BarkBox Subscription Box Review & Coupon – November 2015
BarkBox is a monthly subscription box for dogs. It’s one of our favorite subscription boxes – our dog loves it, and we’ve gifted it to dogs in our extended family as well!
BarkBox customizes your box to your dog’s size. For reference, this review is for the small size (our dog weighs 14 pounds)
My Subscription Addiction pays for this subscription. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).
The Subscription Box: BarkBox
The Cost: $29 a month, or $19 a month with a 12-month subscription.
COUPON: Expiring Soon! Get a free bonus toy in every box when you sign up for a 6-month subscription. . No coupon needed - just use this link.
The Products: Toys, treats and grooming products perfect for your dog based on their size.
Ships to: US and Canada
Keep track of your subscriptions – add BarkBox to your subscription list or wish list!
Check out all my reviews of Barkbox and the Pets Subscription Box Directory!
They used to include a card detailing the items included, but this month is an accordion fold-out with only the ‘featured product’ listed, also without value – so I guess you won’t the prices on cards anymore. Instead, you have to download their app to find out information on all the items included and the theme.
This month’s theme is Harvest.
Please note, I’m using the values from the app.
6″ Pizzle Sticks – Value $3
Half Pig Ear – Value $3
Our dog doesn’t do so well with rawhide, he tends to get a little too excited and eats them way too fast. So, with that in mind, he hasn’t tried these – but they’re so easy to gift to another pup!
Nature’s Bits Bison with Apples & Peaches – Value $8
Buckles has officially gone bonkers for these treats. He’s constantly expecting them while the box is still in my office. He’s a picky eater, which is weird for a dog, so anything that he goes wild for is a win for us.
Squash – value $9
The linked product is the ‘Pear’ variant, but it’s so close and I can’t find the Squash online anymore. I’ve mentioned this in a lot of past reviews, our dog does not like hard/rubber/plastic toys, so this will be gifted.
Pea Pod – Value $8
I’ve found that, if they include a hard toy, they tend to include a soft one too – so that works well for us. Buckles loves his BarkBox toys, this one is perfect for him since the peas come out of the pod, and are a perfect bite-size for him to run around the house with.
Verdict: This box comes to a value of $31, which is $2 over cost. In fact, last month was also $31 in value – and that was the first box that had a lower value/cost ratio than normal, so it seems that you should expect the value to always be very close to the cost now. To me, that is a bit risky and a tad disappointing, because if you have one product that is a miss then your value will be instantly lower than the cost. It’d be nice in the future, assuming this is the new price point, to be able to customize this a bit more – because I wouldn’t want rawhides or hard toys. Either way, we have a lot of friendly dogs in our life that will enjoy all of this stuff.
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Written by Eric Cadman
Did anyone else receive an additional box this month? I thought it was strange that I received notification from them that I had a package on the way, AFTER I received our regular box, which was not good for us this month. I did review it here and wonder….did they actually read that and send replacements? I thought the notification was in error and then sure enough a box showed up today. Hopefully my girl loves this one better! Also, I am getting emails from them saying that they were sorry about the difficulty I had when making a purchase, yet I was never on my account….hmmm an extra box, notifications about my account, I am really confused by this company.
I have noticed that lately Barkbox seems to have more sponsors (more corporate) than ever before and thus the boxes have changed a bit. I did notice however since that change has been made there are more options for customization. If I log into my barkbox account on my phone (and for some reason this only works on my iphone and not on the computer) there is an option to choose which toys I prefer, stuffed or chew. That could help with your hard toy issue maybe 🙂
I have subscribed to bark box since April 2013. I have the big and bold. I pay the yearly sub from their website. I have never been disappointed. Reading comments and reviews seemed to make me think that you really have to pay for 6 months up front at least to get your money’s worth, and those groupon deals probably get all the leftovers. My box value is always over $40, double of what I pay. And the treats I get averages $7 a bag, and there are 2 bags in there. So as much as I am tempted to get the gilt city deal on glossy box, I am not because my box is always the same as the one Liz gets and I am happy paying full price.
My box was totally different this month (we got a turkey and a leaf for toys with different treats), but my value was much higher than this when I added it up. We get the large box, although I think my little dog would have loved the pea pod toy!!!
We got ours a few days ago and I was very disappointed. 2 of the treats were opened. One possibly ripped while shipping but the other had been cut by something, part of the bag was missing and was not in the box. We threw those treats out. Barkbox gave us $15 to spend in their bark shop. So it worked out okay… But still a disappointing experience.
We also did not receive any card in our box. We got a rope leaf toy and a stuffed corn on the cob. They toys were both great.
Also- I was able to specify on my profile my dogs prefer soft toys. 🙂
If you sign in your account on the website and go to your profile, they allow you to choose either plush toys, chew toys, or both.
We’re not subscribing to this box right now but they used to be good about replacing an item that your dog doesn’t like. Contact customer service if your pet really doesn’t like a particular item, esp. if the value of the box is that low!
I cancelled this one. The value went down drastically, and I don’t like not having the info card. Nope and nope. It went from being a great sub to not even covering it’s value over a 2 month period. It’s not like the curation is a big deal on a dog box either. Treats, toys, done. I just went from being in love with it to being Mckayla Maroney.
I’ve been pretty disappointed with their changes lately, taking away the info card, decreased value and not really sticking to their themes. My Groupon deal ran out this month and I decided to let this sub go for now.
We also received the box for large dogs and had 2 bags of treats, a yellow “kong-LIKE” toy, a leaf shaped squeaky toy on a rope and a raw hide. Our 2 year old literally threw up after eating the raw hide. I have never seen her do this before and am not sure why it made her sick. A bag of treats had her nose totally up in the air and I think this is the first time my treat loving dog said no to ANY food. weird. And the two toys were destroyed within the hour. We only got a 3 month subscription and glad that we will not be renewing. Good point on the cost/value issue. One toy or treat not for her and we lose money.
My dog will not play at all with hard toys and we received two this month. UGH, they are both up for swap. I haven’t been overly happy these past few months…mostly because the value has been lower and we’ve gotten things we can’t use so the value wasn’t there for me. But, I reached out to them and was able to update our profile that we preferred “soft, squeaky toys” so I’ll be anxious to see if that adjustment is made in next months box.
I’ll have to do the same to our profile, we’d love to get only soft toys. Thanks for the tip!
Unfortunately for me – they told me it was impossible to mark my account as preferring soft squeaky toys!
Are you serious?!? LOL. Maybe try back and see if you can get a different rep? Or maybe the guy that told me he could was just telling me what I wanted to hear?!? I’ll be interested to see what happens to my box next month. We usually get the same one.
Eric, after seeing this thread I went to my profile page for my dog’s subscription, and the choice of soft toy or hard toy is on that page. It’s not your profile page, but where you click on the dog’s name – then the choice will come up. Thanks for the heads up on this!
I feel like I’m going crazy. I only have these options: size, name, birthday, and allergies.
I was curious, so checked my account and I’m not seeing an option for preferences (just the name, size, DOB and allergies). I wonder if it may depend on whether the option was available or not at the time the subscription actually started?
Deborah:
I’ve been subscribing for about two years, if that helps.
Eric/Deborah:
It took me a while to find the option, but it’s directly below the allergy question.
We got a totally different box this month. They got two bags of jerky treats. Two chews that look like pizzle. A star-shaped soft toy with a rope going through it and a turkey soft toy. So both the toys were seasonal. I’m always super happy with my BarkBox, because my dogs go wild when it arrives. A box just for them! And they can’t wait for me to cut through the seal and open it up to see what’s inside.
I think I got the same box as you, for large dogs. I believe the one toy with the rope through it is a fall leaf. I’m always surprised to hear when dogs won’t use toys or eat treats because my dog loves everything you throw at him! So I’m pretty much always happy with everything in the boxes.
I’ve been debating whether to get this for my dog. She’s a picky eater too, and fussy when it comes to toys, which is pretty annoying sometimes. On the plus side, she’s also very smart and well trained so yeah 🙂 mmhh I guess I’ll give this a try, hope she likes it.
You might be right about it being a leaf. I didn’t look closely. I just ripped the tag off and threw it before I was assaulted by three dogs. The turkey was adorable. ?