Services that people rave about, turn out to be the pits

[Vijoge]

I equated it to be about $40 per dinner, $10 per serving.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

For me, this would be way too expensive. For my brother and SIL, using this service is saving them money because they usually eat out every single meal.

 

[DisneyMandC]

Dollar Shave Club. I was so excited at the concept of cheap razors, but that's exactly what they are- cheap. I tried the lower level and the middle level and wasn't happy with either. I'll just stick to Venus.

 

[LizzyS]

I've had an ipsy subscription for about a year and a half and really enjoy the majority of the samples they send me. Sometimes the sample sizes are pretty generous and I appreciate that. Also, it seems like the more I review the products, the better they get at sending me things that I'll actually like.

I've been doing Naturebox for quite a while now (maybe 3 years?) and I love the snacks they send, so no complaints there.

 

[vinotinto]

I have done many of the services listed here.

Services that were not worth it for me:

Grocery pickup - not Walmart but Albertsons on vacation. super expensive. Like I put a dozen eggs and marked generic ok, and they picked some name-brand organic eggs for $5/dozen. I wanted to save precious vacation time, but if I do this again I will write the brand name and budget on the list.

Birchbox - Discovered a few awesome brands (hello Oi hair products), but overall $120/year can be spent better on real makeup.

Graze - Horrible. Tiny, tiny snacks. Very unhealthy. Just chock full of sugars. Got 4 "boxes" for half price through Groupon and it wasn't even remotely worth it, even at half price. Worst purchase ever.

Services I love:

Spotify Family - we started with one Spotify account and soon upgraded to family. DH, DS, DD, and I each have our own account with playlists. We all use it daily. Connects seamlessly with the Sonos speakers throughout the house. Favorite playlists are "available offline" which does not use data. My fear is that they'll raise the price from $15/month.

 

[David Brent]

Having internet/tv combo.

Cut both and got a different internet provider for a discount for 2 years with way faster speed. Unlocked an amazon firestick. Boom.

 

[aprilchem]

I do the Kroger Clicklist curbside pickup and I love it. You show up during your 1 hour window, park, call, and someone is out in less than five minutes. One person runs your card, one person load the groceries into your car, and you're gone. My 90 minute weekend shopping trip has turned into a ten minute stop on the way home during the week. I will never go back.

I'm going to have to try Kroger Clicklist again. I did it once, and it was 1 hour from the time I drove up to the time I drove away with my groceries. Plus they made some substitutions that didn't make sense, like substituting full calorie bread for my low-calorie bread, and full-fat yogurt for the fat free yogurt I'd ordered. I had to go back and make a separate trip to buy all the things they'd messed up and return all the things we couldn't use. It was frustrating! But maybe they've worked that all out.

 

[Teresa Pitman]

The only subscription box I've ever ordered was a Canadian one called "Sarah Delivered." It's quite expensive - like $60 a month with shipping and taxes - but I was excited to get it. I was so disappointed, really not a good value. The items are full-sized but I just didn't feel they were worth the cost. For example, one included a dish towel (one), two cloth napkins, a square piece of wood (cutting board - but it was literally just a square piece of wood) and a container of sea salt and another of a spice rub.

 

[angierae]

I'm going to have to try Kroger Clicklist again. I did it once, and it was 1 hour from the time I drove up to the time I drove away with my groceries. Plus they made some substitutions that didn't make sense, like substituting full calorie bread for my low-calorie bread, and full-fat yogurt for the fat free yogurt I'd ordered. I had to go back and make a separate trip to buy all the things they'd messed up and return all the things we couldn't use. It was frustrating! But maybe they've worked that all out.

You can mark that you don't want substitutions, or put in notes about what you will or won't take for a substitution. I've never had them sub anything major - they did substitute a brand of smoked sausage we didn't enjoy for our usual one, so now I just put that I don't want substitutions on that. I have no idea why it took an hour, that sounds terrible. I've never had it take more than 15 minutes and they were SO apologetic about how busy they were at the moment.

 

[dreiwhit]

We've done the Wal Mart pickup once, and I really liked it. The only reason is that I don't have to set foot in my local Wal Mart, which always appears to have too few registers open for the number of shoppers in there.

Not having to fight people to get down the aisles, and wait in a long checkout line are worth it to me!

 

[aprilchem]

You can mark that you don't want substitutions, or put in notes about what you will or won't take for a substitution. I've never had them sub anything major - they did substitute a brand of smoked sausage we didn't enjoy for our usual one, so now I just put that I don't want substitutions on that. I have no idea why it took an hour, that sounds terrible. I've never had it take more than 15 minutes and they were SO apologetic about how busy they were at the moment.

The employee who filled my order said they do not employ enough people to pull and fill all the orders, so even though I arrived during my window, they'd only pulled about 1/4 of what I ordered. So I waited, and waited, and waited. He ended up giving me two $5 gift cards by the end of it, but an hour is a LONG time to wait.

 

[prprincess]

I'm with you on the Hello Fresh. It was a huge disappointment for my family. The recipes weren't very creative and something that I could have whipped up myself. I also felt that they took a ton of prep time, and I still have to plan my meals based on some of the veggies them sending me being unripe (avocados). The portions were also pretty skimpy. The worse for me was the taste--I felt like everything was pretty bland and I always ended up adding a ton of my own spices to make the meals edible. I couldn't justify continuing the service for the price. People rave about other services to me, but I'm nervous to try any others.

I've also tried the shop at home from one of our local grocery stores, and have been unhappy, especially when it comes to ordering meats, deli items, and fruit. I've also found that even though I'll pick an item that I know they carry in store, and it's listed as in stock online, half the time they'd call me asking if they could substitute things.

 

[smiths02]

I do the Kroger Clicklist curbside pickup and I love it. You show up during your 1 hour window, park, call, and someone is out in less than five minutes. One person runs your card, one person load the groceries into your car, and you're gone. My 90 minute weekend shopping trip has turned into a ten minute stop on the way home during the week. I will never go back.

I have done this 3 times (my 3 free times), and I have had a problem every time. I find that they do not make substitutions even when you click that they can. One of the times, I really needed lettuce because I had committed to make a salad for the next day. So I get there in the dark with 3 kids in the car, and they said they didn't have the lettuce. So I have to now go into the store and get lettuce. Because how can Kroger not have lettuce? Seriously. Even when I complained to the person checking me out, she did not offer anything, but watched me bundle up 3 kids and go into the store.

Walmart worked well several times, and it is free here, so that is a plus. They did a good job of substituting. The only problem is that they have to store the cold/frozen stuff and my fresh raspberries were frozen (so pretty much ruined except for smoothies or something). I've also had them get backed up and take a long time. So, yeah, if it were just me getting 20 items, going in would be easier, but with 3 kids and a carload full of stuff, waiting 30 minutes in the car was still easier.

 

[Worfiedoodles]

I got a FabFItFun Winter Box, and I guess it was worth it, technically, but I'm not sure it was worth it for me. I had a coupon so it was $40 instead of the usual $50. Based on the Summer and Editors boxes, I thought there would be many more things I would enjoy. I'm going to give it one more quarter with the Spring Box, and if it's not full of things I want to use, I'm out. It may be I'm not in their demographic, perhaps I need to find a box aimed at women who have already raised their families? But I want to be Fabulous, Fit and Fun, too! LOL

I also have ipsy and glossybox, and I'm a fan of both. They seem to meet my needs better

Maria

 

[ILoveMyDVC]

I live in a city with Amazon Prime Now and same-day delivery, but the local delivery drivers are clueless. They can't seem to find either my apartment or my office. I think they rely too much on random-brand phone GPS services and don't bother reading street signs or building numbers. Or they will mark deliveries to our office as "closed" even though it's open until midnight. It's easier to just use regular Amazon warehouse shipping.

I was so excited when we got it, but it's more hassle than just using the two-day shipping.

I fought the Amazon - USPS battle today. Mail carrier won't drive up my driveway because I have a sign about my dogs. UPS and FedEx and the milkman etc... don't have a problem. My Amazon Prime ends up being groceries at the Post Office bankers' hours.

 

[mmmagique]

I'm going to have to try Kroger Clicklist again. I did it once, and it was 1 hour from the time I drove up to the time I drove away with my groceries. Plus they made some substitutions that didn't make sense, like substituting full calorie bread for my low-calorie bread, and full-fat yogurt for the fat free yogurt I'd ordered. I had to go back and make a separate trip to buy all the things they'd messed up and return all the things we couldn't use. It was frustrating! But maybe they've worked that all out.

I like Kroger Clicklist. But I don't allow any substitutions. They substituted Alpo for the Beneful I ordered for my dogs, and we had to donate it to the local no-kill shelter.

 

[perditax]

I fought the Amazon - USPS battle today. Mail carrier won't drive up my driveway because I have a sign about my dogs. UPS and FedEx and the milkman etc... don't have a problem. My Amazon Prime ends up being groceries at the Post Office bankers' hours.

OMG, I completely forgot about the USPS part. Apparently they're contracted here to run some Sunday deliveries for Amazon. They usually either do one of two things if we're unlucky enough to have something fall on a Sunday:

1) Mark the package as "business closed". Very funny, we're not a business.

2) Mark the package as delivered on Sunday, only it's not here, so we frantically go around trying to find it ... but they don't actually deliver it till Monday. (They do that stuff with other packages all the time at Christmas, I assume by marking undelivered stuff as delivered they're faking numbers for some sort of quota per day.)

We've also caught FedEx drivers trying to leave a note on the door pretending we weren't home when they didn't want to carry something heavy up one flight of stairs. (We were home.) This has happened repeatedly.

The only reliable service here is UPS.

 

[ten6mom]

Curious to see if anyone has ever ordered the Tinker Crates for older kids? I am desperate to get my boys (10, 11, and 12) away from screens.

 

[Jewel3k]

Curious to see if anyone has ever ordered the Tinker Crates for older kids? I am desperate to get my boys (10, 11, and 12) away from screens.

They were running a special at Christmas, so we are trying it. So far I've enjoyed it. Mine are sharing 1. I have a girl, 11, and 2 boys 9 and almost 8. Each project seems to have 3 sub projects, so everyone has a big part. The first kit was led lanterns. The kit came with copper tape, resistors, led lights, a battery, 3 different shaped lanterns and monster cards. There is one main project and then several side projects that are in the kit. I think we needed an extra piece of paper for the side project, but they gave us enough copper tape to do all the projects. It kept them busy for 1-2 hours and if they weren't sharing it would have kept them busy longer. This month we made slime, silly putty and bouncy balls. Even though we've made all of these before they still had fun for 1-2 hours doing everything with the same 5 ingredients.

 

[Eureka]

I tried Graze and hated it. I had a coupon for a box for free, so I signed up with that. As soon as I hit submit, I went in and changed the frequency from weekly to monthly. Within five minutes, I had the confirmation for both the free box and my first weekly box. When they arrived, I got four tiny little snacks in each box. I could easily hold a snack I the palm of my hand. I paid $14 for that. And, the snacks weren't great. I can buy a lot of snacks at the grocery store for $14.

Another thing I tried was Spotify. Then I realized any song I want to hear is on YouTube for free.

On the flip side, I got Nerd Block Jr. for my son and have been very pleased with it.

I had a Groupon for Graze so I ended up paying I think $6 total for $25 worth of stuff. It was fine but like you said, the packages were very small. Quality didn't strike me as any better than what I could buy at the MOM store or Whole Foods if I really wanted all natural everything.