THE BELGRAVIA CENTRE BLOG

Name: Jay

Question: I am a male aged 26 and losing hair at a fast rate. I was so concerned that I visited a clinic that advertises in the paper (not yours) and was shocked when they told me the cost would be £1200 for six months treatment. When I looked at your site I saw your comparison chart of your costs against some other companies.

As yours look a lot lower does it mean the treatment isn’t as good? To be honest I felt I was being ripped off as the guy was a bit pushy and that also put me off. Can you help as I am nervous and quite sceptical even though it was a friend who mentioned your name?

Answer: When costs are low, the first thing that most people naturally think is that the product purchased won’t be as good as a more expensive option. In the case of Belgravia’s treatment courses this is not the case and I will explain why.

It’s an unfortunate fact that many of the hair loss organisations in the UK aim to make as much money as possible with little effort. Most of the centres do not offer the medically proven treatments for hair loss as they don’t have the medical facilities to do so (pharmacy / medical staff). These facilities take a lot of time, money and effort to set up and in the case of a pharmacy, need to be overlooked by certain regulatory bodies.

The fact is, as well as having all of these facilities, which ensures we are able to provide the optimum level of treatment and service, Belgravia genuinely aims to make the products offered as reasonable as possible to the consumer. We’re not looking to make maximum profits from individual patients, but prefer to help a higher number of people at lower costs; this is why Belgravia has the largest client base of any single medical hair loss centre in Europe.

We guarantee that the Belgravia Centre offers the most effective hair loss treatment courses available whilst ensuring safety. These treatment courses include the medically proven treatments for hair loss specially combined to suit the individual, treatment course boosters, and other services for which you can find more information on the HAIR LOSS TREATMENTS page.

Although it may seem difficult to believe, these treatment courses offer better value than all of the most advertised centres in the UK - you can see details of this on the HAIR CLINIC PRICE COMPARISON PAGE. In most cases not only are the treatments offered by Belgravia more effective, but the price is considerably lower.

This story was originally posted in January 2008

IF YOU HAVE HAD AN EXPERIENCE WITH GARY HERON OF THE WESTMINSTER PRACTICE, ALSO KNOWN AS THE HAIR CENTRE, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD YOUR COMMENT TO THIS POST IN ORDER TO KEEP THE PUBLIC AWARE OF THE WESTMINISTER PRACTICE AND HELP OTHERS TO AVOID FALLING VICTIM. YOU CAN SEE OTHER PEOPLE’S COMMENTS AND ADD YOUR OWN IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.

The Westminster Practice / The Hair Centre - A Warning

We are receiving an increasingly worrying number of negative reports about Gary Heron and the Westminster Practice (also known as the Hair Centre) from people who have visited the centre for a consultation. Gary Heron is the Westminster Practice’s owner and also works as the consultant, diagnosing hair loss conditions and recommending his own treatments to people who visit the Westminister Practice for a consultation. We have received many complaints about Gary Heron and The Westminster Practice over the years with reports of aggressive selling tactics and schemes to obtain money from people (usually women) without their consent. Gary Heron and the Westminster Practice were featured on BBC 3’s TV programme ‘Conning the Conmen’ in 2007.

Gary Heron of the Westminster Practice has frequently been reported
to use unethical and manipulative tactics to take money from hair loss sufferers.

The Westminster Practice formulate their own non-medically-proven natural lotions for hair loss (Vitastim, Biostim and Follicle Builder II) that have minimal clinical efficacy and are inexpensive to produce, even though reported charges have been between £1,800 and £3,000 for 12 month’s worth of the products. Gary Heron has had no medical or trichological training and has no medical or trichological certifications or qualifications but we have numerous reports that he passes himself as a trichologist to people who visit The Westminster Practice for consultation. There is also evidence of this contained in various articles posted by Heron on the internet where he claims to be ‘one of Europe’s leading trichologists’. Gary Heron is a highly experienced and manipulative sales person and will make the customer feel comfortable during the consultation at the Westminster Practice, usually bringing his family into the conversation to build trust and give the impression of sincerity.

We advise anybody to be highly cautious of Gary Heron and the Westminster Practice in order to avoid having vast amounts of money taken from you.

We would appreciate your comments on this post if you have had any experiences with Gary Heron and the Westminster Practice so that we can pull together to wipe out his bad practice and help to prevent people falling victim to his actions in the future. You can also contact us by email (info@belgraviacentre.com) or telephone (020 7730 6666) if you need any help or advice.

This story was originally posted in May 2007. If you click into the story you can see comments from members of the public at the bottom of the page:

This month an independent agent visited two more London hair loss centres to add to the 5 that had already been reported (including ourselves) - the centres are Maximum Hair and the White Cliffs Group.  You will find information on each treatment offered by the centres and the treatment programme prices on our Hair Centre Price and Treatment Comparison page (click here).

This page allows you to judge for yourselves which hair loss centre provides the most extensive treatments and which is the most reasonable for what is being offered without the need for you to visit anywhere.  Please be sure to read through the whole page as there is a lot of important information contained which you should take into consideration when reviewing each of the hair loss centres.

The centres that are listed on the hair loss price and treatment comparison page are The Belgravia Centre, Advanced Hair Studios, Ashley and Martin, The Westminster Practice / The Hair Centre, The London Centre of Trichology, White Cliffs Group and Maximum Hair.

As always, we will keep you up-to-date with any news or future hair centre reports that are carried out.

You may or may not have seen Belgravia’s Hair Loss Awareness Site.  Well I’d like to explain the reasons we feel it is important that the general public knows exactly what to expect and what to look out for when visiting any hair loss centre in the UK, and why we provide so much information on this subject.

For many years now we have been receiving stories and complaints about people’s experiences with a number of hair loss centres in the UK (I try to avoid using the word ‘clinic’ when referring to other hair loss organisations as I feel many of them do not come into this category).  Force selling, overpricing and even outright lying is unfortunately a common occurrence that we have come to be aware of within the hair loss industry.

Belgravia’s experts have a strict, open and highly ethical policy of providing people suffering from hair loss or a scalp condition with all of the information they need or request regarding our treatment courses in a completely honest manner - something that should of course be expected from any medical organisation.  We are confident, and can back-up the fact that the courses we prescribe are not only the most effective available, but are also highly affordable and will achieve optimum results in the great majority of cases.  We strive to make sure that extensive research is carried out into every product that comes available and all of the treatments we find to be medically proven, highly effective and safe are offered by the Belgravia Pharmacy as part of our treatment courses.

After carrying out some research, we are aware of the products that most of the advertised hair loss centres sell as part of their treatment programmes.  Much of the time these centres do not have the medical facilities, and furthermore are not willing to invest in the time or expense of offering clinically proven and effective treatments that require a prescription.  Because of this they offer natural or non-prescription treatments which are very cheap to produce and most have little or no effect.

We have proof that many of these centres exaggerate the effectiveness of their own treatments, most of the time claiming that they are the best available and claiming high success rates, but we have also found that many tend to play down the effectiveness of prescription treatments that can’t be offered by them - frequently exaggerating their side-effects and under-exaggerating their effectiveness.  Not only does discrediting the effective treatments encourage people never to try them, but the fact that most of the time they treatments that are offered are mildly effective or don’t work at all makes people lose hope and much of the time give up.

Propecia is a perfect example - it is a fact that Propecia is the most effective proven treatment to prevent genetic hair loss and thicken the hair whilst ensuring safety, with over an 80% success rate.  It has been approved by the FDA, meaning it has been deemed safe as well as effective to its cause, but it is a prescription treatment, meaning many of the centres are unable to offer it.  Not only have we heard of a number of consultants claiming the side-effects are too dangerous, but in many cases they have also claimed their natural treatments are more effective.

Just to clear this up; there is no single natural or non-natural treatment more effective than Propecia for genetic hair loss, whilst ensuring safety.  Any-side effects found in clinical trials and in our experience of tens of thousands of Belgravia patients that have used Propecia were only observed in fewer than 2% of men and were mild and either wore off after ceasing usage or shortly after treatment was stopped.  No Belgravia patients have experienced long-term side-effects and no long-term side-effects have been documented.  The effects of Propecia can be further enhanced with the combination of certain prescription treatments.

The price comparison page, found on our website, lists the most advertised hair loss centres in the UK (including the Belgravia Centre), the treatments that are offered by each, and the prices and payment plans available from the centres for their treatments.  You will see that not only are Belgravia’s treatment courses the most effective, but are also by far the best value.

If you have had a bad experience with any hair loss organisation please let us know and we will be happy to give you help and advice.  As promised, I’ll keep you up-to-date with issues discussed in this post so make sure to check back regularly.  Volume 2 of ‘A Warning on UK Hair Loss Centres’ will be posted soon and provide more information on some of the so-called ’solutions’ frequently offered by certain organisations, one of which was recently featured on BBC’s Watchdog.