Mathmos Reviews 268

Ordered an Astro Violet/Turquoise combination and the light fixture inside was loose and broken... Ok, these things happen... So I sent that back...

Re-ordered, got a classic polished silver base... ..Except this one arrived with a big black scuff on the side of it! STILL, I can overlook this, by facing the damaged side against the wall... It's not exactly what you should be doing with a brand new £80 lamp though!

After turning it on, The colours looked more like two shades of blue, rather than violet/turquoise. So I was further disappointed... Luckily I also ordered a 2nd bottle... The violet/orange. And that one just looks more pinky/red. So I don't think any of the website photo colours are accurate to real life. Don't get me wrong, It still looks nice... EXCEPT, there is a glass bubble defect sticking out on the side of the bottle! So clearly the manufacturing quality at this place is poor...

Ultimately, I am just disappointed considering the products are priced at a premium, you'd expect the results to be top notch.... There's just too many defects in these to be one off mistakes.

I specifically wanted a Mathmos lamp instead of the much cheaper lava lamps on Amazon, because I thought Mathmos were the best? WHAT ON EARTH HAS HAPPENED TO THIS COMPANY!?

I had a mathmos back in the 90s and it was far better quality.

This stuff is just grossly over priced, poorly made, whilst they're cutting corners and purely riding the back of their once great reputation.

AVOID AVOID AVOID!

I bought into the ‘made in the UK’, ‘handmade’, ‘quality’… marketing straplines and bought two expensive lamps.
Very quickly the innards of one of the lamps became unstuck, Mathmos replaced it very quickly, thank you.
The bulbs half to make the bottle very hot to make the lava perform, making them too hot to touch, and resulting in these inefficient bulbs that are being phased out for lighting, dying prematurely. Mathmos are able to sell their stockpile of these hard to find bulbs at a premium.
I did not use one of the lamps for a few months as my child did not want it on at night. The lava flooded to the top and solidified. I presumed it would sort itself out when I switched it on again, sadly it did not and it limped into its third year Thus exceeding the two year guarantee. The company responded to my request for replacement, saying they “are sorry to hear your son’s bottle has reached the end of its lifespan.” And they could not make exceptions to their policy. Wow! Short lifespan for such a self professed high quality British made product!
Very sad, but seemingly typical read other reviews

This is the strangest company I've ever dealt with.
I purchased their £295.00.
large lamp,Rokit.I also purchased an extra bottle,£80.00.One of the bottle plastic screw on caps arrived damaged and leaking.
I contacted them, asking for a replacement cap,which must cost no more than a few pence, I was asked to send a picture of the damage, in order to hopefully resolve the problem. When I was able to stop laughing, I sent the picture, which was a few days ago. I haven't heard anything from them.As I said, the strangest company I've ever dealt with and I'm 70 years old.

Everthings "Cool" until you get a faulty product ,then try talking to Customer Services ,they are dreadful and do not care about your situation they will try everything to worm out of the fact that there products are a fault.
BEWARE-Do Not Spend any money that you are not prepared to lose. They live on a name and reputation that they dont deserve anymore. Fingers crossed your product is right first time otherwise its Go Whistle .Truly the worst CS i have ever come across ever.

My only direct experience of Mathmos has been over the last month when I purchased 2 of the Limited Edition lamps. The first was the Studio Job lamp & I thought something was wrong with the sprayed fuzzy area around the base section It was supposed to be a gold blurring, but was showing blotchy black grainy patches & also on one side of the glass a thin faint yellowish horizontal line & close vertical lines. Mathmos were very good analysing the photos I sent twice & responded saying they thought they aren't faults. I viewed the lamp then under white daylight lamps against a white background - & although it still looked a bit funny, the 2 funny effects were far less visible. Mathmos explained them, even though I don't particularly like that effect, ot does seem intended & I was very happy with the lamp otherwise, so I've kept it. Mathmos did say I could return it otherwise. The 2nd lamp was the Camille Walala which arrived a few days ago - and no complaints at all so far. It's really super. Clean lines, brilliant colours. No issue. A pleasure. I hope both last well over time. I'll have to comment again on the bulbs and how they last. But Mathmos have been very good responding to my emails helpfully. DPD delivered both lamps successfully, but they weren't in the upright position shown by THIS WAY UP....but luckily seems no damage done as they were very well packed. Overall, very good experience, just not very keen on the fuzzy bottom of the Studio Job!

Buy another product. Bad costumer service

Good product, fast delivery.

This current generation of management @ Mathmos is struggling to get anything right.

It’s just one disappointing upset after another. This time they cancelled the lamp I ordered for my elderly Dad and gave to to someone else to sell on ebay.

Hopefully it’s just incompetence rather than contempt for their customers but the timing of the ebay listing suggests it might be someone that works at Mathmos.

No public customer could have received the item before it was on sale to the public.

They have apologised but made no attempt to correct their error at all.

Just bought my first lamp, black vinyl and red. Couldn't be happier with my purchase! Mathnos is the original brand, hand made and top quality. You get what you pay for. I've already decided I'm getting a giant one xD

The lamp and good service is worth 5 stars, really good! however while moving it a bit to find its correct place it scraped my table! Also when turning the glass to get the logo in the middle, an inside (bad finish) metal part scraped into the glass. For such a quite expensive lamp i would expect beter finish and quality control. So for me this only deserves 3 stars, which is still quite optimistic. NL7056

Their bulbs are completely useless. They fail after a very short period of use, and the cost to replace them is astronomical! Mathmos are thieves. Obviously designed this way so they can make a fortune from you for life.

For 2 weeks, I have been a happy owner of a Black Vinyl lava lamp from Mathmos. The thing is absolutely gorgeous to watch and way better than any lava lamp I owned before. The vibrant colors look amazing, and the flow of the wax is perfect.

But, at a price point of €120.00, it comes at a cost, especially if you look at the build quality. The foot and cap of the lamp look amazing but aren’t very heavy, and therefore feel a bit fragile and cheap for this price point. Don’t get me wrong, they look gorgeous, but for the price, you would expect something that’s a bit more solid and heavy.

Then there are the bottles and the complaints about the little white dots. I have ordered an extra bottle with my lamp, and there are little white dots (bubbles) inside the glass. Apparently, this is part of the manufacturing process, and personally, I can live with that, but it would be nice if they could reduce the amount of bubbles a bit in the future. One bottle is OK; the other has quite a few, which isn’t a reason for me to send it back, but again at this price point, you would expect a little bit better.

Would I recommend a Mathmos Lava lamp to others? I definitely would. Besides the issues stated here, the lamps are just gorgeous, and my lamp has already brought me some great creative ideas when I was stuck in the creative process. Just staring at it for a couple of minutes gets your creativity juices flowing again. So €120.00 is expensive for what you get, but I think it’s still worth the price.

I purchased an Astro lava lamp 3 years ago and right now is becoming nothing more than an expensive paper weight. I have bought bulbs and they have sent me bulbs. They have been extremely condescending in response to my complaints about the impossibly short life of their branded bulbs. Now I am getting between 10 - 28 hours of burn time when I can be bothered changing the bulbs with the precision of a surgeon (this is after using the lamp 4hrs each time)
I would buy the bulbs from another retailer but guess what.... Mathmos have the monopoly on bulbs for their lamps. I wouldn't recommend buying from them unless you want nothing but frustration try to use it as an actual lava lamps. Honestly there are cheaper and better lamps out their.

Lamp never worked and warranty I just discovered, is void in the US if you purchase abroad. By exporting a Mathmos product to the USA, all warranty coverage is voided at the time of export from the UK or mainland Europe. This is what I was told after reporting the problem.

Bought both a candle-powered lava lamp and a classic vinyl lava lamp about 1-2 years ago from Mathmos. The candle-powered lamp is fantastic, it works incredibly fast and well. It recently dropped down a ~1.5m distance and it was not even scratched. Might be luck on my side, but either way, they feel incredibly durable aswell. The classic lamp looks very good, but the provided lamp could have been more powerful - it takes quite a while for the lava to rise, and it struggles to reach the top. Regardless, both lamps look impressive, feel durable, and as opposed to other reviews I have read here, I do not have any air bubbles in either lamps. Very, very satisfied!

Professional & Great customer service.
After purchasing a product which unfortunately did not meet my expectations my return of the product was made simple. This was achieved by clear communication & supply of a return postage label. An honest British company.

My review was DELETED from the Feefo website!!!!

Absolutely opportunistic and disingenuous behaviour from Mathmos.

I received a faulty order, with a broken seal on the bottle cap and liquid spilled inside the protective bag.
Contacted Mathmos with photo evidence of the matter, only for them to reply the damage was likely caused during shipping, and they are not responsible for faulty orders shipped by third party services to outside the EU (which was the case in my order).

Now let me describe how the above is not possible:

There are a total of four cardboard boxes in the package.
- The generic unlabelled outmost cardboard box;
- The Mathmos labelled black carboard box, containing
- The two separate smaller boxes, one for coloured liquid bottle and another for the lamp components and light bulb.

There was visible damage ONLY to the bottle cap and it's box (see att pictures).
The two outer cardboard boxes were in PERFECT condition, with no signs of damage whatsoever.

This means whatever damage happened, it happened BEFORE OR DURING the process of putting the order together by...MATHMOS, not during shipping.

Of course, knowing that I'm using a third party shipping service, it's easy to send a faulty bottle and wash your hands off of having to replace it while making money off of a broken product.

Paying premium price for a lava lamp, you'd at least expect integrity from the seller.

Terrible experience. There's a reason why most (real) reviews are bad....

Bought an expensive lava lamp from Mathmos. Contacted them as the lamp was full of bubbles and they quite rudely informed me this is normal and they would disappear over time. Well, I’ve used the lamp every day for over a year now and the bubbles are still there. Very disappointing, won’t ever buy another one.

A devastating fall from grace for this once great company.

I’m of an age where I’ve grown up with Mathmos. We have dozens of lamps and they get rotated periodically. It’s a fun, bit of British history, even if hugely overpriced for a bottle of water, a melted candle and a light bulb.

Even the extreme running costs of burning £££ of electricity to melt the wax with the bulb hasn’t put us off. But our latest interaction has been an absolute eye opener. The contempt from the company has been palpable.

We were not expecting our new £300 lamp to be so flimsy or to be defective. They just don’t work properly despite the hefty 80w bulb scorching through the electric bill for hours.

After failing to answer the phone at all for days, the anonymous person in customer service explained that it wasn’t working because it was damaged in transit, but offered no solution, basically they just agreed we had bought a defective lamp.

We raised a return and they sent a link to pay to send them their defective goods back - but that didn’t work either.

Finally after more emails back and forth they agreed to arrange collection but insisted that as the majority of their defective lamps start working eventually, they don’t consider that to be a problem and so they charge their customers £15 if the defective goods are returned.

As it happens, I’m a qualified barrister so I’m more than able to take that battle on, but Im more shocked by what they have become. I feel bereft. It’s like discovering someone you thought of as a friend has been arrested for unspeakable crimes and you realise that you didn’t really know them at all.

The only plus-point is that by employing such money-grabbing, customer phobic untouchables in their alleged customer service team, they have saved me thousands of pounds I would have otherwise spent with them.

Here lies the Mathmos you thought you knew.

Rest in peace.

Awesome products ! I love my lamps