My analysis of the yo-yo email

Here’s my breakdown of this. (Original email text in italics, my highlights in bold italics)

Greetings,

We regret to inform you that your HealthyWager challenge has been administratively terminated. We know that you received an email inviting you to sign up and you were able to do so, but this was an error. You were actually not eligible to participate in a yo-yo HealthyWager challenge. This error allowed certain people to join a yo-yo HealthyWager challenge that could potentially encourage unhealthy behavior which we are not allowed to support. You may be eligible for a yo-yo challenge in the future, but not at this time.

So two things I am taking away from this.

(1) If you got this email, Healthy Wage believes you would be engaging in unhealthy behavior by enrolling in and executing a yo-yo HealthyWager of any type.

This judgment is based on your past history, which would and could include (in decreasing order of likeliness):

• History of your previous successful HealthyWager
• History of any other challenges you did at Healthy Wage (6% jackpots, step challenges, $10,000 team challenges)
• Posts about your weight loss journey in HealthyWage chat
• Publicly-available social media posts about your weigh loss journey
• Social media posts in private groups (if employees are members of these groups)

But at this time, I don’t see any evidence of “unhealthy behavior” from the people I am aware of who are affected by this. It’s common to lose a lot of weight in the short term, or gain it in the short term—but long term, they appear to be in generally acceptable limits for weight loss. (I personally think 1.5% drop week-to-week for 12 weeks straight is borderline unhealthy, but that’s what each member of a 5-man team has to do to win the big money on a $10,000 team challenge.)

(2) If your history is problematic to them now, you can redeem yourself in some manner, in the event that the promotion is offered again. But how do you do that, when you don’t know why you were DQ’d in the first place?

Pursuant to the HealthyWager Services Agreement, we are cancelling your HealthyWager challenge and refunding your payment(s). We suspect that you may not want your challenge to be terminated, so we have automatically appealed the decision on your behalf. The result of the appeal is to confirm the decision, which is final.

The sentences in bold are sack-of-hammers retarded.

So there’s a star chamber within the Healthy Wage offices that hears bullshit appeals and denies them.

First of all, you didn’t authorize the appeal. You should have been given a chance to do so. Maybe you were performing badly on the bet and were willing to abandon it. (What if they approved the appeal and you ended up losing the bet, and you found out you involuntarily appealed an annulment of the wager? Wouldn’t you be pissed of then?)

Assuming you authorized it, you should have been able to muster a case for resurrection of the wager, with knowledge of the criteria that Healthy Wage used to annul it, and the chance of present evidence to the contrary. But that chance is gone now—the decision is final, and that’s that.

If you’re gonna kill the wager and hang your hat on the Services Agreement, just do so. Leave the fake judicial proceedings out of it. It’s insulting to read this.

We apologize for the surprise disappointment. We know this might be a major bummer and you might even feel angry. Please don’t let this stop your motivation. Press on toward healthy goals! You can still use HealthyWage for Jackpot and step challenges. The yo-yo rule does not apply to our Jackpot challenges (any existing enrollments in these challenges will be unaffected), and, of course, it does not apply to step challenges. You can also elect to join up to 10 Jackpot and/or step challenges at one time.

The word “bummer” has no place in a communication like this.

On the positive side, I like the straight apology and the reminder not to quit, and to continue to play in jackpots and step challenges (note: $10,000 team challenges are out, and they always were—even for players who took advantage of the yo-yo reprieve.

Best of health,

The HealthyWage Team

I’d grade this whole thing a C-. At least the people affected are getting their money back. But it would be nice to know why exactly Healthy Wage thought you were doing something unhealthy or maybe gaming the system somehow. Because this could happen to any of us at any time.