don't let the term alternative medicine, put you off! the store has been on coney street for 4 years now, it never looks busy? they do therapeutic massage, quit smoking acupuncher courses etc and a range in chinese medicines. my story starts with my man, years and years ago he hurt his knee at work. he had countless visits to the GP, hospitial, physio etc but no matter how he did the knee exercises, took it easy, rested etc. the dam knee would swell and basically cause him pain in simple every day activities! like walking, standing etc this had been going on for over 3 years! was chatting to my mother and mentioned it to her, and after a long berating of not taking care of my man etc? there are acupuncher doctors in manchester etc chinese medicine has been proven effective etc why don't i do the chinese medicine thing blah blah blah! ( i was seriously thinking of lighting up a cig, but mother would have known, even though we were on the phone, and she was 60 miles away!) so i thought, ok mother i'd give this place a try, told my mother and she said it a chain, the herbal inn's and she's not had any bad reports! like she would have told me anyway? she was just happy i was returning to the old ways! so i took my man in for a consultation, and the doctor who spoke through a translater informed us of a course of acupuncher and chinese medicine, total cost of just over £300.00 (what sprung to mind was, if this don't work i'm billing my mother!) the consultation took part in a small curtained off area. where my mans knee was pushed and prodded. the doctor seemed really professional, questioned my man about a knarly bit on his knee, and said he could do nothing for that! but could help with the swelling and the pain it caused. i think he had 10 acupuncher treatments in total, needles places around offending knee area with little heated bulb shaped glass bottles, where he sat in the consultaion rooms for up to an hour! the medicine was another matter, 1 was in a wax capsule and had tiny little rabbit droppings in it, (though not rabbit droppings, they just looked like them) he was to take these half the amount in capsule day and night, the second medicine, was a black golf balled size thing he had to chew through! eeew! luckily i didn't have to brew any, as from childhood experience it was something that was put on tea time ish, to be taken before bed time! stunk out the whole house and tasted, there is no polite way of saying how it tastes! but i'm sure you can catch my drift! so i was one extremely healthy child! you only fall ill the once and you learn never to say your not feeling well! this was over 3 years ago, he has never had a problem with his knee, has since taken up fencing with a sabre not foil. desparation can lead people to seeking out alternative medicines. it can be costly as you hear so many horror stories of how people have been fleeced of there money and there remaining health! but this method of medicine has been going for thousands of years, so can't be all bad! the chinese did invent the Seismograph, gun powder, built that very long wall, the arched bridges etc so some of the medicine and acupuncher must work? (NOTE chinese medicine, though made up of dried plants etc is NOT to be taken lightly, as some of these plants have very potent effects! and some can be toxic in the wrong amounts! or if prepeared other then how instructed have no effect! you cannot mix sugar into the medicine, infact you could be told not to eat certain foods during a course of medicines, all to do with the ying yang thing) read more

I would avoid this business. I went to the Gloucester Rd branch for their £45 massage promotion as I wanted to try and find a new massage place. It was dirty and did not seem really a legitimate place. The multi-use room was not clean and you laid on a table without a towel or anything. There was an old dirty pillow it looked like had been used without ever having been cleaned. There was also a disposal bin for the acupuncture needles where the needles were sitting on the top. The massage itself was just barely acceptable. The person who did it did not seem experienced. The positive thing was the staff was very nice and polite. read more

I have been conned by the Chiswick branch for years now. I was lucky to find the first doctor who was good so fell for it and re-registered. The doctors may be qualified but it is clear that they work based on how much business they get through the door. Often you are left in the room freeing because a patient has just walked in and they can get more from from him/her. They push medication on you like there is no tomorrow and every time there is a new doctor they change the medication saying the previous one was incorrect so you throw it all away and buy a whole lot of medicines. It's a total scam. I kind of feel for the doctors who work there as this must test their ethics big time. read more

I can't comment on the York place or any other. I only know the place in Coventry. But then, they change the staff frequently and it is never the place that is nice. It is always the individual practitioner. I had two males I am ver fond of. One worked at Herbal Inn in Coventry until about 2012, and the other one from then on until 2013. The first one had his picture on the wall with Prince Charles and Princess Diana. He gave me that wonderful massage. The second guy was middle aged, and helped me with all my pains in hip and knees. The massage didn't help much, so he gave me accupuncture. My tip for anyone: if you want to try a place out, don't start with the multi-session for £300. Get one session of half an hour. See how the staff behaves, whether place is clean, quiet, the staff seems professional, etc. The current practitioner in Coventry is an old man who has no idea how to give a massage. And I certainly wouldn't trust him with needles. The only thing he can do is smearing some smelly oil all over your body. And if you are unlucky, it stains your clothes, which is why he is wearing rubber gloves. If you really want a Chinese massage, go to China or Hong Kong. In China, two hours massage cost you £30, including sauna, shoe shine and buffett. read more

This review is less for my annoyance at my own treatment and far more out of alarmed concern for people who could have conditions and be on medications that I do not have and am not on. Possibly one of the most irresponsible peddlers of garbage around. I was given a herbal tea that they stated was 'important for me to take twice a day'. I walked in there skeptical and wanting nothing more than a massage, honestly thought they were unlikely to be selling something beyond a soothing herbal tea designed to placebo effect me into thinking it was making my aches better. I asked the hilariously unqualified 'doctor' and the till worker what was in the tea they were pushing and they pointed at the box and said something to the effect of 'oh it's medicine'. I asked again since, as a medical student, medicine my ass and received an equally unhelpful response. I looked up the herbs in the tea only to find they interacted rather significantly with very common medications many people are on - TWO of these were SEVERE HERB-DRUG INTERACTIONS which means anyone taking that medication should avoid this 'tea' at all costs. All three interacted with the pill - I was neither asked what medications I was on nor was I informed what these herbs would do despite my asking for the information. While we're at it, before my massage no one took five minutes to ask whether I had any preexisting conditions that might make this procedure unsuitable. I decided to try the acupuncture and hot cup 'treatment' for the hell of it - I do not endorse the latter as anything more than frivolousness that I wanted to try once and the former has such limited evidence that it became part of a whim to try it. The hot cupping and acupuncture involved bruising (bleeding under skin) and piercing of the skin respectively. I wonder how wonderfully this would have gone down if I had been on warfarin or if I had a blood borne infection. Not a single question was asked, not a single thing was explained. I was expecting the whole thing to be farcical when I walked in, taking nothing seriously but the massage, what I didn't expect was irresponsibility, ignorance and, most richly, an endorsement of this utter trash by a member of the house of commons. Then again, why am I surprised. TLDR: Save your money. Nothing but the massage is worth it and DO NOT undergo any treatments including a massage if you may have preexisting conditions that predispose you to adverse side effects - talk to your doctor. As for their herbal remedies just avoid. Go one better and outright ask these morons why they haven't asked about your medical history since they deign to call themselves 'doctors'. Rubbish. read more

These Medicine shops kind of work in the same way, they are commission based and an appear to rip you off. My Brother has been ripped off by them, and when I found this extract below on the internet I only felt compelled to post it here. I've spoke to the Herbal Inn in Blackpool, lady called Lisa very rude indeed after she's taken your money - no time for you at all Read on about the business model. I've received this letter from my former TCM-teacher who lives in UK.She sent it to the people she knows they are in the TCM.I don't know how mucht this is true. I hope that people who lives in UK can tell us more about this. -----------Dear Sir: We've been working for Dr.& Herbs (a chain shop of Chinese medicine, there are about 100 branches in the UK) for two years now. We've have been sick of what we have been doing. SHOCKING! It is really shocking! We wanted to escape from the HELL where they damage the reputation of Chinese medicine as well as public health. IT IS A SCANDAL! We are forced to reach a target such as £3000.00 a day, otherwise we will be paid very little. Some good days our turnover can be as much as £7000.00 a day, in a bad day we can still make £2000.00-£3000.00.Can you image that this is impossible for us to make that much money if we charge each patient £30.00?(we have to have 100- 200 patients a day to make £3000.00-£6000.00. Must be joking!) How we have done that? It is so simple! We have been told and forced to take as much money as possible from every customer. You would not believe it. It is very normal for us to charge a patient three hundred pounds or more at the first visit, they have to pay up-front. For a very mild problem for example a muscular strain which can be cured by one or two acupuncture sessions but we( our poor sales women who are standing outside our shop and BEGGING the people passing by, they are so nice and patient to them so that they would come into our shop, as soon as they come into our shop the sales woman would try all skills they have been taught such as threatening the patient: the condition would get much worse even you will die if you don't have it treated now. etc.) would push /force them to have TEN or TWENTY treatments , our normal method is: if you have ten or twenty sessions and pay up-front you will get one or two session free. It is not easy to persuade every single customer who comes into our shop to take our offer however we do believe that there always are some 'silly' ones who would take our 'advices'. Most of them do not come back for second, third or further treatments which had been paid because they realised that we are not professional and we had ripped them off when they went home to tell their husbands or wives what had happened at our shop. Most of them would not come back to get their money back even they did not want to continue their sessions because they knew it would be very difficult for them to have their money back and they did not want to loss their face in front other people( if they came back to say they did not want to curry on their treatments and want to have their rest of money back, we will give them lots lots of hassle or push them to buy many other herbal products instead), so often they paid three or four hundred pounds end up they only had one or two sessions and left us all rest of the money they had paid that means it cost them £250.00 --- £400.00 each session. Yes! We ripped them off. We know that we are not ethical at all but we have to say that is our job as we are employed by our boss and we have been forced to do so! Without this issue, no one would know the huge risk for the public health from what we are doing in every shopping centre in all Britain ! The biggest single deal we have done was £1350.00(that was paid by credit card.). She was a porch lady patient who suffered from digestion problem. We gave her 90 days herb medicine supply and six other different herbal products which were not necessary at all (actually five of them would make her condition worse so she could come to get some other medicines for them . We did not want to do that but we were told to do it otherwise we can only get £20.00 a day instead of £50.00 a day). As soon as we catch a BIG 'FISH' (over £300.00from a single patient at the first visit we call it Big Fish) we would phone the head office to report the 'achievement'. The man in the head office would prise us: 'Well done! Carry on doing it , the bigger fish you catch the better!' When the patients returned for the following treatments which they had paid, they surpose not need to pay the treatment, but we would do our 'best' to sell them these and that and end up to pay another fifty or sixty pounds. Most of them would not come to our shop to get their money back as they were very unhappy. If they came back to want their money back we would give them lots of hassle as we were told not to give them money back too easily and we would push them to buy herbal products to balance read more