I’m new to Huel but thought i’d give everyone a head’s up. It probably stands to reason to watch out who you buy from, but there are scammers selling Huel at the moment on eBay.
I have been looking at Huel for the last week or so, in part because of my busy lifestyle (juggling working in IT all kinds of hours and looking after our 5 month old twins) it seemed like a perfect solution to save me buying rubbish for lunch. Also because I want to shed a few pounds before I get married in 3 months time, but instead of buying a sample pack or a 28 meal pack, I thought I’d go the whole hog and get a 112 meal pack, for the best price I could (see reasons above, twins/wedding expenses etc).
So I thought i’d snagged a bargain getting a 112 meal, 8x pack, gluten free set for £89 (not too bothered whether it’s gluten free but it’s what was available). I sat waiting for the delivery today when it started getting late so I checked the DPD tracking, turned out the package was never collected by DPD.
It turns out, an eBay user is ‘selling’ 8x packs of Huel which they don’t actually have. They then take and pocket your money (whatever you end up paying), and use a stolen credit card to try and buy Huel directly from Huel. The result being that you end up out of pocket, with either stolen goods you need to return, or no goods at all.
Sufficed to say i’m onto eBay/Paypal to get my money back and have since bought the same quantity legitimately through Huel, but just a word to the wise, if it looks like the deal is too good, it probably is.
Oh well, onward to 100% Huel diet as soon as my order arrives!
I think it’s a good idea to stay away from unofficial vendors for something like this. I understand people might want the previous versions, but there’s always a high risk involved.
Yikes! Hopefully others will avoid this. I wouldn’t buy Huel second hand anyway, you never know what they could do to the mix even if it is legitimate. I know that sounds paranoid but there are some truly awful people out there who would poison food. Besides, when buying a food that could potentially replace all meals and provide 100% of your nutritional needs, imagine what a disaster it would be if you ended up with a knock off? But I can appreciate wanting to make a saving, don’t we all
Always check the rating of any eBay seller before you buy. Only buy significant items from a seller with a rating of close to 100% and with many successful sales under their belt.
I’ve experienced no issues whatsoever. All the stuff is sealed and well with the expiry date (and I’m still alive), I now have a good 6 month supply until they sort out a better version.
If the credit card transaction goes through on the stolen credit card, and is then sent out to you. Result being, receiving stolen goods.
As for the seller, they had 100% positive feedback and had been trading on eBay for over a year so nothing looked dodgy until I spoke with Huel and they confirmed someone is using stolen cards to sell through eBay.
Oh well, live and learn. As Bilb said, could have ended up with repackaged joylent!
Sorry for the confusion, it’s a very convoluted way that they are scamming people.
Basically they are taking your money via paypal for the listing and pocketing it. Then using stolen credit cards, they are making purchases directly from Huel using your information, so the stolen goods would get sent out to your home address as if you were buying the quantity you wanted directly from them.
To eBay, it looks legit. The listing completes, they are provided a tracking number with DPD, however no goods are collected by DPD as there is nothing to collect (in my case anyway). I’m not sure whether they have been successful in other cases but the ‘seller’ ran the same scam two days in a row, so the buyer from the winning bid the day previous to mine may have actually received the items, or maybe not.
The eBay user ID is “pauyoun2” and from his feedback I can see he has provided at least 2 users with Huel successfully (as he has positive feedback for them), however I can’t see positive feedback for the user who bought from him the day before me, so i’d suspect they didn’t receive anything either.
all those dodgy black marker dealers cutting it with inferior products like Joylent 