Lomi Reviews 134

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.

Works great until it breaks

I have had my Lomi for a couple months now. It broke on 2/9/23 and despite being under warranty, I am getting the run around from customer service. They will say they are going to fix it and then nothing happens. After being ghosted multiple times in email communications, I have had it with this company. Do not buy this product. It will break and company will not help you. Waste of money.

The composter broke after a few months, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get someone to talk to at customer service on how/whether it might be fixed. I've tried for 2 days now, via email, 'chat' (with a bot, though they advertise it as a chat with a person) and phone. After 20 minutes on the phone, I get a message that says, "no support agents are available to take your call...please call back later." I've done that 3 times now. No one will respond to my query about the broken machine they sent me. AVOID, AVOID, AVOID!!!