K P.

I belonged to Ravelry for five years, beginning when I learned to knit after my son was born. I loved coming to the site for creative inspiration and I also made some great connections for charity knitting projects.
Fast forward to their "new and improved", "think like us and only like us or GTFO" community rules. Not so great anymore. The focus is no longer on knitting, but instead is on making sure everyone on the site agrees with the mods/founders/admins in terms of politics (AKA the Trump ban).
I'm pretty darn progressive, a registered democrat, LGBTQ ally, etc, etc. However, I am aghast the founders of Ravelry don't see how incredibly hypocritical and divisive their new policies and political focus are. Just ban political topics altogether, as the only other forum I belong to does quite successfully. It seems these folks are the type who want to live in a world where everyone else thinks just as they do, all while espousing to be open and liberal. That's not how progressiveness works, kids.
The last straw for me was starting a thread in which I suggested going back to featuring creatively focused posts on the home page, rather than 90% of the home page posts being focused on tech tips, politics, and profiles of their "team." Know what happened? I was flamed by "oh so liberal" members who claimed the Ravelry community needed to be "protected" from the forces of evil by the Ravelry team. Say what? You would think I had announced my loyalty to Pol Pot or something. Then, the thread was locked because it violated "Community Guidelines." I asked for clarification on this and was given none, no response at all.
As a progressive knitter, do I care to have anything to do with these folks? Nope!
Stay far, far away.

I wrote a review commenting negatively on one of their yarns and it was not published. See attached photos documenting terrible quality. This is an in credibly dishonest business practice. Rather than filtering negative reviews of your products, Lion Brand, why not address the quality concerns with the yarn? I will not purchase from Lion Brand again, nor will I take one of their classes, unless this dishonest business practice is addressed.
The quality issues I expressed concerns with were splitting and fraying of the yarn fibers. Now I am left with a knitting project that has obvious flaws due to the poor quality of the yarn.
Additionally, while the problem was remedied with a phone call, when my husband was sold a gift certificate to take a class at Lion Brand, the sales associate didn't write a gc # on the physical certificate he gave to me. This resulted in a bit of a hassle when I tried to register for the class using the gift certificate. The actual class was fantastic and very professionally run, but that was probably mostly due to the awesome instructor, not Lion Brand. I found the person at the desk when I checked in for my class to have a "less-than-warm" manner, a bit "too cool for school." JMO.

While this company offers a pretty enticing selection of fibers and accessories for knitting, after having ordered from them for a couple of years, I find myself growing increasingly disenchanted with them. Something went terribly wrong with an order I placed a couple of months ago and they shipped a duplicate of most of the original order out after I had already received the order and charged me a second time. Granted, their customer service was great at addressing this problem, and promptly refunded what I was erroneously charged.
However, I had returned one set of needles to be exchanged for a different size. After not hearing anything for a while, I called and was told that yes, I would be receiving the exchange needles. More time passed and I then received a refund check in the mail with no notation as to what it was for. I called again. They informed me it was a refund for the returned needles. I asked about the exchange item and they said they had no record of that. On that call, they asked me what I wanted to exchange for and took my credit card info to send out the item. A good, quick resolution. However, when I received the needles and cast on a new project, I immediately noticed one of the needles was splintered, snagging my yarn. So now, I will have to return those, too.
It's becoming too much of a hassle to deal with the constant problems with the orders form this company. I think I will steer clear and shop elsewhere, despite their vast offerings.