Lomi Reviews 124

Love the idea. Sadly the execution is severely lacking! My Lomi broke a mere 2 months after starting to use it. I submitted a warranty claim which Lomi acknowledged that I am due for a replacement. And then they vanished! No replacement received. They do not reply to emails. And if you call them they say they are not available to take call and you should email instead... Very disappointing.

After less than a month, my Lomi broke - Ventilation issue. I reached out to Customer Support but I got tired of waiting on them. I found the fix for my Lomi on YouTube. When Customer Support got back to me almost 2 weeks later, the fix they told me to make would not have fixed my issue. I really like the machine but their Customer Service is terrible.

I echo the issues that everyone is having. Machine broke after 4 uses (“ventilation issue”) and customer service is unresponsive. If you DO get a response, it’s ineffective and there is no follow-up when they ask you a question. Warranty is ridiculously short for such an expensive machine.

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS ITEM. If I could choose no stars, I would. The bolt at the bottom of my bucket sheared right off. When I phoned customer service, I was informed (by a recording) that there were no representatives available to take my call. Their chat feature is not working either. I have been emailing back and forth for over 3 weeks now. I was given a claim number but it does not work in their claims portal. I have never experienced such abysmal customer service from any vendor I have purchased from. I am DONE with this company. Do not waste your money.

I tried to file a warranty claim and it says it was unable to find my order. It takes customer service 2+ weeks to respond to emails, they are no longer taking calls over the phone and their chat is no longer active.

Do not buy this product because your bucket WILL break. It's happened to everyone that has purchased the product that I know. I'm throwing this in the trash and canceling the subscription.

Their customer service is terrible. I initiated my return well within the 30 day time frame allowed. It took them several weeks to "find" my account. I received an email that my return was not going to be approved because I wasn't within the 30 days any longer, even though I initiated the return well within the period. I finally got a hold of someone via phone and she advised that I in fact did qualify for a return and that she would be processing my return. We are approaching 6 weeks and still nothing. Now their phone service is no longer available and their email response time is out to lunch.

Don't buy this product!! It's very loud, and the waste burned and ultimately hardened to the bin the second time I used it. Contacted them immediately but by the time they responded it was past the 30 day return policy. After several attempts contacting them I got someone to allow the return for reimbursement but that option was still blocked out online. I contacted them again and almost 2 weeks later I was told that they are now not allowing the return. If a company takes that long to respond they obvious have a lot of frustrated buyers!! Wish I would've read the reviews before buying!!! Everyone may not have had the same experience as me, but a lot of people have, and that's not good. Now I am stuck with deciding if I throw this in the landfill or pay to return it to them so they can dispose of it. I hope they don't refurbish and resell! They have good intentions, but an inferior product!

I have tried to cancel my subscription which you have to keep for a cycle when you purchase. I can not get any one to respond , not chat, not email, not calling- horrible customer service! Lomi is very small and gives you very little for the amount of time it runs. NOT worth the money !!!!!

Known issues with this product and the company does nothing to let us know about them. They may assist if you contact customer service. They also may not. It's expensive, with known issues that users attempt to help each other in blogs, and not worth your money. I've gone back to regular composting and will be beating this machine with a bat a la Office Space. At least it will be worth something to help get out the frustration with this company's stupidity.

Lomi is less than 2 years old. They won't offer any type of assistance as they said it's out of warranty and nothing they could do. I would be willing to by a replacement part (heating element stopped working), but after several hours hours of being on hold, sending videos, speaking to customer service they were of no help so basically wasted $500 on a product. Will definitely tell my friends, co-workers, etc. to steer clear of any products by Pela as overall experience has been incredibly frustrating and disappointing.

This company is guilty of a planned obsolescence scheme that costs customers more money in the long run and damages the environment. Their business practices are a blatant contradiction to how it markets its products as a climate solution and itself as a sustainable company. They have horrible customer services and do not stand by their products. Lomi should be ashamed to state that their mission is "to leave the planet better than how we found it by eliminating more than 10 Billion pounds of waste". If anything goes wrong with their product their only solution to help you is to proposing that you CREATE WASTE by simply discarding it with no regard to where it will end up. Ironically, it would likely end up in a landfill with the food they claim to be preventing from going there unless you as the consumer take on the burden (and cost) of discarding it responsibly, which is something they should be doing. This promotes over consumption and over production. Below is the timeline for how I learned this about the company.

A family member purchased my Lomi for me as a gift in May 2022 for $500. I was gifted the Lomi and began using it in October 2022. The Lomi broke in November 2023 only 1 year and a few weeks after it started being used. The cooling light glowed red and would not run even after a reset which the company said is the trouble shooting method for that particular issue. After further inspection I found the wiring coupling to the fan motor had failed and the fan and/or wiring needed to be repaired or replaced to make it work. I reached out to the company requesting a repair kit and their response was that the best solution would be for me to purchase a new Lomi at full retail price (I was now slightly outside of their 1 year warranty). When I pressed them further to offer a better solution they suggested I "take advantage" of their new subscription which offers a lifetime warranty as long as I have the subscription which is $180 per year. This affords me lifetime warranty, the ability to discard my Lomi and "upgrade" to the newest one every 3 years, and new pellets every 3 months. As I described above they offer no solutions and take no responsibility. They simply try to sell you more and get you locked in to a more expensive and more wasteful consumption habit. Awful company. Do not buy

After following your instructions to a tee; again the bucket snaped. After each cycle, I clean the bucket, especially under the heat source. My husband is a fastener engineer for more than 25 years. This is a failure of engineering on both the design and mechanical sides. The design is poor in that it relies on an undersized fastener and a fitting/washer that are not sized correctly. It is clear that this design is not sustainable. This is a conceptually a good idea, but it is built poorly. At a very high price. If I had read the inline reviews, I would not have invested in it. I purchaed this device less than a year ago and have had to go back now 4 times for a broken turn arm.

Does not actually compost. It doesn't actually make soil, it just dries and mulches your waste. I tried to use it for my plants as they advertised and all the "soil" would immediately mold when I watered the plants. Our house was infested with flies from the soil for about a month. I had to repot every single plant I used it in (I have a lot of plants) and start over with new store-bought soil. Do not buy if you want actual soil. Because its not an actual composter, you would actually need to put the lomi finished product into another (real) composter to make it compost and turn it into dirt. Basically the terminology they used when selling it to me and countless others was false advertising. They've since changed some of the language on their website but they should still be investigated for the false claims of being environmentally friendly and composting that they made previously. Its sad to say but the lomi's final product is something even less useful than dirt!

I purchased the Lomi through the indigogo funding in October 2021. They were just in the production phase. In December 2021 I paid the balance for a total price of $446.88. I received my Lomi in February of 2021. I used it a few times, in the compost to soil mode, but ended up with a wet mush. This is likely because I was not getting the correct recipe of wet, green and dry ingredients. I went to use it again in July of 2023 after doing some research on compost composition, but the machine didn't work. It showed a cooling fan error. I found that this was an issue several people were having so I contacted Lomi. A kind and helpful CS agent arranged for a new fan to be sent to me and emailed the instructions for install. I watched the video and opened the Lomi fan panel. There was a blob of silicone-like material that was to hold the fan wire harness in place but in my case it covered the wire harness, both male and female ends and when these were separated was on the wires themselves. I immediately took photos and emailed them to customer service. They replied asking me to let them know the result when I had replaced the fan. The replacement fan did not solve the issue and I got the same error even after resetting the machine several times. After reporting back to Lomi a different CS agent asked me to re-set, take a video and send to them which I did. A third CS agent replied asking where in my house I was using my Lomi. After replying a 4th CS agent responded to me that they were sorry that I was having the issue but my machine was now 5 months out of warranty and that they would not normally allow me to purchase an extended warranty outside of that initial 1 year period they would, in this case let me and for $59.95 USD I could purchase a 3 year extended warranty and my Lomi would be replaced. However the 3 year warranty would only be valid until February 2025 expiring as if I purchased it the day my original Lomi was shipped. I replied that while I appreciated them working with me on this that I felt I should either pay a prorated amount for a prorated extended warranty or receive a full 3 years for paying the full price. A 5th CS agent responded that he wouldn't (unfortunately) be able to accommodate either of those. But, "The issue that you've reported with the fan connection in your Lomi unit is something that we have subsequently rectified at the manufacturing step, and we now use a different type of connection with our fan components in order to prevent issues along these lines. We are very confident that there wouldn't be any recurrences of this issue with a replacement unit."
I asked to be escalated to the head of customer service (the now 7th person I dealt with) and spoke on the phone with that person. I was told that those were the only options available to me, considering my machine was out of warranty. I stated that I believed that seeing as my machine was one of the initial ones delivered and that this was a somewhat common issue and that it looked like the problem was caused during assembly that I should either pay a prorated amount for half an extended warranty or get the full 3 years if I paid the full amount. She stated that she was sorry that the only option was the full price for the warranty that expired February 2025. At this point I chose not to pay nearly another $100.00 CDN. After reflection, $546.88 was too much to pay for a machine that I had yet to make a satisfactory composted loam with, considering it failed so early. Each customer service agent was friendly and polite. Each made an effort to hear my concerns and to help, but in the end their policies made that impossible. I wrote to the CEO but have never received a response. I followed up to ensure I had his correct email and someone offered to pass along my letter to the CEO but would not give me his contact info, but I had no desire to deal with a 8th person when all I wished was for the CEO to receive my email showing this very history.
Now I have a large, white, plastic $446.88 door stop and advise everyone to buy the extended warranty even though "The issue that you've reported with the fan connection in your Lomi unit is something that we have subsequently rectified at the manufacturing step, and we now use a different type of connection with our fan components in order to prevent issues along these lines. We are very confident that there wouldn't be any recurrences of this issue with a replacement unit."

Ive had LOMI now for several years and for me it’s a total waste of $500. I invested in it to do my part of the FootPrint on our earth and justified it my being able to make my own soil. It does NOT do what I understood it would do. The soil is hard and crusty thus killing anything I put the soil in or on. When I inquired about it I was asked what am I putting in it? PRODUCE Waste. That’s it!!! I would like to get rid of it but it cost WAY TOO MUCH and now I’m stuck with it. Wish someone who loves it would buy it off of me. 😞

I got a Lomi for a Mother’s Day gift and rather than getting the basic unit, we opted for the bundle. The discount wasn’t huge but somehow what we signed up for is costing us an additional $544 USD on top of the invoice we already paid in full…their subscription for activated charcoal and probiotics that was advertised as part of the bundle and the invoice said free. We thought that the subscription was part of the discount (since it said free after all). I got charged over $70 USD for a shipment of charcoal and Lomi tabs, and I will get charged every quarter for 2 years to keep my lovely Lomi running at a total cost of $544 USD more than the $469 USD on my invoice, or the $499 à la carte price for the appliance (I’m also a Canadian so add an additional 1.3 exchange to that!). I can’t cancel my subscription, according to customer service. My 10% bundle discount is actually costing me 2X the price of the $499 Lomi composter. I’ve postponed my subscription… indefinitely… and I will continue to bug customer service until this is resolved. There was no fine print that explained things nor did I sign anything. You can invoice me the basic price and I’ll pay the difference. Seriously, would you expect this much trouble if you bought an air fryer? I wonder if this sort of advertising is even allowed under our Canadian Consumer Protection Laws 🤔 I do like my Lomi. If it wasn’t for my experience with their subscription I’d likely give them 4 stars. The unit is a little louder than expected but apart from that we’ve been pleased with the results. Pineapple makes a great textured compost for the garden!

We love it. It works exactly as they said. It’s pretty quiet too. Reduces kitchen waste into useful compost

Left a review in the beginning of March... Lomi was working for my situation. Now its broken. Now I understand why every other review says same...

We use ours everyday at least once and we love it. We live in a multi resident building and taking out the compost has always been a messy pain. We scan fit at least 4 bags of wet stinky veggie/fruit/compost into one simple bag of dirt. The fertilizer is really powerful so we almost killed some of our indoor plants. The support is FANTASTIC! We had a fan issue, they sent us a replacement which worked fine for four months and then it happened again and they sent a new unit right away. No problems since. We love, love our Lomi. We recommend it highly.

Our Lomi arrived in August 2022 and we were very committed to using it to create compost, as advertised, for a community garden plot. After a few months it was clear that the output was not useful, then it became even less useful: we were ending up with sludge. We tried to get advice from customer service on how to adjust our inputs but even following the advice to run a load several times we still had sludge. Since February we have been trying to get a further response from the company and eventually requested a refund. No response. It is possible that we simply have a defective unit but we may never know due to the lack of response and therefore absolutely cannot recommend this product.