

Great Dieting Biz Model: Lose The Weight or Pay Up - jeremyw
http://loseitorloseit.com/

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patio11
This is a poor business model. (This is true of most attempts at changing the
tried-and-true "Pay for the stuff you get" system, which nearly invariably
work better on paper than in real life.)

For one, your credit card processor is going to hate your bones, because your
entire business model is based on holding money which is not yours for your
customers, and then not allowing some customers to receive it. This exposes
your credit card processor to about a million different flavors of risk: for
example, if you charge $100,000 and then just vanish into the ether, they're
now on the hook for $100k. Even if you're an upstanding businessman, and you
certainly don't look like it because you're operating a scam, your scam
^H^H^H^H innovative business model is going to have customer support costs far
out of line with their good customers because you will attract
disproportionate refund and chargeback requests.

Also, the "diet industry" is a hive of scum, villainy, and Tim Ferris.

Edit: On reading their terms of service, I think I was far too polite above.
Look at the timing and photographic evidence requirements for weekly weigh-
ins, which are clearly designed so that the typical user does not succeed.

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houseabsolute
The biggest problem, which you touch on briefly but which I want to emphasize,
is that they win if you fail. Their interests are in opposition to your own.
This is not the type of company you want to be doing business with.

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yummyfajitas
While their interests are in opposition to yours, I don't see any way they can
affect the outcome. From their "how it works" page:

 _Lose It or Lose It does not provide any diet, exercise or weight loss
advice, suggestions or program of any type._

What you are risking money for is a way to commit your future self to
unpleasant actions (putting down the chips). The only thing that looks shady
to me is this:

 _No penalties will be deducted from your investment if you can't weigh in
because of a reported technical problem or outage unless we determine that the
site was up and running for at least 12 hours during your 24-hour weigh-in
window._

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drcode
This is a copy of stickk.com. However, stickk.com gives the money to charity,
whereas this site just pockets the cash.

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carbocation
I envisioned a system like this while prepping for the MCAT. Put in terms of
the SAT: Up front I pay $x dollars into an account, where $x is some amount
that I find appropriate for break-even given an SAT practice test, your GPA,
and some demographic info. For every 10 points below 2400 that you score on
the real thing, my obligation to you is reduced by $y. If you score too low,
you owe me.

This would only really be effective if the student had the ability and time to
do extra prep for the test, etc. And it would do nothing to resolve the
underlying flaws of the exam itself.

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storborg
They allow you to cancel for $50, so you're never going to lose more than that
much money. What's the point?

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rsheridan6
This reminds me of an idea I had for a gym membership fee - pay $200/week, get
back $40 for every hour workout up to 5 times weekly (plus some unimplemented
mechanism to prevent your gym from being overrun by gym rats who actually do
work out 5 times weekly).

