Maximuscle are jerks!

mloc

I ordered a whole bunch of stuff from them last march, whey, glutamine, creatine, zma etc and waited it for it to arrive, hoping to have it before i left for america for the summer in june.

It arrived well after I left, in late June (basically 3 months after I ordered it). I emailed them to complain, once I arrived back from America. No reply. 3 more emails. No reply.

That wasn't the real problem, however. I opened the glutamine, still well within in its sell by date, to find it seriously contaminated with ammonia, one of the precursors used in its production. The stuff smelled so strong it almost made the eyes water. So i wrote them a letter, complaining about the whole situation, throwing in some of my knowledge of what ammonia poisioning might do to a person (I'm a Pharm/Toxicology student). No reply.

I stopped ordering from them. I moved to Nutrisport for a while, which was ok and relatively cheap, before finding out about a guy who imports stuff from America through a friend who had bought stuff off him before (think he might be Easygainer). Much better. ON whey is great, I used to use it in America and mixes amazingly.

Anyway, Maximuscle are totally useless. Hopeless, and thier advertising is full of ****. Unfortunately, I've been out of the gym for 6 weeks with a nasty injury (very nasty... still can't walk properly), so I'm desperately out of shape and will soon be kick starting the training again with some more supplements, NOT from maximuscle.

Easygainer

Cheers for the somplement!

I have a few probs with maximuscle.

1) Overpriced supplements. They charge a lot more for a lot less of the same thing. They can tell you how great biomax is but it's no more than 2 or 3% different than most whey. (Except pure wpc which is less than 100bv).

2) Products taste like ass.

3) They pretend to have some amazing standards which mean you won't magically test positive for drugs. I got news for you. This never happens anyway. Since Jan 05 even prohormones have become illegal, so even if a co. did make prohormones in the same factory as proteins this no longer happens. This is generally an excuse used by athletes who have taken drugs but know of studies (I've seen them) supporting metabolites being found in some supplements years ago.

4) They spread lies. I'll go through a couple. You can only digest 30g of protein per meal, which is, coincidentally, what's in a scoop of their protein. (I think). All of their sponsored athletes are drug free. (Sure they are).

We need more European based supplement manufacturers...One in a new accession state would mean we could drastically lower prices and not have to pay import duties or rely on the dollar.

mloc

i guess the market in the US drives the prices down. I was amazed living over there how many people used whey etc. In NYC there was a supplement store (a decent one at that) every couple of blocks.

I guess Ireland is still a bit behind, certainly with some people thinking whey is an artificial chemical that's "bad for you", and creatine some sort of evil cancer causing agent. It's shocking the amount of people I've talked to that consider creatine a steroid... it goes to show the lack of understanding about supplements in this country.

As for maximuscle, thier whole website and advertising campaign, including thier health reports etc., are all basically bull**** that will get you nowhere except lighter in the pocket from spending money on thier overpriced rubbish. Even cheapo Nutrisport is miles better. The worst thing is the markup charged in Irish shops on thier stuff... it's ridiculous.

Smellyirishman

Three cheers for EasyGainer!

Dragan

The main reason there are not a huge amount of European supplement companies is because the EU will only allow certain products to be sold. Basiclaly any product that people want to poduce for sale in Europe needs to backed up by science that shows it actually works.

In one way, this is good, as it means that only products that work are made here ( however, there is a huge difference between company A saying "This works, here's the study" and putting out a decent product and Company B saying "Company A proved it worked, lets rip it off!" )

All in all, most everything in this life is more marketing that anything else!!!

Easygainer

Dragan wrote:

The main reason there are not a huge amount of European supplement companies is because the EU will only allow certain products to be sold. Basiclaly any product that people want to poduce for sale in Europe needs to backed up by science that shows it actually works.

In one way, this is good, as it means that only products that work are made here ( however, there is a huge difference between company A saying "This works, here's the study" and putting out a decent product and Company B saying "Company A proved it worked, lets rip it off!" )

All in all, most everything in this life is more marketing that anything else!!!

If this is the case, which I don't doubt, two things would seem awry.

1) If the EU is taking this measure to protect consumers, how come they haven't banned useless products, ie products proved to be ineffective. I could buy, but don't buy, liquid creatine. Why? It has been proved useless and went against what I had read (creatine is unstable in liquid). The result? In NZ a case was taken against MM USA for false advertising and they were fined $70k, yet this same product is for sale on Workout World.

2) Maximuscle have a large line of products. 95% of supps sold would fall under what they sell ie whey, creatine, glutamine and then the derivatives like mrps etc and test boosters. BUT maximuscle also market unproven products like GH kick. The thing about this is it uses ingredients which have been shown to help STH (natural GH production), but many things can do this - what hasn't been shown is whether or not this is effective. Big difference. Other products like methoxy isoflvones fall in this category where the product itself or the dose prescribed is ineffective.


The USA has the advantage of a more liberal regime and, obviously, for intra US sales there is no duty. If I had the capital, I would rather invest in something along the lines of www.trueprotein.com or the protein factory where you can customise products to suit yourself and theyv are also very cheap. Unfortunately the shipping rates on these products is atrocious!

Dragan

Easygainer wrote:

If this is the case, which I don't doubt, two things would seem awry.

1) If the EU is taking this measure to protect consumers, how come they haven't banned useless products, ie products proved to be ineffective. I could buy, but don't buy, liquid creatine. Why?

2) what hasn't been shown is whether or not this is effective. Big difference. Other products like methoxy isoflvones fall in this category where the product itself or the dose prescribed is ineffective.


The USA has the advantage of a more liberal regime and, obviously, for intra US sales there is no duty. If I had the capital, I would rather invest in something along the lines of www.trueprotein.com or the protein factory where you can customise products to suit yourself and theyv are also very cheap. Unfortunately the shipping rates on these products is atrocious!

I am unsure as to the resources that the relevant governing body has, so maybe it is just some lone Civil Servant at a desk some where, vainly trying to understand what various studies etc are saying!!! All i know is that to introduce a "new" product to the European market some friends in the supplement business need to be lobby for it's approval! I'm not well up on the details to be honest as they are playing there cards pretty close to there chest right now! I'll try and find out more but i doubt they will tell me just yet!

And the method you pointed out is very valid, maybe a group of boarders should get together and place and order?