TovalaReviews of tovala.com

I recently canceled my Tovala subscription after approximately 18 months, despite genuinely admiring many aspects of the service. The oven is beautifully designed, the meals are convenient and generally good, the packaging is thoughtful, the website works reasonably well, and the pricing is fair. Unfortunately, one fundamental failure in the subscription experience ultimately made it impossible for me to continue. **Tovala did not provide me with a reliable way to establish a permanent dietary preference that would prevent meat-based meals from being automatically selected and shipped.** I do not eat meat. Yet every week, I had to remember to check an email and manually change my meal selections. If I forgot, meat-based meals could arrive at my doorstep. Why should customers have to repeatedly prevent something they have already explicitly rejected? For me, the consequences go far beyond inconvenience. When unwanted meat arrives and is discarded, an animal has been raised, slaughtered, processed, packaged, refrigerated, transported, and delivered, only to end up in the trash. Think about the staggering moral absurdity of that. An animal's life has been taken for absolutely nothing because a subscription system failed to respect a customer's dietary preferences. **That is not merely a usability problem. It is a failure of design, ethics, and basic customer understanding.** Over approximately 18 months, I repeatedly requested this basic functionality but saw no meaningful progress. That is especially disappointing because Tovala has demonstrated considerable technological sophistication. A company capable of designing an innovative cooking appliance, automating payments, and managing complex food logistics should be capable of honoring a standing instruction as simple as "never automatically send me meat." I also believe this reflects a larger failure to recognize changing customer values. Meat should no longer be the assumed default. Increasing numbers of people are choosing vegetarian and plant-based diets for reasons of animal welfare, climate justice, environmental sustainability, and personal health. Customers who make these choices should not have to fight a subscription system every week to have them respected. As someone who has spent my professional life designing products and experiences, I find this particularly disappointing. **Innovation is not simply about clever technology. It is about understanding people, listening to their concerns, recognizing changing values, and designing systems that respond to them.** I want to be fair to Tovala. I liked the oven, appreciated the convenience, and thought many aspects of the service were well considered. I did not cancel because the product was poor. I canceled because the company failed to address a basic customer need that I communicated repeatedly. I would gladly reconsider Tovala if it introduced permanent dietary defaults that reliably prevent unwanted meat-based meals from being automatically selected and shipped. This would be a meaningful improvement for customers like me and, I believe, a better subscription experience for everyone. Until then, I cannot justify supporting a service that requires me to remain constantly vigilant to prevent food waste that conflicts with my deeply held values. Tovala has demonstrated that it knows how to design an excellent oven. I wish it would bring the same intelligence, care, and respect to designing the customer experience around it.

edit: They replied WHY the oven was held- waiting for the first meal confirmation- but this is NOT what is advertised on the site. I wish I could include a screenshot with this review. The site says the oven will ship in 3-5 days of the order, not the food confirmation. This is FALSE information, even based on Tovala's response here. ---------------------------------------- This is based on false advertisement, no transparency on the website, and poor customer service. I used a referral code for a free oven with a 6 time food order committment. That was fine, I knew what I was signing up for. The problem came in when they charged me $11 for shipping for the free oven, then proceeded to NOT SHIP the oven. I placed my order 10 days ago and the site said the oven would ship within 3-5 business days after placing my order. Now, 10 days later, I still have not received any shipping notification. I contacted customer service yesterday and the guy said they wont ship it until my first FOOD order processes, even though they charged me IMMEDIATELY for the oven shipping 10 days ago with my actual order. Now, since the food choices they had for the 1st 2 weeks sucked, I have to waitANOTHER week before they will even THINK about shipping my oven to me despite charging for it already. So now they have my $ for the shipping and STILL have no intention of sending it to me! Ridiculous and possibly illegal. NOWHERE on the website did it say this. The CSR was completely unwilling to do anything about it. My options were to suck it up and wait or cancel the order completely and make them refund the $11 they already charged me (which I consider to be stolen at this point since they charged me for something they had no intention of following through with for WEEKS - they should not be charging for shipping until shipping is actually a possibility). I couldn't cancel bc it was on a referral and the person who gave me the code already used the credit she recieved, so me cancelling mean they would auto charge her another $50 to get the referral credit back from her and I don't feel right doing that to her (although she apologized profusely and said it would be ok if I chose to). We ended up settling on her sending me her food choices for the week and I would place an order on my account for her food in an effort to get Tovala to actually send out the oven they were supposed to have sent over a week ago. I did that, it processed, they charged me for the food, and guess what? STILL no shipping info for the oven! Is this actually a scam? I feel like it can't be bc my friend has used them for a few months herself and had no issues, in fact she loves it. So why is it such a nightmare to get Tovala to actually do what they advertise?

I’ve been using Tovala for the last 4 to 5 years prices have gone up and customer service has gone downhill I I changed my payment method using the app and then the next morning noticed that it was not changed as pending charges were on that original payment method. I then emailed them and ask their support to change the payment method. They said they were unable to change when the final post occurs on Thursday at noon. I’ve reached out and left a poor review on Tovala’s Facebook page without any false accusations and no profanity and they blocked me from their Facebook page they then also blocked me from Facebook messenger, so I cannot get a hold of them. I will call them next cause I know where their corporate office is in Chicago.. They’ve lost a customer of 4 to 5 years which is about $600 per month for the last 4 to 5 years that I spend with them and because they would not change my payment they have put me in financial situation this week. Poor, poor, poor poor, poor customer service if you cannot do your job of helping your customer resolve an issue Also blocking customers that leave a poor review is a sign of a shady business. I would think twice before using Tovala and look at the other companies with smart ovens and food packs.. Stay away from Tovala. They used to be great, but they’re not so much anymore. I don’t know what happened to their service and their support but it is terrible.

The food is only decent, but everything must be cooked in their specialty oven. The main issue I have with them. The delivery company. They can't follow simple instructions. Living in the south, the temperatures on my front porch can get into the hundreds quickly and they have a large delivery window. It's roughly 5 to 6 hours wide. My instructions were to simply ring the doorbell. Drop it off. Ring my doorbell so that my food doesn't sit in the hot temperatures for 4 to 5 hours. Tovala. didn't really seem to care too much about my concern, which was food safety. Raw protein, especially fish sitting in the hot sun for that length of time, can't be safe. And as a final thought, I canceled 6 days before the next order. But I still got charged for the next week's meal and they dropped it off, failed once again to ring my doorbell, and it sat in a hot sun for who knows how long.

My oven consistently burnt dinners - I contacted the company and it was 3 weeks before they responded despite multiple attempts via chat and and internet. The responses seemed automated, not addressing my concern but telling me how to scan - which only worked about 50% of the time; the rest of the time, I had to use the app to get the meal to cook. I'd receive an em from Max, but no response to my actual issue, just a "canned" reply. After more than 6 weeks, told to run a Bake Test; no instructions how to do so and there is no Bake Test on the oven. Another rep says to just run the oven on Bake at 400 for 20 mins. He then says it's fine; next meal...burnt again. Another response from Max that after seeing I've run several tests, they will replace the oven. Then, em from Catherine that they are sending a new oven and return label for defective is attached...but of course it is not. We're now looking at 9 weeks of issues with the oven, 4 spoiled proteins (3 chicken that were disgusting and 1 salmon that STANK the day it arrived). This company looks fantastic but is really a horrific disaster with no customer service - every time you try to reach them, you get no response for WEEKS. We'll see how long it takes to get the return label for the defective oven and how long it takes for the replacement to arrive. I am NOT holding my breath!

I am concerned the oven is defective. It gets so hot that I have burned myself several times touching the outside of the oven. The meals are OK. They get boring, too much chicken (that may be fake chicken-it doesn't seem normal.) Overall the meals are ok.

I'm very upset with this company. My food order did not arrive on time and I had to throw away the spoiled food. I contacted the company, and they would not give me a refund or a credit! I would stay away from Tavola - there are much better food prep companies out there to pick from.

You have a commercial on regular channel.Not the spanish channel and a whole commercial is in spanish, which is pissing me off.We're not in spain or mexico.Make your commercials in english. This is still america remember?