Cometeer Review

Monday, December 2nd

2024 Coffee Club Reviews

Cometeer

• Pricing: $2 per cup, with one-time purchases available for $84
• Single-serving frozen coffee pods brewed at 10x strength
• Fully recyclable aluminum cups
• Customizable box options with various roasters and blends
• 4-week delivery schedule with flexibility to adjust

Home-brewed coffee can be hit-or-miss. What if you could have the perfect cup of coffee, every single time? That's what Matt Roberts, Cometeer's founder, set out to make possible in 2014 with the help of "the godfather of specialty coffee”, George Howell.

Frozen, single-serving pods

Cometeer offers single-serve coffees in pods visually similar to K-cups, with a couple of important differences. First, the cups are aluminum, fully recyclable (including the lids) and don't contain any grounds (which means less rinsing before recycling). And second, they contain frozen coffee, brewed at 10x strength and frozen with liquid nitrogen at -321°F. No, it's not instant coffee - when prepared, Cometeer coffee still has all the flavor and aroma of a fresh-brewed cup.

Coffee you don't have to brew

You can prepare Cometeer coffee any way you like it. For an iced coffee, thaw, then pour it into a glass with ice and 6-8 ounces of water. Hot coffee requires 6-8 ounces of hot water and one frozen coffee puck. An iced latte is made by pouring melted coffee into 6 oz of milk, and so on. You can also make yourself an affogato at home. Just pour a capsule of melted coffee over vanilla ice cream.

Icy and pricey

Compared to other coffee clubs, Cometeer is really expensive: it's $2 per cup (approximately $1.50 more than most of their competitors). But, everybody's coffee budget is different: maybe you regularly stop by the cafe in your town on the way to work every day (where you're definitely paying at least $4 for a mug) and making your coffee at home with Cometeer would actually save you a buck or two.

Build your own box

You have the choice of two box sizes: a 4-pack of 32 capsules, or a 6-pack of 48 capsules. If you tend to stick to one roast, tell Cometeer what it is and you're basically set. But if you want to mix and match, building your own box starts by telling them what state you're in so they can select for the freshest coffee in delivery distance. Then choose your roast or caffeination levels from the Barista's Choice section, and they'll optimize your delivery from their catalog of bestsellers. Scroll a little further on this page, and you can choose your packs of pods yourself, from brewers like Intelligentsia, Equator, George Howell, Klatch, Birch Coffee, and more. These options are a bit more expensive though, often coming in around $3 a cup. And you still have to play barista. (But at least you won't be asked to tip.)

Shipped every 4 weeks

Cometeer allows you to change when you receive individual shipments from your account settings, but it appears that your shipments will always readjust to a 4-week timeframe (meaning you'll need to have some freezer space available if your household goes through a lot of coffee in that amount of time). Cometeer ships orders in 1-4 days, usually Monday to Wednesday. You'll get your coffee 1-3 days after that. They'll email you when it ships. The coffee stays good for a day at room temperature or 3 days in the fridge. You can also refreeze it if you don't use it right away.

One-time purchases for $84

If you're interested in getting a taste of Cometeer with no strings attached, they now allow you to make a one-time purchase of the pack of your choice. Just be aware you'll be paying about $20 more than you would with a subscription. There doesn't seem to be a gift subscription option, but you could send a friend a one-time purchase or a gift card of $100, $145, or $235 so they can choose their own pack.

Predatory cancellation process

If Cometeer has a Better Business Bureau listing, we couldn't find it. Unfortunately for them, we did find their Trustpilot page, which has a few concerning reviews from past customers. According to one longtime user, the website has been getting "worse and worse”: to cancel your subscription, the user reports, you now have to navigate through no fewer than 8 screens. Also, Cometeer no longer sends you reminders about your upcoming orders, in the hopes that you'll forget to skip or cancel a delivery. That doesn't work out in favor of customers who may be traveling, given the time-sensitive nature of frozen coffee.

May charge your card after cancellation

Another customer wrote that after canceling their subscription multiple times and telling their bank to block charges from Cometeer, they noticed Cometeer changing their merchant name and continuing to charge the customer's card anyway. That sounds pretty scammy to us.

Needs a BBB listing and good rating for a higher grade

We think Cometeer's concept is really cool (no pun intended), if a little bougie. If you're anything like us, sometimes you need something to look forward to to get out of bed in the morning, and a perfectly brewed cup of specialty coffee would do the trick nicely. Unfortunately, Cometeer has a little bit of work to do on the customer relations side of things. When all we can find about a coffee club's reputation is a handful of negative reviews about their billing practices, it'll naturally fall short of ranking up there with competitors with a squeaky-clean record with the Better Business Bureau and a more extensive track record.