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Punchbowl Reviews Summary
Punchbowl has a rating of 4 stars from 880 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. Reviewers satisfied with Punchbowl most frequently mention birthday party, guest list and customer service. Punchbowl ranks 1st among Event Planning sites.
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You think that you will get a valuable service for free. What you actually get is lured into investing time and energy creating something of importance to you (an invitation to an event) which you find out, at the end, cannot be sent unless you allow tacky ads to be included in the card. The alternative? Pay Punchbowl $85 dollars -- an extortion fee, lest you loose the work you have done and have to start over with another provider. They could explain up front the terms of the agreement and let people decide for themselves if they want the product for the price. That is what an honest company would do.
Never, ever use Punchbowl. Half the invitations I sent out never reached the recipients. I double-checked that the email addresses were correct. By the time I figured out what happened, people couldn't make it because of too short notice. Punchbowl sucks.
We understand how important it is to gather friends and family to celebrate your most important occasions, and we're very sorry to hear you didn't have a great experience. We explain what to do in the rare occurrence that a guest doesn't receive their invite here: https://help.punchbowl.com/article/486-some-of-my-guests-didnt-receive-their-invitation-what-can-i-do and we make it very clear on the Manage Guests page which of your guests has viewed or has not viewed the invite.
They cancelled the invitation i worked on for my 7 year old's birthday without telling me why. The party is in 5 days. I was wondering why i didn't hear back from the parents. My son is at school now. He is going to be so heartbroken if no one shows up because of the very little notice the parents have when i create a new one. I will never use Punchbowl again. They are HORRIBLE PEOPLE to do this to a 7 year old!
We'd like to clarify that under no circumstance do we cancel or delete active invitations. Our team is made up of moms and dads, and we care about our customers. We do our absolute best to ensure that every event planned on our platform is a success.
I have sent a couple e-cards and included a convenient gift card. Unfortunately, i have never shopped or used Amazon, but there was nothing to say that you can only purchase out of the US. That said, the shipping, duty, taxes and exchange made it a total bust... punchbowl originally told my friend that she could request the card 'stud value could be reimbursedone and changed to CDN funds. When I followed up with them they said that she had redeemed it so they couldn't do anything. She never did make the purchase. They stink.
IF ANYONE WANTS TO DO ONLINE GIFT GIVING OR SHOPPING- Use SHOP. CA, They are ABSOLUTELY GREAT. I have learned my lesson the hard way. I will make sure i spread the word... Punchbowl may be convenient and their cards might be customizable, but the rest is a big fail.
Punchbowl is an authorized reseller of Gift Cards for Amazon.com. It sounds like our customer support team tried their best to help, but it is true that Amazon gift cards are not refundable. This is due to an Amazon policy, not ours. Once a gift card has been redeemed, we're unable to reimburse it in any way. We note that these gift cards are not redeemable on Amazon.ca here: https://help.punchbowl.com/article/296-amazon-gift-card-redemption-information but we agree that this should be more clear during checkout. We will be sure to pass along that feedback.
I like the cards on Punchbowl and use them almost monthly. BUT, imagine my surprise today when I tried to send a Christmas card that they now put ADS at the top of their cards, and will not take them off unless you buy the MOST EXPENSIVE subscription level. The ads make it look so incredibly cheap. If I want a cheap looking card I can just go to Walmart. At least their cards don't have dumb ads on them. I'm taking a hike and finding an ecard site that removes ads for any subscription. Does anyone have any recommendations for an alternative?
We offer best-in-class digital cards and carefully monitor the ads that appear on our site. We're sorry to hear you were unhappy with a service we offer for free.
I used the free trial version of Punchbowl to see if it would meet my birthday calendar/birthday card needs.
Likes:
- The birthday calendar works fantastically.
- They let you buy online gift certificates to give with the birthday card.
Hates:
- Their customer service are terrible. TERRIBLE.
The company has a policy for free accounts where you're limited to 10 cards a month. Great deal! I was excited to try their product and then buy a subscription.
Well, despite the company policy, I have only been able to send 8 cards in May and 6 cards in June.
When reaching out to Punchbowl customer service they not only *do not* assist in their company's card policy miscount, they bold face lie to you about their miscount. Both times I wrote them about the lower card limits and both times Punchbowl customer service told me I had actually created and sent cards that do not exist. And let me point out it's not easy to get confused by the company's easy to use interface. It shows you cards sent and when. Very simple to keep track of what you're doing. But Punchbowl customer service will make up cards that are not on your list. "Oh you sent "x" on "yz" date. That's why you can't use our service for the rest of the month."
Punchbowl customer service didn't help me in my inquiry, they actually took it a step further and lied about why they can't help - on two occasions, and then they offered me a discount code to get a subscription... lulz - gtfo here! There is no way I want to pay for subscription with total horse crap customer service. No thank you. I'm going to find and pay for a better subscription elsewhere.
Update:
I didn't misunderstand anything. Nice try. Too bad. I am now paying monthly for Hallmark. Your loss.
It seems this customer misunderstood our digital card send limits, so we want to clarify what we count as a send. With a free account, you can send digital cards to up to 10 recipients per calendar month. The limits on digital cards refer to the number of email addresses and/or phone numbers you send cards to, not the number of different card designs you can send. For example, with a free membership, you can send two different cards to 5 people each or you could send one card to 10 people. This is all explained clearly here: https://help.punchbowl.com/article/306-is-there-a-limit-to-how-many-people-i-can-send-a-digital-card-to
From the business
Punchbowl makes it easy to create and send beautiful, free online invitations and digital greeting cards from your phone, tablet or desktop.
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- Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
- Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
- Suspicious reviews are flagged by our algorithms, moderators, and community members
We're sorry to hear you feel this way. While you do have the option to upgrade to a paid subscription to unlock all of our membership benefits (such as an ad-free experience), our platform is completely free. We do our best to make this clear. The cost you mentioned was for an annual membership. Monthly plans are also available.