and then they are obligated to dealing with incompetent, sales only driven people who don’t realize that without customer there is no business. These problems should be taken care of before growing the company any bigger.
I still purchase from this company as the products are quite good; however, it sounds to me like they are still having serious customer service problems. If I experience problems again I’ll drop this company very quickly and will report the problems here as well. So if you are reading this blog and have similar problems report them here and I will publish your comments.
Let’s make it clear, the buck stops here mentality is no longer pervasive in the U.S. anymore. A rude awakening for me to that fact was the mass murder that occurred at VA Tech and the refusal of both the president as well as their incompetent and complicit police to resign and admit they were ultimately responsible for this. Not only did their mishandling of this result in numerous deaths, their anti-weapons policies no doubt compounded the problem greatly. If the one professor who confronted the killer had done so with a weapon the death toll may have been greatly reduced. No doubt his death was in vain no matter how VT tries to lionize him. As they say “a fish rots from the head down”…
PS I will at some point report a related event that happened at Ferrum College. It shows just how incompetent this “state” is, and “officials” are in general.