Review: CFS book by Nick Duerden

MeSci

MeSci

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Source: The British Journal of General Practice

Vol 68, #677, p 586

Date: December 2018

URL: https://bjgp.org/content/68/677/586.1

Ref: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/get-well-soon-9781472950482/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/get-well-soon-9781472950475/

Books: Get Well Soon: Adventures in Alternative Healthcare: Chronic Fatigue from the Inside
Nick Duerden, Bloomsbury, 2018, PB, 272pp, 8.57 pounds,

978-1472950482
----------------------------------------------------------
Dougal Jeffries

- Falmouth. Email: dougal6@gmail.com.

'An irritating enigma' is a description of chronic fatigue syndrome quoted by the author, but 'irritating' is the last adjective that could be applied to his book. Rather, it is engaging, entertaining, thoughtful, and moving, and it goes a long way to demystifying the enigma it explores.

Nick Duerden was, in 2009, a successful self-employed journalist, thriving on frenetic activity and, by his own admission, prone to 'a little harmless competition'. His hectic lifestyle came to a sudden halt following a bout of severe flu-like illness contracted in the US, launching him into a new existence in which debilitating fatigue overshadowed everything else. His book, which in itself would prove to be part of his therapy, tells the story of his attempts to understand his condition and his search for a cure.

It comes as no surprise that the NHS was unable to offer much help, and neither his GP nor the specialist to whom he is first referred - whom he tellingly dubs Dr Dolittle - emerge with much credit. He is diagnosed as having post-viral fatigue but is advised to follow the guidance offered to those labelled as having full-blown ME/CFS, an arguable error of judgement of which, later in his narrative, he makes perhaps too much.

In any case it transpires that he is not depressed enough to qualify for CBT on the NHS (and no one seems to have given him any detailed advice about graded exercise therapy, the other NICE-approved treatment), so, with the help of his long-suffering and admirably determined wife, he sets out to find his own solutions.

By nature something of a sceptic, he wisely avoids the wilder shores of alternative medicine, apart from some dubious nutritional supplements, focusing instead on therapies that aim to transcend the mind-body dualism of which mainstream medicine is so often accused. Over the years that follow he takes up various forms of yoga and meditation, spending a small fortune with various outfits - some wackier than others, and many founded and run by recovered sufferers of CFS with messianic zeal and an eye for commercial success. He passes up the offer of a day with a celebrated 'motivational guru' at the discounted price of 6000 pounds.

His investigations finally lead him, via explanations of the stress-adrenaline-cortisol axis, to the reluctant acceptance that there might be some psychological factors involved in his collapse into crippling fatigue, not only relating to his lifestyle but also to his childhood. At the same time he learns strategies for dealing with his day-to-day symptoms and the demands of parenting a young family as well as keeping up with his work, and he manages to convey the sensations of extreme fatigue with powerful imagery.

Duerden employs a light touch, and his gentle pokes at some of the more outrageous practitioners he meets is matched by his self-deprecation.

But his purpose is serious, and he does not shy away from sharing painful insights and experiences. On the whole though he is generous in his opinions, and his open-mindedness extends to both the orthodox and the alternative. Towards the end of his explorations he spends an hour with Susie Orbach, of Fat is a Feminist Issue fame, and is clearly struck by her undogmatic wisdom, as she gently explains her psychoanalytical perspective on his story. What finally emerges is the uncertainty that we all feel when faced with the challenge of a chronic condition with psychosomatic components.

To disentangle the predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors becomes almost impossible, but the attempt is surely worthwhile. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in chronic fatigue - doctor, patient, or involved observer - whose opinions on this most puzzling of conditions are not already fixed.

--------
(c) 2018 British Journal of General Practice

(c) 2018 The Royal College of General Practitioners
 
Last edited:
MeSci said:
Source: The British Journal of General Practice

Vol 68, #677, p 586

Date: December 2018

URL: https://bjgp.org/content/68/677/586.1

Ref: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/get-well-soon-9781472950482/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/get-well-soon-9781472950475/

Books: Get Well Soon: Adventures in Alternative Healthcare: Chronic Fatigue from the Inside
Nick Duerden, Bloomsbury, 2018, PB, 272pp, 8.57 pounds,

978-1472950482
----------------------------------------------------------
Dougal Jeffries

- Falmouth. Email: dougal6@gmail.com.

'An irritating enigma' is a description of chronic fatigue syndrome quoted by the author, but 'irritating' is the last adjective that could be applied to his book. Rather, it is engaging, entertaining, thoughtful, and moving, and it goes a long way to demystifying the enigma it explores.

Nick Duerden was, in 2009, a successful self-employed journalist, thriving on frenetic activity and, by his own admission, prone to 'a little harmless competition'. His hectic lifestyle came to a sudden halt following a bout of severe flu-like illness contracted in the US, launching him into a new existence in which debilitating fatigue overshadowed everything else. His book, which in itself would prove to be part of his therapy, tells the story of his attempts to understand his condition and his search for a cure.

It comes as no surprise that the NHS was unable to offer much help, and neither his GP nor the specialist to whom he is first referred - whom he tellingly dubs Dr Dolittle - emerge with much credit. He is diagnosed as having post-viral fatigue but is advised to follow the guidance offered to those labelled as having full-blown ME/CFS, an arguable error of judgement of which, later in his narrative, he makes perhaps too much.

In any case it transpires that he is not depressed enough to qualify for CBT on the NHS (and no one seems to have given him any detailed advice about graded exercise therapy, the other NICE-approved treatment), so, with the help of his long-suffering and admirably determined wife, he sets out to find his own solutions.

By nature something of a sceptic, he wisely avoids the wilder shores of alternative medicine, apart from some dubious nutritional supplements, focusing instead on therapies that aim to transcend the mind-body dualism of which mainstream medicine is so often accused. Over the years that follow he takes up various forms of yoga and meditation, spending a small fortune with various outfits - some wackier than others, and many founded and run by recovered sufferers of CFS with messianic zeal and an eye for commercial success. He passes up the offer of a day with a celebrated 'motivational guru' at the discounted price of 6000 pounds.

His investigations finally lead him, via explanations of the stress-adrenaline-cortisol axis, to the reluctant acceptance that there might be some psychological factors involved in his collapse into crippling fatigue, not only relating to his lifestyle but also to his childhood. At the same time he learns strategies for dealing with his day-to-day symptoms and the demands of parenting a young family as well as keeping up with his work, and he manages to convey the sensations of extreme fatigue with powerful imagery.

Duerden employs a light touch, and his gentle pokes at some of the more outrageous practitioners he meets is matched by his self-deprecation.

But his purpose is serious, and he does not shy away from sharing painful insights and experiences. On the whole though he is generous in his opinions, and his open-mindedness extends to both the orthodox and the alternative. Towards the end of his explorations he spends an hour with Susie Orbach, of Fat is a Feminist Issue fame, and is clearly struck by her undogmatic wisdom, as she gently explains her psychoanalytical perspective on his story. What finally emerges is the uncertainty that we all feel when faced with the challenge of a chronic condition with psychosomatic components.

To disentangle the predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors becomes almost impossible, but the attempt is surely worthwhile. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in chronic fatigue - doctor, patient, or involved observer - whose opinions on this most puzzling of conditions are not already fixed.

--------
(c) 2018 British Journal of General Practice

(c) 2018 The Royal College of General Practitioners
Click to expand...

ME patients, along with millions of other chronically ill patients, are insulted and condescended to at every opportunity when they try alternative treatments or anything that may work to treat a ruinous disease. We are insulted by medical professionals for stupidly "believing we are sick" and held in contempt for trying to find any explanation or help.

Then the very same people turn around and say "look at this alternative treatment that worked, isn't that wonderful?". And to add insult to the original insult, they add that it only works because this guy believed in it and now believes in himself, which is all the evidence they will ever need to continue believing this is not a real disease, because anecdotes that confirm their bias overrule science because their prejudice is so intense.

And again with this "mind-body duality" tripe. It's really fascinating and all but it still doesn't have any basis in objective evidence and anything that is claimed on this topic is purely ideological. It's a mess of logical fallacies and wishful thinking. The review literally includes "motivational guru" as a positive as if it had a scientific basis. "Jump on mats", they, "it will cure all your diseases", they say. And it's only 6,000 pounds, that's a bargain! Only 12 easy payments! Call now for a free loofa (it has a smiley face!)!

Regressive, condescending bunch of hacks.
 
Sigh. That review is in the British Journal of General Practice.

MeSci said:
His investigations finally lead him, via explanations of the stress-adrenaline-cortisol axis, to the reluctant acceptance that there might be some psychological factors involved in his collapse into crippling fatigue, not only relating to his lifestyle but also to his childhood.
Click to expand...
It's all dreadfully unhelpful. I don't really blame Nick Duerden though - with the prevailing culture and so much uncertainty, it is easy to fall into this way of thinking. I hope he finds his way here and gets a deeper understanding. When better informed, he could be an asset to the community.
 
Trish said:
When the original thread appeared I actually bought the book out of curiosity. I can see it from my bed now, sitting on the shelf unread.
Click to expand...

I thought I'd take a look at the book on amazon...

You purchased this item on 25 March 2018.
Click to expand...

Totally forgot! :oops: Haven't looked at it even. :rolleyes: Or have I? It's on my Kindle, and labelled as "New", but when I opened it up it wanted to take me to the furthest read page, which turned out to be 89% read! :confused: Gone back to the beginning, read the introduction, didn't recognise it at all, but then why would I when my memory is totally shot? :laugh:

So then I took a look at the reviews, it gets 75% 5-stars 25% 4-stars. One reviewer, "Still Listening" has written a very long review, (scroll down to see) ending by thanking the publisher and author for a pre-release copy to review. They revealed this:

The author perhaps makes a little too much of being led to believe he had CFS when he actually had another condition—which was only discovered three years later.
Click to expand...

And also, when talking about the Optimum Health Clinic, talks about shouting stop when you notice negative thought patterns. Sounds more like LP to me, but there you go.

I might give the book a go after the brilliant one I'm reading now about blood. "Nine Pints" by Rose George, which I thoroughly recommend.
 
I've finished reading the book. Spent this morning writing the following attempt at a review. Apologies that it's rather long.

It is based on what I remember from a single read through. Apologies to Nick Duerden if I have misunderstood or misremembered the details.

The short version:

He may or may not have ME, has been grossly misled by NHS doctors including Peter White about ME, or as he calls it 'chronic fatigue', including the stuff about death threats and forums being full of angry people. As a result he grossly misleads his readers.

He spent a lot of time and money on quack therapies including OHC, Gupta and LP, none of which helped his 'chronic fatigue' but which he thinks help him deal with work related stress. He now thinks he doesn't have 'chronic fatigue, but still has to pace carefully, has had to change his way of life completely and crashes if he does too much.
Click to expand...

The long version:
Nick Duerden had bad flu 2009, another flu a year later, didn’t feel better, and was diagnosed with PVFS.

He works from home as a freelance journalist, has wife and 2 children who were very young when he got ill. When he became ill he had to give up travelling for work, going to the gym, socialising etc, but was still able to work at home. Any exercise set him back and he became mostly housebound for some time.

His NHS experience included some useless CBT. He went to interview Peter White who he presents in the book as a leading expert in CFS. White told him to try to get on the CBT/GET program in his local area, but they refused him because he wasn’t depressed enough. White also spun him the story about vexatious patients and death threats and seems to have warned him off patient forums and organisations.

His wife decided to research on line for alternative treatments, since the NHS had given up on him. He started with Dr Myhill’s recommended treatments gleaned on line, (Dr Myhill is not named, but the description fits), This involved taking masses of supplements for 6 months to no obvious effect.

He then started a journey through increasingly wacky alt. med. psychobabble, including the Optimum Health Clinic (whose psychobabble includes trying to convince him his problems were due to past trauma), Gupta Amygdala retraining, Lightning Process, mindfulness, Vedic meditation, hypnosis and other even more wacky ones including Psych-K (which used pendulums to pick phrases for him to say), F**k-It, and others.

From all of these he ‘learned’ that his problem was fear avoidance and symptom focusing that he must say STOP to any negative thoughts about his health. He also picked up the stress/burn-out/cortisol model along the way and still seems to believe it. He concluded that he was burned out from trying to live a hectic life and must slow down and see himself and his life differently. In other words, he seems to conclude from all this that he isn’t really sick, he is just living wrongly and thinking wrongly.

Every time he tried a new therapy he threw himself into it enthusiastically, often committing 6 months or more to dedicated practice of what he’d been taught. Yet he remained sick - still able to work from home, but having to pace himself carefully and crashing if he overdid physical activity.

Eventually he decided he had to stop spending money on all these things and try more orthodox medicine again. He spent an hour with the well known psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Susie Orbach who told him all the stuff about trying to stop negative thoughts he’d been taught by OHC, Gupta and LP was wrong. That negative thoughts are part of the human condition and we shouldn’t try to exorcise them but to understand and accept them. She also told him that CBT was also the wrong approach because it is about behaviour, not about ‘meaning’. She then tried to persuade him that his needing to stay at home might be because that was a ‘safe place’ psychologically for him and he should have gone for psychoanalyisis in the first place.

He tells her he thinks all the things he’s tried have helped him feel more in control and less fearful and more able to take responsibility for himself. She then goes on about capitalism and the need to achieve etc pushing people into unhealthy patterns of behaviour.

He then goes back to an NHS consultant who does a much more thorough case history and symptom discussion, and tells him he doesn’t have ‘chronic fatigue’ (this is what he calls it throughout the book) because although he has very debilitating fatigue, he doesn’t have depression or brain fog or light or noise sensitivity. The doctor says to discard everything he’s learned in the last 3 years. That his problem is not mental, it’s physical and it might be something wrong with his T cell function but that’s still being researched.

She tells him that although his condition is clearly debilitating, her diagnosis that it’s not CFS is good news. That it’s less serious in the long term and he should be optimistic. In a sense she is blaming his diagnosis 3 years earlier of PVFS as making him catastrophise and treat it as a more serious problem than she thinks it is. He would probably still have been just as debilitated, but not driven by fear onto the path he took.

He ends up not sure what difference being told he had PVFS or CFS might have made:

‘’Either way, that single symptom - fatigue - has been a permanent resident of my recent life. Friends tell me I should be furious, and those irate forums I never visit would probably encourage me to start sending letters of complaint, death threats.’’ p248

He then goes on to say he accepts his new reality, that there’s no point being angry, his condition is just part of life, though he is sad that his children ‘‘might never know the old me who never stopped doing things.’’

He says he still finds the LP and meditation techniques useful in helping him deal with negative thoughts that arise from stressful situations with his work. And he blames himself if stress leads him to crash into worse fatigue. He reads back over what he regards as the ‘good advice’ he picked up from all the multitudes of therapies to help him not to ‘catastrophise’. Although he’s only in his 40’s he now attributes his fatigue and bodily aches to ageing.

The epilogue written 2 years after his ‘adventures in alternative medicine’ he says he still tires easily, still crashes sometimes, but has learned to live with his new self with a slower pace of life. He puts a positive spin on this as a learning experience.
…………………….

My response to all this. The NHS let him down by not explaining about pacing and supporting him in learning to do it right from the start, and not explaining that he was suffering from a physical condition, leaving him in a state of panic.

He has therefore wasted a huge amount of money on quack therapies instead, until eventually he came around to pacing for himself.

He was lucky to have a job where he could work at his own pace from home and a very supportive wife, so he could rest when he needed to, and to have escaped the directive CBT/GET crap which might have made his symptoms a whole lot worse if indeed he does have ME/CFS, not stress/burnout.

He has a huge misconception about ME/CFS and people with it as a result of believing everything Peter White and the other NHS doctors and the OHC told him, and has missed out on the support of fellow sufferers, and horribly misleads his readers as a result.

The mixture of being rather gullible and a sucker for every quack therapist if they tell him stuff that sounds convincing or are charismatic, and his willingness to believe without question an ‘expert’ like Peter White and the doctors who diagnosed him initially with PVFS, and in the end with not having ‘chronic fatigue’ but with having ‘something physical’ means it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to look into patient organisations and forums.

If he had turned, instead of the OHC, to the MEA at the start, he might now be much better educated about ME/CFS and have learned about pacing much earlier.

It is not clear, by the end of the book, whether he has ME or not. He clearly has debilitating fatigue that limits his physical activity, and he crashes when he does too much physically, and feels very unwell when he crashes. He also tends to get very stressed by work problems and finds some of the stuff he learned about examining his thoughts, meditating and stopping himself catastrophising can help with that. But is has no impact on his physical condition, whatever it is. Perhaps he now has mild ME that he keeps under control most of the time by pacing, as well as a tendency to get stressed that he deals with by a mix of blaming himself for catastrophising and meditating to calm himself.

My main concern about the book is that it gives a completely false picture of ME/CFS and of the behaviour of sufferers which might put off others from seeking the help and support of patient organisations and forums.
Click to expand...

Edit to add: I've put up a slightly edited version of this review on Amazon. Apparently it could take a few days to appear.
 
Last edited:
Trish said:
Edit to add: I've put up a slightly edited version of this review on Amazon. Apparently it could take a few days to appear.
Click to expand...
Well, that was an interesting experience. I've just had my review knocked back by Amazon.
Here's what Amazon said in their e-mail to me:
Thank you for submitting a customer review.

Thank you for submitting a customer review on Amazon. After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review-guidelines
Click to expand...

Here's the review as I posted it:
Well written and entertaining, but very misleading about ME/CFS

This review is based on what I remember from a single read through. Apologies to Nick Duerden if I have misunderstood or mis-remembered the details.

While I found the book easy to read, entertaining and interesting, I am left with a serious concern about the harm the misinformation in it about ME/CFS can cause to sufferers and to the support they receive.

Nick Duerden had bad flu 2009, another flu a year later, didn’t feel better, and was diagnosed with PVFS.

He works from home as a freelance journalist, has wife and 2 children who were very young when he got ill. When he became ill he had to give up travelling for work, going to the gym, socialising etc, but was still able to work at home. Any exercise set him back and he became mostly housebound for some time.

His NHS experience included some useless CBT. He went to interview Professor Peter White who he presents in the book as a leading expert in CFS. White told him to try to get on the CBT/GET program in his local area, but they refused him because he wasn’t depressed enough. White also spun him the story about vexatious patients and death threats and seems to have warned him off patient forums and organisations. (Professor White was the lead researcher on a notorious clinical trial that has been debunked by leading scientists and described in the UK Parliament as a scandal.)

NIck's wife decided to research on line for alternative treatments, since the NHS had given up on him. He started with Dr Myhill’s recommended treatments gleaned on line, (Dr Myhill is not named, but the description fits), This involved taking masses of supplements for 6 months to no obvious effect.

He then started a journey through increasingly wacky alt. med. psychobabble, including the Optimum Health Clinic (whose psychobabble includes trying to convince him his problems were due to past trauma), Gupta Amygdala retraining, Lightning Process, mindfulness, Vedic meditation, hypnosis and other even more wacky ones including Psych-K (which used pendulums to pick phrases for him to say), F**k-It, and others.

From all of these he ‘learned’ that his problem was fear avoidance and symptom focusing that he must say STOP to any negative thoughts about his health. He also picked up the stress/burn-out/cortisol model along the way and still seems to believe it. He concluded that he was burned out from trying to live a hectic life and must slow down and see himself and his life differently. In other words, he seems to conclude from all this that he isn’t really sick, he is just living wrongly and thinking wrongly.

Every time he tried a new therapy he threw himself into it enthusiastically, often committing 6 months or more to dedicated practice of what he’d been taught. Yet he remained sick - still able to work from home, but having to pace himself carefully and crashing if he overdid physical activity.

Eventually he decided he had to stop spending money on all these things and try more orthodox medicine again. He spent an hour with the well known psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Susie Orbach who told him all the stuff about trying to stop negative thoughts he’d been taught by OHC, Gupta and LP was wrong. That negative thoughts are part of the human condition and we shouldn’t try to exorcise them but to understand and accept them. She also told him that CBT was also the wrong approach because it is about behaviour, not about ‘meaning’. She then tried to persuade him that his needing to stay at home might be because that was a ‘safe place’ psychologically for him and he should have gone for psychoanalyisis in the first place.

He tells her he thinks all the things he’s tried have helped him feel more in control and less fearful and more able to take responsibility for himself. She then goes on about capitalism and the need to achieve etc pushing people into unhealthy patterns of behaviour.

He then goes back to an NHS consultant who does a much more thorough case history and symptom discussion, and tells him he doesn’t have ‘chronic fatigue’ (this is what he calls it throughout the book) because although he has very debilitating fatigue, he doesn’t have depression or brain fog or light or noise sensitivity. The doctor says to discard everything he’s learned in the last 3 years. That his problem is not mental, it’s physical and it might be something wrong with his T cell function but that’s still being researched. (More misinformation - depression is not a key feature of ME, though it can be a consequence of being chronically ill. ME/CFS is a physical illness, the core symptom of which is post exertional malaise. No one seems to have explained this to Nick).

She tells him that although his condition is clearly debilitating, her diagnosis that it’s not CFS is good news. That it’s less serious in the long term and he should be optimistic. In a sense she is blaming his diagnosis 3 years earlier of PVFS as making him catastrophise and treat it as a more serious problem than she thinks it is. He would probably still have been just as debilitated, but not driven by fear onto the path he took.

He ends up not sure what difference being told he had PVFS or CFS might have made:

‘’Either way, that single symptom - fatigue - has been a permanent resident of my recent life. Friends tell me I should be furious, and those irate forums I never visit would probably encourage me to start sending letters of complaint, death threats.’’ p248

He then goes on to say he accepts his new reality, that there’s no point being angry, his condition is just part of life, though he is sad that his children ‘‘might never know the old me who never stopped doing things.’’

He says he still finds the LP and meditation techniques useful in helping him deal with negative thoughts that arise from stressful situations with his work. And he blames himself if stress leads him to crash into worse fatigue. He reads back over what he regards as the ‘good advice’ he picked up from all the multitudes of therapies to help him not to ‘catastrophise’. Although he’s only in his 40’s he now attributes his fatigue and bodily aches to ageing.

The epilogue written 2 years after his ‘adventures in alternative medicine’ he says he still tires easily, still crashes sometimes, but has learned to live with his new self with a slower pace of life. He puts a positive spin on this as a learning experience.
…………………….

My response to all this. The NHS let him down by not explaining about pacing and supporting him in learning to do it right from the start, and not explaining that he was suffering from a physical condition, leaving him unsupported and in a state of panic.

He has therefore wasted a huge amount of money on quack therapies instead, until eventually he came around to pacing for himself.

He was lucky to have a job where he could work at his own pace from home and a very supportive wife, so he could rest when he needed to, and to have escaped the now debunked and often harmful directive CBT/GET crap which might have made his symptoms a whole lot worse if indeed he does have ME/CFS, not stress/burnout.

He has a huge misconception about ME/CFS and people with it as a result of believing everything Peter White and the other NHS doctors and the OHC told him, and has missed out on the support of fellow sufferers, and horribly misleads his readers as a result.

The mixture of being rather gullible and a sucker for every quack therapist if they tell him stuff that sounds convincing or are charismatic, and his willingness to believe without question an ‘expert’ like Peter White and the doctors who diagnosed him initially with PVFS, and in the end with not having ‘chronic fatigue’ but with having ‘something physical’ means it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to look into patient organisations and forums.

If he had turned, instead of the OHC, to the MEA at the start, he might now be much better educated about ME/CFS and have learned about pacing much earlier and saved himself a shed load of money.

It is not clear, by the end of the book, whether he has ME or not. He clearly has debilitating fatigue that limits his physical activity, and he crashes when he does too much physically, and feels very unwell when he crashes. He also tends to get very stressed by work problems and finds some of the stuff he learned about examining his thoughts, meditating and stopping himself catastrophising can help with that. But is has no impact on his physical condition, whatever it is. Perhaps he now has mild ME that he keeps under control most of the time by pacing, as well as a tendency to get stressed that he deals with by a mix of blaming himself for catastrophising and meditating to calm himself.

My main concern about the book is that it gives a completely false picture of ME/CFS and of the behaviour of sufferers which might put off others from seeking the help and support of patient organisations and forums such as the ME Association, and the patient and scientist forum Science for ME (s4me.info).

Nick, if you are reading this, I wish you well and don't blame you for being misled. If you are interested, why not do an interview with Dr Charles Shepherd of the ME Association, and take a look at the Science for ME forum. We don't bite!
Click to expand...

And here's what they added at the end of their e-mail to me:
A few common issues to keep in mind:

  • Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it. Feedback on the seller or your shipment experience should be provided at www.amazon.co.uk/feedback.
  • We do not allow profane or obscene content. This applies to adult products too.
  • Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same point excessively are considered spam.
  • Please do not include URLs external to Amazon or personally identifiable content in your review.
  • Any attempt to manipulate Community content or features, including contributing false, misleading or inauthentic content, is strictly prohibited.
Click to expand...

I think I might have another go, using my short version as a basis. Watch this space.
 
Trish said:
Well, that was an interesting experience. I've just had my review knocked back by Amazon.
Here's what Amazon said in their e-mail to me:


Here's the review as I posted it:


And here's what they added at the end of their e-mail to me:


I think I might have another go, using my short version as a basis. Watch this space.
Click to expand...
Delete 'F**k It'. That'll help with the profanity part. Amazon blocks anything even slightly offensive (or words like Scunthorpe or cocktail, which contain swearwords according to their filters).

I would refer less to the author. Or rather, make fewer statements about him as a person. Calling him gullible, etc.
 
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