CUDDLYReviews of cuddly.com

I love Cuddly and all the rescue groups who go out of their way to help the poor, abused animals that suffer at the hands of cruel owners. I wish the owners, like that abuser of Trixi were punished and would go to jail for what they've done. Keep up the wonderful things you do for the animals you save. Sincerely, Deb Rowe

Any person and organization helping to reduce and eliminate great animals' suffering in this world is aces in my book. We need more initiatives like Cuddly.

I have been getting cuddly newsletters for some time. They use shocking and graphic cases to stir up sympathy. So much that I can’t even read the full subject lines of their emails. But the items being asked for are often boutique, overpriced items, and not even life-stage appropriate, including adult food for a puppy, and a $15 “cuddly af” tag. Rescues could get much cheaper, age appropriate foods, that are still nutritionally complete, as well as high nutrition veterinary supplements when needed, and as someone else pointed out, rescues and shelters can get these items in bulk at cheaper prices, rather than $40 for a 3lb bag of puppy food. Cuddly is for-profit and is just a platform for rescues to ask for donations. It seems like a scam to tug at your heartstrings and then trick you into buying overpriced items through Cuddly to feel like you’ve helped. I would suggest direct donations to rescues that are using their resources well, not asking for boutique items (instead asking for help with veterinary bills, bulk food, and other necessities), that are non-profit and have good reputations/transparency. Shelters and rescues need help with veterinary care for these animals, which is necessary and life-saving but costly, so donate directly to those fundraisers. Cuddly only asks for donations for small containers of fancy dog food and other boutique items, not for the veterinary bills of these animals. I believe it is a scam. Edit to add: I just looked again at the wishlist for “Blue,” the puppy who I received an email about today. Blue is about 1 year old, and a “husky mix,” she is NOT a small dog, as you can see in the picture of her being held in someone’s arms. But many of the food items that are being requested are for small adult dogs, and they are also asking for milk replacer, Blue would clearly not benefit from either of these as she is a 1 year old medium to large breed puppy, far too old to need milk, and clearly not a small fully-grown dog. Perhaps the rescuers are asking for these items for their own small dogs, or younger puppies in their care, which is not transparent, and buying these small bags of boutique dog food is not an efficient use of limited monetary resources. Also, Cuddly says that it is “for-profit” meaning they don’t just use the money they make to cover overhead and paid employees, but they are generating profit on top of that that would go to the company’s owners or investors. Since they also spend money on advertising, they clearly are making a substantial amount of money off of these “donations.” However in their replies to other reviews, they claim that they don’t make any money off of monetary donations, or wishlist item donations. Where do they make their profit, employee salaries, overhead expenses, and advertising money, then? Not to mention their profit margin on the $15 “cuddly af” tag on Blue’s wishlist, which probably costs less than $1 to manufacture. Again, they claim not to make any money off of the wishlist items, in their below replies, so who is making that nearly $15 profit, on an item that they either manufacture or buy wholesale? They further claim to not buy wholesale from a distributer, because they are “too small,” but why would they buy full price from a separate retailer, when they could buy custom-printed tags in bulk for a fraction of that price? Even small retailers buy from wholesale distributers. If the profit from these tags were going directly to rescues, that would be one thing, but that is not what they claim, and there is no transparency, so they are tricking donors into spending money on overpriced individual items, when the rescues could use that money much more efficiently. Their responses to other reviews bringing up these questions and critiques are either disingenuous or false. Hopefully they will be investigated soon. Bottom line they are a for-profit. And other reviewers have raised the concern that their model encourages individual “fosters” or “rescuers” to fake rescues so they can make a wishlist of expensive items for their own pets. They brought up that some “rescues” seemed fake or staged, and a video of a kitten swimming in the surf came up. Cuddly claimed that the private individuals filming and “rescuing” this kitten have to take a video to prove that it was a rescue. How would a kitten be in the surf to begin with, did they fall off a boat? How could a small kitten then swim to shore? Or was the kitten placed in the surf, just to be videoed, so the “rescuers” could then receive donations? Who knows? Probably not Cuddly, and their business model would encourage these sorts of fake rescues, and harming of animals, so individual “rescuers” can get free pet supplies, and Cuddly makes a profit.

They do Gods work

IT TOOK OVER 40 MINUTES & ENTERING THE SAME INFO FOUR + TIMES BEFORE THE ORDER/DONATION WAS FINALLY ACCEPTED!

I used to love Cuddly and have donated on many occasions and have been up to now a monthly donor. There have been several “rescues” lately that made me question if rescues were being created to get on Cuddly and then abuse animals for sympathy and money. I looked online and found no proof but info from Nat Geo research that found thousands of fake rescue videos are being made for monetization through YouTube etc…Just a minute ago I saw a Cuddly ad on Facebook of a dog, “Dobby”, and the video was obviously a staged rescue. It’s just like the fake rescues on YouTube. A rescuer that sees a malnourished animal in distress and on the verge of death but instead of helping, the “rescuer” decided to get their phone out first and casually strolls to the dog and rips the container off its head so it doesn’t suffocate or starve to death. You can tell on the real rescues there are plenty of photos and info but on this one there were just a couple photos, no info and the story didn’t add up with the pics and video. I do believe Cuddly has good rescues on its site but I now know there are fake ones on there too that are just out to get money. The disturbing thing is some of the ones where animals have been shot or mutilated get more sympathy and therefore more donations so if people are taking advantage of the site they’re liable to be shooting and/or mutilating these animals to get more money too. Cuddly, you have to do a better job of vetting these rescues, get rid of the fake ones you have now and prevent it from happening again and continue to monitor the ones you have. You’re a for profit and that’s perfectly fine but you have a responsibility to prevent these people from taking advantage of the site. I’ll need to see some real change before I can ever consider donating again.

I'm all for helping animals but I feel this platform makes it easy for rescues to take advantage of people because I have already seen many instances of fundraisers posted for dogs that have already received more than enough donations thru FB & IG. I hate to see people being taken advantage of. Rescues using this platform & donators to profit.

Please keep saving animals lives. You are angels for them.