The Grommet

I ordered a gift for my husband for Christmas. I saw it on the Grommet in early November and ordered it on Nov. 7. When he opened his gift on Christmas we found that our daughter had given him the same gift. She had sent it from out of town. We decided to return the one I had purchased rather than tell her that hers was a duplicate. My return was refused because I had not purchased during their Christmas period from Nov 18-Dec 31. And therefore was not within the 45 day return period. They would allow no exchanges.

Ordered 4 items. One item was not what I ordered and damaged to boot; was not able to use the other. Went to website to initiate the return. Was told my request was logged in, and a rep would contact me shortly. Despite several attempts to figure the status of my return - never got past pending - and repeated requests to have a human being contact me, I was just redirected to go through the procedures on their website. Never could work my way all the way through their convoluted Web. Could be a neat site, but customer service is nonexistent. $100 bucks wasted!

Gadgets gizmos etc. Lots of stuff but nothing you really need. Just more junk to clutter up your life. And the shipping is pretty bad because it's all independent businesses. I ordered something accidentally and immediately tried to cancel it and was told that wasn't possible because my order had been automatically sent to the vendor. When it arrived (a fancy lintbrush), it didn't work that well and would've cost more than I paid to return it. Then I found the item that had really interested me on amazon for free shopping. I'll never shop at grommet.com again.

I recently had a package from the Grommet stolen from my porch (very sad as all my items were Christmas gifts). I called Grommet and received help within 4 minutes of being on hold (pretty miraculous as far as I'm concerned for a hold time!). The rep I spoke with, Mark, was so considerate and helpful, and from his review agreed that the package had been taken by someone who wasn't me. He reordered all my items in full and got them to a different address so the same thing wouldn't happen again. I am so grateful as I was dreading calling to report my package that never made it to me, and I will definitely order from Grommet in the future based on this interaction.

This was a discouraging experience. Bought a "notebook" that is a pad of paper in a binding with a map on the front, the kind of thing you would end up with at Yellowstone in a gift store for about $14. But it was $49. Not only that, but there are absolutely NO DETAILS about returns; I was simply told on the receipt that the item is not refundable. No phone number works, no email was responded to. STAY AWAY. Seriously a rip off.

While they do have some interesting products, their customer service is AWFUL. I received an email saying my order had shipped. When I still hadn't received it a week later, I found out that in fact it hadn't shipped yet. They then repeatedly ignored my request to cancel the order since it would be arriving too late to give on date I intended. Then they asked for my opinion on their customer service and when I advised them of how poor it was, I got absolutely NO RESPONSE.

So if you find something you want, make sure you really really want it and that there is no need to receive it in a timely manner. Furthermore, check to see if the product is available on Amazon. Something I thought would only be on their site, was also on Amazon with prime shipping!

I ordered 4 lighted knit hats. And my husband LOVED it. I gave one to my mother-in-law and am giving one to my son. The only reason I did not give them 5 stars is because they don't ship to Canada :( I had to send it through one of those mail shippers (BongoUS) who ripped me off on the shipping cost. It was a good thing that The Grommet gave me free shipping, cause I ended up paying more to the shipping company that I did to The Grommet! But all in all I was very happy with the product that I got. I see a few bad reviews, but I can honestly say I had no trouble and I loved the product. Now if they would only ship to Canada, I would purchase more stuff from them.

The product was mislabeled on the site (the site said Medium sized, but they sold me XL) and though I immediately realized the error (within seconds) and canceled the order, the company refused to cancel it and refund my money.