You can watch the now famous Snuggie commercial any time you want online, and it has certainly been played plenty on TV, too.
"I saw the Snuggie commercials on TV several times and decided that it looked like a good deal," said customer Victoria Shepard of Oakland, who ordered a couple of Snuggies through the automated telephone process. At the end of the call she says no total was quoted.
Concerned, she looked up the company's main phone number and spoke to a live person who could not find that an order had ever been placed.
"Because they couldn't find my order, I ended up ordering a second time and figuring the first hadn't gone through," she said. "Two days after I ordered for the second time, the first order arrived in the mail. Instead of two Snuggie blankets it was four Snuggie blankets."
She had been charged $99 and she was not happy about it.
7 On Your Side asked Allstar Marketing Group, the Snuggie people, and were told, "All charges are listed throughout the ordering process, so a consumer should not be surprised when the final price is listed… As with any industry, customer service issues do arise from time to time and our trained customer service team does its best to resolve all issues to the best of its ability."
Shepard paid $16 to ship the wrong order back, received a refund, and eventually got the correct order.
Peter Tafil bought his Snuggie online and he had trouble, too. He received a check in the mail with a Snuggie return address. He figured it was some type of rebate.
"So I looked at it -- $8.25 -- looks pretty good," he explained. "Then I look at it a little more and I have my glasses on and I saw underneath it in the small letters, 'By cashing or depositing this check you are purchasing a membership in great fun,' and it would be great fun, I am sure."
If he had cashed the check, he would have been enrolling in a discount club and charged $149.99.
"Sometimes the print is so small, it's so nebulous, you're not even sure really what you signed up for, you just think you got the $8 or $10 check," said a Better Business Bureau spokesperson. The BBB has received complaints about this Snuggie offer and others like it. "There is no privacy policy so they give your information to other marketing companies and they send you these bogus rebate item checks – eight bucks, 10 bucks, join an auto club, join a buying club. You think you got the eight dollars for buying the Snuggie as a rebate."
Allstar Marketing Group told 7 On Your Side, "We would like to assure consumers that this was a test program and we have decided not to move forward with similar programs in the future."
Which brings us back to Shepard and her advice for Snuggie buyers.
"I would suggest if someone wants to buy a Snuggie blanket, just go to Walgreens or someplace and just get it there," she said.
Buying local or from a large online retailer you know and trust is never a bad thing.
