Bullfrog Spas Reviews

Original Review: Dec. 22, 2022

I ordered a swim spa in October with the understanding that it would be delivered by the holidays. After 3 weeks of delay, it was destroyed on the highway on delivery day (Dec 21) through negligence. It won't be delivered now until mid-January and the company refuses to offer any discount or upgrades to make up for this awful service and long delay. They take no responsibility for this upsetting situation and have been awful to deal with. I regret choosing this company.

Fast forward 3 years later... I began to leave Montana for the winter and winterized the spa according to the manufacturers instructions. Even after covering the spa lid with 2 tarps to protect it from the weather the lid leaked enough that water accumulated in the spa and created an internal plumbing leak when I went to fill it the following spring. When I contacted Bullfrog in Missoula to repair the unit they would have to take the tub to their shop ($500 plus shop time), but they were 2 months out for pick up and over 2 months out to service the unit. It didn't make sense to me to have the tub repaired, redelivered, filled and then drained for use of a couple of weeks. I have tried repeatedly to have another spa repair business to come fix the leak but no one will touch a Bullfrog Spa because they are "extremely problematic to work on".

We paid over $13,000 for this spa. The customer service has been insulting and demeaning. I tried numerous times to speak with the owner about the issues we were experiencing with the spa and he would not return my calls. When I filed a complaint via the Montana Justice Department complaint division, the Bullfrog Store owner claimed I was an "entitled, undesirable customer who was only trying to get something for free from them". On the contrary, I merely want them to stand behind the product they sold. They certainly made money on a $1600 spa lid which turned out to be a defective product. Why not support your customers? Now we are sitting with a leaking tub, leaking lid and no one to service it.

If Bullfrog spas are so great and truly worth the expensive price tag then why is their service shop backed up for months with repairs? This is a company that sells to unknowing consumers and when the product turns out to be defective there is no one to turn to. I would recommend staying away from Bullfrog. They intentionally keep their customers from contacting them when problems arise and will not stand behind their products.

When we decided to purchase a hot tub (this is our first), we did a ton of research. We settled on Bullfrog for this very reason - leaks. Their design seemed like a good one to minimize the chance for leaks. However, there is more to a tub than the design. Construction of the tub is just as important as the design. Maybe Bullfrog should work on improving the quality of their hot tub construction. Slow down and build them right. We paid $12k for this tub. I guess we are expecting too much from a $12k tub.

This is not the dealer’s fault. This is poor build quality by Bullfrog. Had we known at the time we purchased that Bullfrog doesn’t stand behind their product - they won’t even talk to their customers - we never would have bought a Bullfrog hot tub. Winter is now here. I have a tub that I can’t use due to the leak, but I have to continue to fill and heat the tub to keep the water from freezing. The insulation is soaked from the leak, and will likely freeze and cause more damage to the tub. We are very disappointed, and quite frankly, angry about this. We will never purchase anything from Bullfrog again.

We had a spa repair man come out and he tested the water - it's perfect so there's no way that gasket cracked from wrong chemicals. Now we have more jets leaking from cracked gaskets and the tub is only 3 yrs old! The foam insulation is great until you have to find a leak...We've had to remove 75% of the insulation now just searching for multiple leaks. We fix one and find another. We are FED UP. Do not buy a bullfrog!

So I start up the tub recently and lo and behold it is leaking. I contact Jelly Belly Bullfrog dealer and he states freezing is not covered under the warranty although it does not say this anywhere in their extended warranty blurb. Their response was this is "common knowledge". Not covered under warranty. I would have bet my last dollar they would weasel out of covering under warranty. Oh, and I must mention this guy was just plain rude. Not covered, not covered, not covered being repeated in our "conversation".

There is a more local Bullfrog dealership, Oasis Spas, where I should have bought this spa. I went to their location to talk to someone about advice on repairing the tub. No one from the service department was there so they took down my phone number and promised to have a service rep call. No sooner do I get home and they called. This man was outstanding. He was friendly, knowledgeable and answered all of my questions clearly and with detail. Right down to how to deal with the infestation of mice in the tub insulation. The contrast with the 2 dealers could not have been more striking.

For my conclusion: Bullfrog Spas does not provide any contact information to the company itself. They want you to go through their local dealers with all contact. What have they to hide? Clearly they don't give a crap about the people who shell out a lot of money for these spas. Jelly Belly Spas should not be in business. Just read their reviews and yet because they are crafty enough to sell their products to unsuspecting pigeons the manufacturer doesn't care. I know of 2 people that bought their spas from this the bogus rude dealer.

Does this not mean anything to Bullfrog Spas? Why do they insulate themselves from their customers? Have they tired of negative feedback about their product? So in all fairness since I'm fairly handy I've embarked on doing the repair myself. I am impressed with how these tubs are manufactured. Lots of insulation on both pipes and area fill. Seems like quality materials. I would, however suggest they pay more attention to mitigating the rodent problem. What mouse in a cold climate wouldn't fight to find themselves in a cozy, warm insulation cave?

We notified our local dealer of the fault on the 4th July. We are still waiting with no idea when the part will arrive or if it has even been sent 2 months later. Hours of phone calls and e-mails later I have no information. Try calling Bullfrog and you will see that you can never speak to a person and none of your calls are returned. This is a very bad sign on a company that positions itself as Supposedly premium quality and premium support. It seems the only way to be answered is to leave a negative review and even that is no guarantee. They blame shipping and distribution problems due to Covid and the Suez Canal but I have ordered many items from the USA via Amazon and have received quick and cheap delivery.

I have been trying to avoid leaving a negative review but feel I now have no choice. The screen does not even turn on now which means no pump or filter so I will have to drain the spa now and can’t use it at all. So disappointed. For what it has cost me financially (not to mention the headache and frustration) I could have spent a month at a 5 star resort and had a spa every day. As it is I’m left with a useless ugly lump in my backyard and no idea of when or if it will be fixed. Their promises seem to mean nothing.

One week later we had to follow up with the dealer in order to get them to install the new board. Once the tech got here he discovered the access panel did not properly engage with the frame but that we could make do with relying on the side trim to hold the panel in place (apparently another common issue that the factory was aware of but chose to not correct). He also the claimed the factory hadn't sent new LED bulbs and would it be OK if they did that later? (For some reason they had sent a new bulb cover plate that apparently had nothing to do with the problem.) Seemed like a reasonable request, except we then had to contact the dealer a month later to follow up for that service. We then tried to change the default programming to one of the available options so we could better manage the operating costs only to discover that the owners manual had several mistakes in describing those options.

Dealer correspondence with the factory was confusing and failed to answer straightforward questions, but it didn't seem like a battle that was worth fighting. Speaking of operating costs, we were never able to achieve the lower costs touted in the marketing material and would support the comments of others that their technology is relatively more expensive and not as environmentally friendly as other methods (shame on us for not doing better research before purchasing).

After coming to the conclusion that continued ownership was a path we didn't want to follow, we elected to sell our hot tub and inquired how stringent Bullfrog was in not extending their warranty beyond the initial owner -- we were hoping for some latitude since the spa was only 6 months old. Unfortunately, we weren't surprised that Bullfrog chose to continue the level of customer support we had experienced thus far and indicated that there was no flexibility in this area although they were looking into it for the future (I can only guess they hoped telling us that might make us feel better). Bottom line: while the products held a great deal of promise, the manufacturing and customer service execution make them, in our opinion, a poor value.