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Customer service announcement and review: do not buy from Hugl or Plufl

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tl;dr: terribly made product; worse customer experience

Ed note: This is the review I attempted to post (three times!) on their website at https://weareplufl.com/products/hugl-cooling-body-pillow. I even mailed it to the customer service rep who I had been working with during this process in case it had gotten “lost.” However, despite my efforts, my review has gone unpublished (which is also extremely dishonest, IMHO). So, I’m doing what I said I would and publishing it here, even though this is not the sort of content I enjoy publishing.

Review below:

I really should write a long review that details my terrible experience, but I’m just ready to be done with anything having to do with Hugl or Plufl (makers of “the world’s first human dog bed”).  The bullet-point version:

  • The cover of my “Hugl Cooling Body Pillow” began to pill within 2 weeks of receiving it
  • The grommets on the cover had (a) sharp edges and (b) pulled away from the fabric tabs
  • It was not comfortable at all — look at the angles of peoples’ heads and necks in the photos on their website: your head should align with your spine, but the Hugl is so overstuffed that it forces your head up at a crick-inducing angle
  • Uncomfortable and defective? Yeah, I decided to return the product.  I was assuming that since it was defective (pilling cover with grommets that were pulling away from the fabric) they’d cover return shipping.  Nope.  They were willing to charge me **$60** so that I could return my defective product.
  • I said I’d pay the return shipping (as I knew I could ship it more cheaply than $60) and only then did they offer to send me a new cover. 
  • I pointed out that a new cover wasn’t likely to help unless they’d changed the design….
  • And (again) only then did Hugl say they had changed the cover, because they’d received significant other complaints.
    • IOW: they told me there had been problems with the cover I had issues with only after I’d said I didn’t want a new cover. IMHO, they should have replied to my first email and said “Oh, we’re so sorry. Yes, the pilling is a known issue. Let us send you one of our new and improved covers free of charge.”
  • Despite the fact that they’d (theoretically) fixed the Hugl cover at this point, by now I was fed up with the runaround (it had taken five email exchanges just to get this far!), dishonesty, and admittedly inferior product, so I said “no thank you. I don’t appreciate the way Hugl/Plufl runs, and I just want to return this product. I will pay my own return shipping fee to do so.”
  • I packed and sent the thing back. HUGL received my (tracked) return on April 12. I did not receive my refund until May 1.  Almost three weeks to issue a credit for an item that they had received (and even acknowledged they received)

I’ve left out many of the smaller (yet equally frustrating) details (like being charged $60 return shipping when shipping via UPS was half that), but the bottom line is that if I am paying $150+ (or $199 at the current price, which is “on sale”) for a “luxury” product, I expect to:

  • be able to return said product free of charge if it is defective
  • be TOLD that the defect I have noted is a known issue and offered a replacement free of charge when I first start the return process
  • receive a refund within 2 business days (4 maximum) of my return being received

I expect this review may vanish from the site (ed note: or it’ll never show up at all), so I’m also posting it on my social networks and website. I enjoy supporting smaller retailers and businesses that are trying to think outside the box; however, this experience has been closer to backing a Kickstarter that failed than purchasing from a legitimate enterprise. At least with Kickstarter you know you’re taking a gamble.

PS Were there any question about the legitimacy of this Plufl/Hugl, check out their shipping and returns policy:  https://weareplufl.com/pages/shipping-duties-and-return-information (ed note: this page was blank until recently. There are policies there now, but as you can see from my experience they are not following them.)

More thoughts after the fact

The company should have raised alarm bells for me from the start. This is a screenshot of one of the graphics on the Hugl page:

graphic from Hugl page as captured on June 11, 2024
Notice any issues here? What does it say about a company’s commitment to quality when they don’t even bother to size website graphics correctly so they are not blurry?

And, of course, the fact that their https://weareplufl.com/pages/shipping-duties-and-return-information is sometimes blank …yeah, that should have been a tip-off also.

Ugh. Do not make the mistake I did. Do not order from Hugl or Plufl. Do not trust the reviews on their site.

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Sigh

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Jeff & I have been invited to a Halloween party Friday night. The invitiations didn’t say anything about costumes, so I entered into a state of willing suspension of disbelief WRT needing a costume. As you can see, I take costumes very seriously and given the hecticness of my schedule this week (Ok, any week), I was loathe to undertake a costume creation.

Then Meghan asked me at lunch yesterday what I was wearing to the party. I said I wasn’t sure if it was a costume party or not, so Meghan wrote the hosts and asked them. Now I have written confirmation that it is.

So last night I went to Jo-Anne’s (before dinner with Tim & Kim) and Michael’s (after dinner with Tim & Kim) in search of last minute crafts bits. Then when I got home I sewed and hot glued for a few hours.

Today I have a few burned bits on my fingers (Gina + hot glue = almost certain mishap), 1.5 finished costumes (must finish mine tomorrow) and *very* bleary eyes (not nearly enough sleep).

Updates and pictures to come.

Healthy cereal = Impossible to Open bags

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I do not know why this is the case, but it seems that all of our favorite “healthy” cereals (Puffins, Granola, all varieties of Bran flakes) have interior plastic bags that are *impossible* to open. I tug and struggle and grunt and pull and and and … eventually resort to kitchen scissors.

All varieties of Sugar Bombs, though, (which, for the record, I no longer eat :( )have bags that you so much as look at them and they pour forth their sugary goodness.

This confuses me. I’m already eating the healthy cereal. I don’t need the concommitant workout.

Promised cake pics

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Isn’t it the *swellest* cake ever? I confess, I might’ve eaten a wee bit too much fondant, tho. Cake by Queen Anne’s Cakes. :)

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee! :)

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I have a birthday cake (from team at work — pics to come, it’s fabulous), a dozen roses (from Jeff) and a beautiful arrangement (from Mom) in my office — I *AM* the birthday girl

X-10

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So here’s the odd thing: I called SmartHome today (since I bought the filters from them) and described the situation. When I got to the part where I said “so I’ve installed the filters and now the towel…” the guy jumped in and said “let me guess: the towel heater is going off and on at the correct times but you’re still getting sporadic light flickers.

Well, color me dumbfounded. I said “um. yeah. That’s exactly what’s happening — how did you know?”

He said “Let me describe your switches; see if I’m right: they’re X-10 brand switches and have a rocker top with a small toggle tab underneath the toggle.”

At this point I was positively boggling — how did he know?! I didn’t even buy the switches from SmartHome, so it wasn’t like he was looking at an order history.

Well, it turns out that those switchs are known for doing this. In these switches, the power used to drive the X-10 circuitry goes through the filament itself. What happens is when a large, short load is put on the line (like a fridge coming on, or the UPS doign the thing it does to recharge itself), the filament dims, and it’s as if there were a momentary brownout. The switch gets confused, loses its state, and then, when the power comes back up to “full speed”, the switch interprets that as an “on”. Equals light on in middle of night for no good reason.

He said the solution is to move up to better switches that use the neutral for the X-10 circuitry (Switchlinc) and that are not so sensitive. Sigh. And they’re $44 each. I do believe him, though, as he *nailed* my problem exactly. He also suggested switching house codes on those switches to see what happens, so I’ve done that and will report back.

Product endorsemnt

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For which I am not being paid, but, oh well.

I got a nasty boo-boo on my thumb a few nights ago, right at the place where it joins the rest of my hand. As anyone who’s ever gotten a cut there will know: (a) it *hurts* an d(b) it’s almost impossible to keep a band-aid on it.

Until now (drumroll, or other anticipatory instrumentation)! Band-Aid makes a new(ish) bandage called “Compeed” (no idea why … seems like a silly name to me). These suckers WORK! They’re odd, almost like they’re made of rubbery stuff, and are end-to-end-sticky but not in a way that sticks to wounds. They seal out water *really well*: I stuck one on right after cutting my finger and it stayed on through two showers (including hair washing) and an afternoon of futzing with a sewing machine.

Yah technology!

Arrrr!

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Courtsey of Fidius.org:

Your pirate name is: Captain Anne Bonney

Even though there’s no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you’re the one in charge. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Wanton lust

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For technology bits.

Currently the “really, really, I’d love this, but I’m trying to be a good girl list” includes:

  • 40GB iPod. I’m sort of an all-or-nothing music girl, which is why I never had a CD player in my car [1]… me being me, whichever cd’s were in the car would be the ones I wanted in my house, and vice versa. This is a sure path for madness making. With 40GB, there’s finally enough *space* on a personal player to hold the vast majority of my music (which, including everything, is about 45GB, I think). I don’t think I’ll have a problem with 40GB because some of the stuff I own I wouldn’t want on the iPod (and some of that music is Jeff’s, which I wouldn’t necessarily cart along).
  • BIG plasma or digital projection TV. The prices are dropping ($2799 for 42″ plasma from Gateway, and $3k for 52″ digital projection from Samsung), but I can hold out (sure I can!).
  • Windows PC phone. I’d sure love to have one phone-PDA thing, but we’re still in early adopter phases here (and I *always* get burned on the early adopter thing!).
  • Nice digital camera. Dad has a pretty spiff Nikon, and while I love my Dimage X (and would keep it for the goes-in-the-pocketbook camera), it’s a wee bit annoying to be taking 3 cameras on vacation (small digital, “real” film camera + fun camera [either LOMO or Polaroid Land camera to do manipulations])

[1] My solution has been a mini-disc player for which I make mixes. Those being intentional (with the “flow” worked out and whatnot) somehow manage to fool the “all-or-nothingness” thing.