BELOW WE HAVE PUBLISHED ALL THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN BOTH PARTIES.
[ THE BELGAVIA CENTRE AND MR A SIMPSON ]
WE ARE PUBLISHING WHAT THE BELGRAVIA CENTRE EDITED OUT AND DID NOT PUBLISH ON THEIR BLOG.
A BIASED OR BALANCED VIEW?
YOU THE PUBLIC MUST DECIDE [ READ ON ].
“Enough is Enough”: A Complaint and Our Response
I thought it would go against Belgravia’s outlook not to display the following correspondence between a member of the public and I. We are unsure who this person is so at present do not know for sure if the way he has identified himelf is accurate. He says he is a previous Belgravia client but we cannot find any record of his email address on our database and he also states he currently works for a ‘pharmaceutical research business specialising in hair loss technologies for an American drug company’. We will add any updates to this post should we find out.
Either way I thought this information would be useful and interesting to any of our readers or clients and may answer a few questions.
You will find ‘Mr Simpson’s’ email to Belgravia underneath so it’s probably better to start from the bottom.
Please note: We have reason to believe this person has provided a fake name and is connected to the manufacturers of one of the hair loss products that we have reviewed. He has since sent 2 emails with further comments, most of which are invalid. We have decided to refrain from publishing these emails which contain abuse targeted at The Belgravia Centre and me personally, and unresearched, manipulated information.
My Response:
Hi Mr Simpson
Thank you for your email.
The Belgravia Centre has been established for almost 20 years and we very rarely receive a complaint of this nature. In fact it is extremely seldom that we receive any form of complaint about our services. The centre is the largest single hair clinic in the UK, employing a team of more than fifty and has developed an excellent reputation for not only the expert and personal service it provides, but also for the very high level of success in stabilising and even reversing hair loss in both males and females. The Belgravia Centre is also the only UK hair care centre that has an in-house registered pharmacy that is managed by a fully qualified and registered pharmacist and a full time state-registered doctor.
Although you have not presented yourself with any address or telephone details, nor any references as to your position we are always appreciative of opinions regarding the content on our site and completely transparent.
It is myself that is in charge of all of the content on the website. I am 26 years old and a hair loss sufferer myself and have been researching hair loss treatments for the almost 6+ years that I have been employed here. I am also the son of the chairman Michael Harris.
Firstly I’ll say that I have absolutely no problem with you ‘CACHING’ our website pages. You are acting as if this is a threat, but we have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of or concerned about within our content. I feel very strongly about providing the public with accurate and precise information and that is exactly what we set out to do on our hair loss website.
You can look at our comments regarding other hair loss products and clinics as an attack if you wish, but the fact is we are providing factual information to the public so that they can make an informed decision of the products they wish to use going by the facts – not the information provided by the manufacturer of the product which is often (usually, in fact) inaccurate. Many friends of mine and people that have visited the centre have almost lost hope because of products they have purchased that don’t work. Most of these people will never bother trying an alternative once they’ve been let down more than once. Why should we sit back and let this happen when we are the experts, who know the facts and can offer a helping hand to people with lack of knowledge?
Our post on the Westminster Practice is in response to ongoing complaints about its owner and consultant, Gary Heron. We are very familiar with Heron because he previously worked as Belgravia’s clinic manager until he was dismissed for Gross Misconduct in 2001 when it was found out he was taking money from people’s credit card account without their consent. We hear reports of him carrying out this practice at his new centre. This is something I was well aware of when I joined Belgravia and this experience, as well as many other similar ones, is the reason that I personally set out to offer a different, more open and factual approach to the general public through our website in order to create awareness.
Belgravia are one of the only clinics to provide all of the medically proven prescription medications for hair loss – these are the treatments offered because these are the ones that work. We are completely against offering non-proven products as an individual treatment for hair loss because quite simply there is no evidence that they work and we frequently hear reports from previous users that they don’t.
About Belgravia’s ‘booster’ products (Hair Vitalics, Medroxyprogesterone and Azelaic Acid). Nowhere do we state that these are proven treatments, or that they are effective if used individually for the prevention of hair loss. We simply state that they ‘help to block DHT topically and complement the proven treatments’ or ‘help to maintain and improve the quality of the hair’. After reviewing this following your comments I am however planning to add some further information for MPG and Azelaic Acid regarding their lack of firm clinical evidence as I agree that descriptions of these products may not fit exactly with our description of other similar products and we do not want to give the impression that the information on our own products contradicts our reports on others.
We are sure that we are not breaking any rules so have no problem with you reporting us to whichever body you feel necessary. We do not advertise prescription medications, we advertise ‘The Belgravia Centre’. Our treatment courses frequently consist of non-prescription products and medications, and services for people who do not wish to use prescription medications or those with hair loss related to scalp problems so as I said, there are no rules being broken.
And regarding your comments about the LaserComb; before making such accusations you should get your facts right. Please refer to the following post regarding the FDA’s HairMax LaserComb clearance - LASERCOMB FDA CLEARANCE MISCONCEPTION. If you want to take this matter up with HairMax then please contact them directly.
Regarding the FDA – we are not pretending anything. We clearly state that they are an American body and there is no reason why we can’t or shouldn’t refer to their approval on belgraviacentre.com – it’s something that is recognised by medical specialists world-wide.
May I ask what drug company you work for? And if there are any specific products you are researching?
As I said, I am always open to constructive suggestions for our site and the information we provide so if there is anything you feel is incorrect regarding a specific product or clinic please let me know and I will be happy to amend it if you are correct in your assessment.
Yours sincerely
Jonny Harris
Joint Managing Director
Original email from ‘Mr Simpson’:
To the Managing Director
As a science student losing his hair, I speak as one of a number of people i am sure, that is sick and tired of your company’s lofty attitude to the industry. Constantly attacking others businesses who you accuse of being scammers instead of just concentrating on your own business. I used to be a customer as well as now working in the pharmaceutical research business (specialising in hair loss technologies for an American drug company - actually doing real research) and know from the inside (as a customer) that you are just as commercial as anyone else and break as many laws in your own way. This email represents my own views and not that of my companys’, hense from a personal address. I just really dislike the way you do business and wish to tell you that.
I personally abhore the non-scientific way in which so many in the business of hairloss sell their products but find that your companty is barely any different except in the way in which you are openly hostile and critisise others when you have as much to be critised about yourselves.
You break so many rules it is jaw-dropping how you feel justified attacking others without any fear of recrimination. Perhaps this brazen attitude has grown over years of no-one reporting yourselves to the authorities or slating your company on their websites. Frankly more than anything else, i just want to know from a psychological perspective you justify this approach to yourselves? Do you beleive your own press? Is that it? Or do you think everone else is stupid and don’t know the law? Do you think if you attack enough and shout loud enough then people will assume you must be on the right side of the law in every respect or you’d be crazy to take that approach. I just cant figure it out.
So let me ask you some questions to get you thinking about what i’m thinking:
1. I beleive that you advertise unlicenced medicines without a marketing authorisation license. Is that true and if so, do you beleive that is legal? If you beleive it is not legal, why do you do it? and how do you dare critisise others for what they do if you beleive you have an aethical basis for selling the products which may work quite well but which you know are illegal to advertise for sale?
2. You state that your proprietory minoxidil preparations have regrowth effects (”boosters”). Are you planning to produce your clinical trials to substantiate your otherwise illegal claims. (ALL PAGES HAVE BEEN CACHED - I DIRECT YOU TO THE ASA RULING ON THIS MATTER)
3. The lasercomb (to take one example of your double standards with regard to products that do or do not meet your self-imposed standards) is not only a scam but one you profit from. I personally beleive that you know full well it is a scam. I think there once was a time (if not still today) when you sell time under laser lamps instore. There is no proof of efficacy at all for these devices. I invite you to do your research on what the device is actually FDA registered for (see wikipedia for one thing). None of this flimsy research data would get past the pre-clinicals - it is a joke that a company as stringent as yours purports to be on real efficaceous standards would sell this junk. In any event, even if you did beleive in these phoney trials, as you well know, the registration of FDA is irrelevant in the UK. The body of note in the UK is the MHRA. Why are you pretending you do not know this? Your advertising (ALL CACHED) of the lasercomb in this country is illegal in my view. As is the sale.
I could go on - i have cached all your your website - every page. Feel free to tell me you views on my email. As unlike youselves, it is not my style to go around bad-mouthing competitors or other scientists, and since really you have no impact on me other than you just annoy the hell out of me, I would like to know your plans before i make representations to the MRHA, ASA etc.
Sincerely
Mr A Simpson
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Hair Loss Awareness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
THE FOLLOWING HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED UNEDITED AS WE RECEIVED THEM
FROM MR A SIMPSON.
I REPEAT WE HAVE MADE NO CHANGES.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD YOUR OWN COMMENTS AT THE END.
From: Andrew Simpson
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 19:01:25 +0000 (GMT)
To:
Subject: a further email to the thread
Please note - this is a summary of an email sent to Mr Harris but written down by hand/memory for a record later. Therefore it may not be exactly identical but to all intense and purposes it reads here as it did when sent.
May i also add that Belgravia uses as far as I know laser machines for therepy sessions which of course are not proven medically (as far as I know) and certainly their website seems to offer UV light therepy. If there is one thing universally known in the science of dermatology is that UV light is damaging to skin cells which includes hair cell folicles. I would like to know what benefit UV light could possibly offer to patients with hair loss. Furthermore, what about the future growth of ‘age spots’ from hyperpigmentation through the use of these lamps. Should a patient lose all their hair when in their 50’s, would they not prefer a young looking skin on their scalp? It is my personal view that Belgravia are ignorant of joined up treatment and are as commercial as most other practices. It is about time they came off thier high horse. It may be their more educated, senior and wise chairman made an error appointeing who i beleive to be a cock-sure young-buck a free rein to cause havoc amongst a community of fragile sufferers and small businesses altready navigating the line between offering helpful if not proven products with regulators that prevent them from replying in a fashion they most surely would if they had the arrogance of youth it seems the younger Mr Harris benefits/suffers from.
Disclaimer: All these views are my own personal opinions. I do not intend to defame either the employees owners or the companies mentioned at all. I wish to exercise my freedom of speech and have tried to be balanced. If this is published and the people involved wanted a right to reply i would have no objection and the decision would be with the site owner who publishes to let that happen.
Dear Mr Harris,
Of course as a commercial business it is self-serving. Publishing only the first in a series of emails provided an opportunity to appear transparent and magnanimous and an opportunity to reply. However the subsequent emails were not published. the best chance of this comment being published is probably to suggest ‘they wouldn’t dare’ but now i have stolen this opportunity to continue the pretense of unswerving probity.
I notice the author of this blog has an ongoing complaint about Mr Heron of the Westminster Clinic. He speaks of the use of implication and marketing puff to suggest he is a bigger company than he is. One ‘crime’ is apparently to work from serviced offices (copy of this post to the Business Centre Association of Great Britain) but curiously the author points to the semantics of the phrase ‘one of our trichologists’ yet elsewhere Mr Heron is accused of having no training. I ask the author, What is a trichologist? Is there any medical or pharmaceutical training or medical qualification involved? Or is it just a polysyllabic job title of senior-sounding medical or biological standing. My friend who happens to be a bus driver for london transport has a biology degree and is technically more qualified and more matriculally suitable for hair medical services.
Mr Harris, it is about being disingenuious. I am sure you receive the same complaints as any laser hair comb quack but dont publish them. Offered the oppotunity to make your blog public so you cannot monitor and edit your content you seemingly declined by inaction. But no doubt your turn will come. Karma is a round about.
Mr A. Simpson
From: Andrew Simpson
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 18:42:27 +0000 (GMT)
To:
Subject: Fw: enough is enough
Dear Mr Heron,
I do not know of the history between you and The Belgravia Centre but I did notice when discovering the duplicitous naming of ‘mispellings’ of the IOT that you had indeed spotted this yourself and wrote about it on your site which came up on a google search. I was therefore on your site and a little suprised to see a copy of my post that i sent to Belgravia which they posted in their blog (and did you see their defamatory image they ran alongside) and that you must have copied to yours.
What you have not seen is the subsequent correspondance which they decided not to publish - perhaps because they did not see an opportunity to feign probity or transparency and in fact felt that my emails contained too much damaging information. I could not possibly say or infer anything.
I actually have nothing against the company nor yours nor the industry. As a hairloss customer and sufferer (plus scientist), I simply dislike the way in which an entity purports to be beyond reproach but then is is exactly as guilty of what they deem shady pracitices themselves yet have the temerity (yes it’s all about the cheek, the nerve of it) to critisise others.
Therefore, I have forwarded you the rest of the thread for you to do with what you wish. (you may need to read from bottom and re-format a little - there is an other mail which i will also forward - i am not too good with email accounts etc.)
Personally I am all in favour of a public blog where customers and the public can speak freely without being edited. I think it speaks volumes that the blog conversation was truncated by their inaction (unless they were just delayed in replying in which case i look forward to their posting and answers). It indicates to me a certain degree of manipulation.
Isn’t it all a bit like MPs telling us to pay our taxes while they claim expenses for non-existant second homes? I mean we all know it goes on and dont really care but when they are so high and mighty themselves, it kind of puts your nose out of joint. Well lets see if The Belgravia Centre are humble enough now to eat some of the pie by the same name and stop all this slating others, behave reasonable, take down the offensive content and start putting right some wrongs.
Please note Mr Heron, I am not endorsing your position or the opposite - i have no clue about what private matters happened between the two of you.
Sincerely,
Mr A Simpson
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jonny, The Belgravia Centre
Date: Thu, May 7, 2009 at 3:36 PM
Subject: RE: enough is enough
Dear Sir
The fact that you have still not provided us with details of your address and place of work makes us suspicious of your real intentions. We are still unaware of your identity and who you might be acting on behalf of.
We will not be responding to any further comments or accusations. My absolute confidence in all of our services and all of our literature gives me no reason to justify any of our actions to a person who refuses to offer his identity. If you carry out further research on our website you will find answers to all of your questions.
If there is any form of misrepresentation or manipulation by yourself in any way we reserve the right to take proceedings against you.
Yours faithfully
Jonny Harris
Joint Managing Director
The Belgravia Centre
52 Grosvenor Gardens
London SW1W 0AU
020 7730 6666
www.belgraviacentre.com
From: Andrew Simpson
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 1:59 AM
To: Jonny, The Belgravia Centre
Subject: Fw: enough is enough
Dear Mr Harris,
Despite not wishing to continue corresponding, I did notice that you have not included my reply in your blog. I wonder when you do have a chance to update the blog article you would like to include this email too and take the opportunity to explain to readers exactly what benefits are obtained from your steam therepy and UV and infra red light machines which you offer.
I and impartial readers would be grateful if you avoided a debate on semantics or exactly what you claim and therefore whether it is ‘legal’ or not but addressed the body of my complaint and that of the ethical dimension to your business. There are no proven benefits to these therapies whatsoever and the ASA i beleive ruled against another company advertising treatments using them. Therefore the ASA and their experts beleive these machines are of no value in treating hair loss and the company in question i beleive from reading the full adjudication, provided a full dossier of evidense from manufacturers.
Given you are so keen to point out the disgracful selling techniques and shoddy underworld of the industry, why do you offer this treatment programme?
Remember this is not about debating if you have claimed they do something medical, it is about why you offer them in the first place.
Should you publish this thread (unedited) it would be commendable on your part and i look forward (unsarcastically) to your reply by email and if you wish on your blog.
Of course it may be that since you are publishing my emails, i presume you would have no issue with me publishing your replies on a blog of my own should i set one up which of course would be ranked on Google hopefully with the right keywords and will like you allow people to make informed choices following your lead, as again like you, I also suffer with hair loss and appreciate the devestating psychological consequences it has for many people. I would like to invite other clinics to participate as then we can all thrash it out.
Again, you have nothing to fear because everything you do is not only perfectly legal but more important than claim smeantics, your whole business is morally and ethically beyond reproach.
The reason, and i apologise, for my anonymous status is because i am working for a drug company in the industry and i may get in trouble for making personal views within the industry i work (even though we are mainly drug research). Given the ruthless way you pursue, bully and critisise people i feel i have to protect my identity.
Sincerely,
Mr A Simpson
— On Wed, 6/5/09, Andrew Simpson wrote:
From: Andrew Simpson
Subject: enough is enough
To: jonny@belgraviacentre.com
Date: Wednesday, 6 May, 2009, 11:50 AM
Dear Mr Harris,
First private correspondance between persons is confidential and therefore you are infringing my copyright by publishing it. It might sound counter-intuitive as you would think having sent an email to you that it becomes your property but in fact this is incorrect under English law. However i have no issue with you posting my comments. I only hope that you continue to and post this response.
The reason why i bring this up is because it is entirely consistent with your attitude (or really that of your companys’) that you would make the knee-jerk response that you have, assuming you are without reproach at all times.
Let me be clear. I will not and have never threatened you nor do i wish to make any threats or make this personal. But I must say i find your company’s attitude most aloof and it is for this reason I said that i have cached your pages because i anticipated that you would make changes to obfuscate your responsibilitites.
You spend an inordinate amount of time (even in your response to me) critisising others and it is not in my interest time-wise nor in terms of creating a level playing field in the longer term for others in the industry to now fore-warn you about your activities.
Paradoxically, I do accept and warmly congratulate you for being a company that in many respects is head and shoulders (pardon the pun) above others in terms of clarity and fairness to your customers. What i find objectionable is the way you seek to create conflict with competitors and suggest that you are the only company in the industry that has the same motives. You offer for sale unproven medical products which are unlicensed medicines. I wonder if you would have the email address for Mr Heron so that he can see this thread and respond himself.
There are a multitude of ways in which you break the UK medicines act and your reply only further aggravates your many and frequent contraventions of the law.
As for your response to the Hairmax complaint, it is quite ammusing that you do not find it inconsistent with your company’s self-appointed ‘white knight’ status that even if it is pointed out to you that the FDA approval of Hairmax is under the same category as a ‘vacuum-cap’ for hair loss and not proven for efficacy, but for safety and use as a hairloss device, that you only wish to reply that i should take that up with the manufacturers ergo - you are not concerned with proving efficacy for your customers but getting away with what you can. In any event, even is there was bone-fide FDA approval, it is irrelevant as the product would need MRHA approval to be sold in this country for the purposes which you sell it.
As you are so confident as to your company’s approach, i challenge you NOT to change a single thing on your website so that we can all judge in the future. I think your age may explain your brazen approach and I am surprised your father let you reply in this way. I do not intend to further correspond on this matter.
Mr A Simpson
Hi Mr Simpson
Thank you for your email.
The Belgravia Centre has been established for almost 20 years and we have never received a complaint of this nature. In fact it is extremely seldom that we receive any form of complaint about our services. The centre is the largest single hair clinic in the UK, employing a team of more than fifty and has developed an excellent reputation for not only the expert service it provides, but also for the very high level of success in stabilizing and even reversing hair loss in both males and females. The Belgravia Centre is also the only UK hair care centre that has an in-house registered pharmacy that is managed by a fully qualified and registered pharmacist and a full time state-registered doctor.
Although you have not presented yourself with any address or telephone details, nor any references as to your position we are always appreciative of opinions regarding the content on our site and completely transparent.
It is myself that is in charge of all of the content on the website. I am 26 years old and a hair loss sufferer myself and have been researching hair loss treatments for the almost 6+ years that I have been employed here. I am also the son of the chairman Michael Harris.
Firstly I’ll say that I have absolutely no problem with you ‘CACHING’ our website pages. You are acting as if this is a threat, but we have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of or concerned about within our content. I feel very strongly about providing the public with accurate and precise information and that is exactly what we set out to do on belgraviacentre.com.
You can look at our comments regarding other products and clinics as an attack if you wish, but the fact is we are providing factual information to the public so that they can make an informed decision of the products they wish to use going by the facts – not the information provided by the product itself which is often (usually, in fact) inaccurate. Many friends of mine and people that have visited the centre have almost lost hope because of products they have purchased that don’t work. Most of these people will never bother trying an alternative once they’ve been let down more than once by a product. Why should we sit back and let this happen when we are the experts, who know the facts and can offer a helping hand to people with lack of knowledge?
Our post on the Westminster Practice is in response to ongoing complaints about its owner and consultant, Gary Heron. We are very familiar with Heron because he previously worked as Belgravia’s clinic manager until he was dismissed for Gross Misconduct in 2001 when it was found out he was taking money from people’s credit card account without their consent. He is still carrying out this practice at his new centre. This is something I was well aware of when I joined the company and this experience, as well as many other similar ones, are the reason why I personally set out to offer a different, more open and factual approach to the general public through our website in order to create awareness.
Belgravia are one of the only clinics to provide all of the medically proven prescription medications for hair loss – these are the treatments offered because these are the ones that work. We are completely against offering non-proven products as an individual treatment for hair loss because quite simply there is no evidence that they work and we frequently hear reports from previous users that they don’t.
About our ‘booster’ products (Hair Vitalics, Medroxyprogesterone and Azelaic Acid). Nowhere do we state that these are proven treatments, or that they are effective if used individually for the prevention of hair loss. We simply state that they ‘help to block DHT topically and complement the proven treatments’ or ‘help to maintain and improve the quality of the hair’. After reviewing this following your comments I am however planning to add some further information for MPG and Azelaic Acid regarding their lack of firm clinical evidence as I agree that descriptions of these products may not fit exactly with our description of other similar products and we do not want to give the impression that the information on our own products contradicts our reports on others.
We are sure that we are not breaking any rules so have no problem with you reporting us to whichever body you feel necessary. We do not advertise prescription medications, we advertise ‘The Belgravia Centre’. Our treatment courses frequently consist of non-prescription products and medications and services for people who do not wish to use prescription medications or those with hair loss related to scalp problems so as I said, there are no rules being broken.
And regarding your comments about the LaserComb; before making such accusations you should get your facts right - http://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/hairmax-lasercomb-fda-cleared-for-hair-growth-or-just-safety017/. If you want to take this matter up with HairMax then please contact them directly but we are going by information provided by them.
Regarding the FDA – we are not pretending anything. We clearly state that they are an American body (http://www.belgraviacentre.com/fda.htm) and there is no reason why we can’t or shouldn’t refer to their approval on belgraviacentre.com – it’s something that is recognised by medical specialists world-wide.
May I ask what drug company you work for? And if there are any specific products you are researching?
As I said, I am always open to constructive suggestions for our site and the information we provide so if there is anything you feel is incorrect regarding a specific product or clinic please let me know and I will be happy to amend it if you are correct in your assessment.
I thought that the correspondence between you and I would be an asset to our blog so I have added it as a post - http://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/enough-is-enough-a-complaint-and-our-response/.
Yours sincerely
Jonny Harris
Joint Managing Director
The Belgravia Centre
52 Grosvenor Gardens
London SW1W 0AU
020 7730 6666
www.belgraviacentre.com
FACEBOOK - Become a Belgravia Centre Facebook fan and spread the word! Here’s our fan page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/The-Belgravia-Hair-Loss-Centre/44159485192
________________________________________
From: Andrew Simpson
Sent: 05 May 2009 13:05
To: Info, The Belgravia Centre
Subject: Enough is enough…
To the Managing Director
As a science student losing his hair, I speak as one of a number of people i am sure, that is sick and tired of your company’s lofty attitude to the industry. Constantly attacking others businesses who you accuse of being scammers instead of just concentrating on your own business. I used to be a customer as well as now working in the pharmaceutical research business (specialising in hair loss technologies for an American drug company - actually doing real research) and know from the inside (as a customer) that you are just as commercial as anyone else and break as many laws in your own way. This email represents my own views and not that of my companys’, hense from a personal address. I just really dislike the way you do business and wish to tell you that.
I personally abhore the non-scientific way in which so many in the business of hairloss sell their products but find that your companty is barely any different except in the way in which you are openly hostile and critisise others when you have as much to be critised about yourselves.
You break so many rules it is jaw-dropping how you feel justified attacking others without any fear of recrimination. Perhaps this brazen attitude has grown over years of no-one reporting yourselves to the authorities or slating your company on their websites. Frankly more than anything else, i just wnat to know from a psychological perspective you justify this approach to yourselves? Do you beleive your own press? Is that it? Or do you think everone else is stupid and don’t know the law? Do you think if you attack enough and shout loud enough then people will assume you must be on the right side of the law in every respect or you’d be crazy to take that approach. I just cant figure it out.
So let me ask you some questions to get you thinking about what i’m thinking:
1. I beleive that you advertise unlicenced medicines without a marketing authorisation license. Is that true and if so, do you beleive that is legal? If you beleive it is not legal, why do you do it? and how do you dare critisise others for what they do if you beleive you have an aethical basis for selling the products which may work quite well but which you know are illegal to advertise for sale?
2. You state that your proprietory minoxidil preparations have regrowth effects (”boosters”). Are you planning to produce your clinical trials to substantiate your otherwise illegal claims. (ALL PAGES HAVE BEEN CACHED - I DIRECT YOU TO THE ASA RULING ON THIS MATTER)
3. The lasercomb (to take one example of your double standards with regard to products that do or do not meet your self-imposed standards) is not only a scam but one you profit from. I personally beleive that you know full well it is a scam. I think there once was a time (if not still today) when you sell time under laser lamps instore. There is no proof of efficacy at all for these devices. I invite you to do your research on what the device is actually FDA registered for (see wikipedia for one thing). None of this flimsy research data would get past the pre-clinicals - it is a joke that a company as stringent as yours purports to be on real efficaceous standards would sell this junk. In any event, even if you did beleive in these phoney trials, as you well know, the registration of FDA is irrelevant in the UK. The body of note in the UK is the MHRA. Why are you pretending you do not know this? Your advertising (ALL CACHED) of the lasercomb in this country is illegal in my view. As is the sale.
I could go on - i have cached all your your website - every page. Feel free to tell me you views on my email. As unlike youselves, it is not my style to go around bad-mouthing competitors or other scientists, and since really you have no impact on me other than you just annoy the hell out of me, I would like to know your plans before i make representations to the MRHA, ASA etc.
Sincerely,
Mr A Simpson.
— On Wed, 6/5/09, Andrew Simpson wrote:
From: Andrew Simpson
Subject: enough is enough
To: jonny@belgraviacentre.com
Date: Wednesday, 6 May, 2009, 11:50 AM
Dear Mr Harris,
First private correspondance between persons is confidential and therefore you are infringing my copyright by publishing it. It might sound counter-intuitive as you would think having sent an email to you that it becomes your property but in fact this is incorrect under English law. However i have no issue with you posting my comments. I only hope that you continue to and post this response.
The reason why i bring this up is because it is entirely consistent with your attitude (or really that of your companys’) that you would make the knee-jerk response that you have, assuming you are without reproach at all times.
Let me be clear. I will not and have never threatened you nor do i wish to make any threats or make this personal. But I must say i find your company’s attitude most aloof and it is for this reason I said that i have cached your pages because i anticipated that you would make changes to obfuscate your responsibilitites.
You spend an inordinate amount of time (even in your response to me) critisising others and it is not in my interest time-wise nor in terms of creating a level playing field in the longer term for others in the industry to now fore-warn you about your activities.
Paradoxically, I do accept and warmly congratulate you for being a company that in many respects is head and shoulders (pardon the pun) above others in terms of clarity and fairness to your customers. What i find objectionable is the way you seek to create conflict with competitors and suggest that you are the only company in the industry that has the same motives. You offer for sale unproven medical products which are unlicensed medicines. I wonder if you would have the email address for Mr Heron so that he can see this thread and respond himself.
There are a multitude of ways in which you break the UK medicines act and your reply only further aggravates your many and frequent contraventions of the law.
As for your response to the Hairmax complaint, it is quite ammusing that you do not find it inconsistent with your company’s self-appointed ‘white knight’ status that even if it is pointed out to you that the FDA approval of Hairmax is under the same category as a ‘vacuum-cap’ for hair loss and not proven for efficacy, but for safety and use as a hairloss device, that you only wish to reply that i should take that up with the manufacturers ergo - you are not concerned with proving efficacy for your customers but getting away with what you can. In any event, even is there was bone-fide FDA approval, it is irrelevant as the product would need MRHA approval to be sold in this country for the purposes which you sell it.
As you are so confident as to your company’s approach, i challenge you NOT to change a single thing on your website so that we can all judge in the future. I think your age may explain your brazen approach and I am surprised your father let you reply in this way. I do not intend to further correspond on this matter.
Mr A Simpson
Hi Mr Simpson
Thank you for your email.
The Belgravia Centre has been established for almost 20 years and we have never received a complaint of this nature. In fact it is extremely seldom that we receive any form of complaint about our services. The centre is the largest single hair clinic in the UK, employing a team of more than fifty and has developed an excellent reputation for not only the expert service it provides, but also for the very high level of success in stabilizing and even reversing hair loss in both males and females. The Belgravia Centre is also the only UK hair care centre that has an in-house registered pharmacy that is managed by a fully qualified and registered pharmacist and a full time state-registered doctor.
Although you have not presented yourself with any address or telephone details, nor any references as to your position we are always appreciative of opinions regarding the content on our site and completely transparent.
It is myself that is in charge of all of the content on the website. I am 26 years old and a hair loss sufferer myself and have been researching hair loss treatments for the almost 6+ years that I have been employed here. I am also the son of the chairman Michael Harris.
Firstly I’ll say that I have absolutely no problem with you ‘CACHING’ our website pages. You are acting as if this is a threat, but we have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of or concerned about within our content. I feel very strongly about providing the public with accurate and precise information and that is exactly what we set out to do on belgraviacentre.com.
You can look at our comments regarding other products and clinics as an attack if you wish, but the fact is we are providing factual information to the public so that they can make an informed decision of the products they wish to use going by the facts – not the information provided by the product itself which is often (usually, in fact) inaccurate. Many friends of mine and people that have visited the centre have almost lost hope because of products they have purchased that don’t work. Most of these people will never bother trying an alternative once they’ve been let down more than once by a product. Why should we sit back and let this happen when we are the experts, who know the facts and can offer a helping hand to people with lack of knowledge?
Our post on the Westminster Practice is in response to ongoing complaints about its owner and consultant, Gary Heron. We are very familiar with Heron because he previously worked as Belgravia’s clinic manager until he was dismissed for Gross Misconduct in 2001 when it was found out he was taking money from people’s credit card account without their consent. He is still carrying out this practice at his new centre. This is something I was well aware of when I joined the company and this experience, as well as many other similar ones, are the reason why I personally set out to offer a different, more open and factual approach to the general public through our website in order to create awareness.
Belgravia are one of the only clinics to provide all of the medically proven prescription medications for hair loss – these are the treatments offered because these are the ones that work. We are completely against offering non-proven products as an individual treatment for hair loss because quite simply there is no evidence that they work and we frequently hear reports from previous users that they don’t.
About our ‘booster’ products (Hair Vitalics, Medroxyprogesterone and Azelaic Acid). Nowhere do we state that these are proven treatments, or that they are effective if used individually for the prevention of hair loss. We simply state that they ‘help to block DHT topically and complement the proven treatments’ or ‘help to maintain and improve the quality of the hair’. After reviewing this following your comments I am however planning to add some further information for MPG and Azelaic Acid regarding their lack of firm clinical evidence as I agree that descriptions of these products may not fit exactly with our description of other similar products and we do not want to give the impression that the information on our own products contradicts our reports on others.
We are sure that we are not breaking any rules so have no problem with you reporting us to whichever body you feel necessary. We do not advertise prescription medications, we advertise ‘The Belgravia Centre’. Our treatment courses frequently consist of non-prescription products and medications and services for people who do not wish to use prescription medications or those with hair loss related to scalp problems so as I said, there are no rules being broken.
And regarding your comments about the LaserComb; before making such accusations you should get your facts right - http://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/hairmax-lasercomb-fda-cleared-for-hair-growth-or-just-safety017/. If you want to take this matter up with HairMax then please contact them directly but we are going by information provided by them.
Regarding the FDA – we are not pretending anything. We clearly state that they are an American body (http://www.belgraviacentre.com/fda.htm) and there is no reason why we can’t or shouldn’t refer to their approval on belgraviacentre.com – it’s something that is recognised by medical specialists world-wide.
May I ask what drug company you work for? And if there are any specific products you are researching?
As I said, I am always open to constructive suggestions for our site and the information we provide so if there is anything you feel is incorrect regarding a specific product or clinic please let me know and I will be happy to amend it if you are correct in your assessment.
I thought that the correspondence between you and I would be an asset to our blog so I have added it as a post - http://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/enough-is-enough-a-complaint-and-our-response/.
Yours sincerely
Jonny Harris
Joint Managing Director
The Belgravia Centre
52 Grosvenor Gardens
London SW1W 0AU
020 7730 6666
www.belgraviacentre.com
FACEBOOK - Become a Belgravia Centre Facebook fan and spread the word! Here’s our fan page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/The-Belgravia-Hair-Loss-Centre/44159485192
________________________________________
From: Andrew Simpson
Sent: 05 May 2009 13:05
To: Info, The Belgravia Centre
Subject: Enough is enough…
To the Managing Director
As a science student losing his hair, I speak as one of a number of people i am sure, that is sick and tired of your company’s lofty attitude to the industry. Constantly attacking others businesses who you accuse of being scammers instead of just concentrating on your own business. I used to be a customer as well as now working in the pharmaceutical research business (specialising in hair loss technologies for an American drug company - actually doing real research) and know from the inside (as a customer) that you are just as commercial as anyone else and break as many laws in your own way. This email represents my own views and not that of my companys’, hense from a personal address. I just really dislike the way you do business and wish to tell you that.
I personally abhore the non-scientific way in which so many in the business of hairloss sell their products but find that your companty is barely any different except in the way in which you are openly hostile and critisise others when you have as much to be critised about yourselves.
You break so many rules it is jaw-dropping how you feel justified attacking others without any fear of recrimination. Perhaps this brazen attitude has grown over years of no-one reporting yourselves to the authorities or slating your company on their websites. Frankly more than anything else, i just wnat to know from a psychological perspective you justify this approach to yourselves? Do you beleive your own press? Is that it? Or do you think everone else is stupid and don’t know the law? Do you think if you attack enough and shout loud enough then people will assume you must be on the right side of the law in every respect or you’d be crazy to take that approach. I just cant figure it out.
So let me ask you some questions to get you thinking about what i’m thinking:
1. I beleive that you advertise unlicenced medicines without a marketing authorisation license. Is that true and if so, do you beleive that is legal? If you beleive it is not legal, why do you do it? and how do you dare critisise others for what they do if you beleive you have an aethical basis for selling the products which may work quite well but which you know are illegal to advertise for sale?
2. You state that your proprietory minoxidil preparations have regrowth effects (”boosters”). Are you planning to produce your clinical trials to substantiate your otherwise illegal claims. (ALL PAGES HAVE BEEN CACHED - I DIRECT YOU TO THE ASA RULING ON THIS MATTER)
3. The lasercomb (to take one example of your double standards with regard to products that do or do not meet your self-imposed standards) is not only a scam but one you profit from. I personally beleive that you know full well it is a scam. I think there once was a time (if not still today) when you sell time under laser lamps instore. There is no proof of efficacy at all for these devices. I invite you to do your research on what the device is actually FDA registered for (see wikipedia for one thing). None of this flimsy research data would get past the pre-clinicals - it is a joke that a company as stringent as yours purports to be on real efficaceous standards would sell this junk. In any event, even if you did beleive in these phoney trials, as you well know, the registration of FDA is irrelevant in the UK. The body of note in the UK is the MHRA. Why are you pretending you do not know this? Your advertising (ALL CACHED) of the lasercomb in this country is illegal in my view. As is the sale.
I could go on - i have cached all your your website - every page. Feel free to tell me you views on my email. As unlike youselves, it is not my style to go around bad-mouthing competitors or other scientists, and since really you have no impact on me other than you just annoy the hell out of me, I would like to know your plans before i make representations to the MRHA, ASA etc.
Sincerely,
Mr A Simpson.
