Has anyone tried the Emery Cat scratching board?

Having inherited a cat that loves using leather furniture for claw grooming, I have tried a variety of clawing boards, sissel (sp?) products, etc. So I ordered the Emery Cat Board from their web site where you can get 2 for the price of one, paying only shipping and handling. The order should have cost $35.00 total. After I finished the process I was presented with a $66.70 bill that will be charged to my credit card. I am trying to reach the company, but it took 2 days for an email to come with an actual phone number and they are closed till Monday, natch. I understand the boards will be available in stores such as Target, Walmart, and pet stores. I strongly suggest waiting till then to buy one and give it a try. In theory it may prove really great. But I would warn all not to buy from their web site.

can someone provide a link? I'd like to see it! thanks

Easiest way, just type Emery Cat Board in the search area of your URL bar. It will take you there. The informercial that will be airing sometime (with a phone number attached, I assume) is there. Be careful if ordering. I've read another post that talks about terrible customer service.

Thanks, I followed your advice! I like the shape (my cats love the wave curl) but I don't have any trouble with nail trims! And, in fact think it is good for my cats to know and accept that I, their mother, will sometimes be doing things to them that they object to.

I am skeptical that a cat would use it enough to really make a difference!

I also take care of my "children's" claws, but the need to clean and scale their claws and stretch the muscles/tendons of the toes makes some type of scratching post or surface also necessary. And the fact that my mom's cat developed a love of furniture, especially leather, over the past 10 years, has had me searching for good scratching surfaces. I'm told the emery will arrive in 4-6 weeks. For all who read this post, be careful entering number of boards ordered when you are on their site. If you change the number from 1 and then back to 1, it remembers the other number. And no phone number shows up anywhere until your confirmation arrives by email.

Everyday Edisons and Edison Nation which developed the EmeryCat assure me that it is a great product. We shall see.

I look forward to hearing how your cats like it! Do your cats have a cat tree of some type with different surface choices?

We ordered 2. took 6 months to come and the cats have looked at them and have not used them even once. We even put CATNIP from the stores on it and still they are not interested. We had 3 old scratcher's that they loved but these they could care less. One cat tried it for all of maybe 3 seconds and has not been back since. We tried to donate them to our local VET but they said to just throw them away because of complaints about of the boards pulling out cats nails.

VERY VERY disappointed and a total waste of money..

I would not recommend to anyone not even my worst enemy

Thank you very much for sharing your experience. You've only confirmed what I was thinking which is "not a good idea".

Welcome to the forum!

Pulling out cats' claws?! How awful!!!

I searched the net for info on this product before ordering, mostly to make sure it wasn't made in China... and I am SO glad I did.

I am extremely grateful to everyone who posted their experience and opinion about this thing here. You have no doubt saved me and my precious cats from harm. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I'm glad to see the reviews of it. I've seen them at Wal-Mart and wondered if they would be any good.

My boards finally arrived - only a 3 month delay. One cat has used it once and then decided that the sissel pads were more satisfying. One cat loves to play with the belled fluff that comes with it on a tiny pole that lodges in holes provided in the board's plastic form. I added the catnip, makes it great to rub a chin on, but they don't even like the feel of the surface on their pads, let alone on their claws. Since the posting about losing cat claws (seems a little harsh) I will keep a close watch. I've had one cat manage to catch his claw in another object and yell for help when he managed to flip himself over trying to free it. The claw stayed intact and I was able to rescue him with no injury - other than to his feline pride, but I am not leaving the pad down when I'm not at home.

Thanks for all the posts. I, also, do not recommend this product. Maybe a lynx would like it (bigger paws and claws), but for normal domestics, just not the cat's meow.

hmm... i used to have something similar to this for prissy, and she loved it. The "honycomb" surface was just cardboard though. can anyone who has tried this tell me how much stiffer than cardboard theis really is? She might just like this.

I had the same experience regarding price doubling. But I went to customer service site and there was a selrction to cancel order click on it and it canceled my order next day. but I am going to wait for it to get to a store.

It is already on Walmart for $18.99... I looked very close at it and I can not see how it can work though... The sand is only on the top, and not on the inside of the little holes where the claws go in... Also, the sand is way too rough and my impression is that it comes lose very easily...
It is not what I expected at all... Looking at it I wouldn't buy it.

I ordered the Emery Cat product over the phone, and took advantage of the "buy one get one free" offer. Total should have come to $19.95 + $7.95 + $7.95 = $35.85. Instead they charged my credit card $71.70, or double the correct amount.

They also did not include a receipt.

My credit card company will not dispute the charges without a receipt, and even if I had a receipt it would probably say $71.70.

So my congratulations to Emery Cat for finding such a simple way to rip people off. Based on other posts I've seen here, sounds like it's a piece of junk anyway.

I'll return 'em of course, but just wanted to let others know they can expect to be overcharged.

Keep seeing this on TV and wondering if it really works but by the way surface looked like, also reading all the posts here, I can't see anything different to those cardboard based scratching mat/pad always sold at stores.

Since Ku Ku prefers coarse & thick surface(i.e. my couch!) to scratch, I bet cardboard would never appeal to her at all even with the help of catnip.

I could imagine this having a good effect if it was actually corrugated board made from sandpaper. Maybe I need to invent one! That way, the top of the scratcher would feel like paper, since it would be the edge, and no matter how deeply the cats wore it down, it would still have sandpaper to dull their claws.

However, sandpaper is much more expensive that the brown paper used to make corrugated paperboard, so such a scratcher might be pretty expensive.

i tried a bunch of different scrath 'items' in the last year. the one that works the best so far, for my brats anyway, is those cheap, cheezy scratch poles at walmart that are 9 bucks. they have rope, a fuzzy carpet base, and a cheezy spring with a fuzzy ball on top.

They wear them out in a few months, and I get a new one. they're ugly, but the cats love them.

ONE caveat. The base isn't big enough, so i put it under a post of the bed so they don't just pull it over.

I have a cat for the very first time. (always had dogs before) She adopted my husband and I, and I quickly fell in love. Anyway, I was considering the Emery Cat scratching board, cause it just sounded so great. I found this sight by a Google search for info about it. I sure found the right place! Thanks so much for all the help. I'm so thankful that I didn't go to their web site to order it. This is one that I am going to pass on. Don't want anything to happen to my little "Penny!"

Appreciate the helpful advice!

Gwen

This is the worst site and customer service I have dealt with in a long, long time. Where to start? First, I went onto the site and it asks you how many you want to order. As there is a "buy one - get the second for S&H only" I was not sure whether to enter 1 or 2. (Hint - it's not 2!) Next, up pops an "upgrade" page where for only $10 per board you can get a "sturdier base" which I said "No thanks" to. I don't even know what the upgrade is - it looks identical to what is initially advertised. So, I started to smell a rat, but unwisely kept going. I did enter my billing information, and then decided to check out some reviews before finalizing and I hit the Back button to leave the order section. Read a bunch of bad reviews and also that you can pick it up with no S&H at Walmart these days, so left the website altogether. A Order Confirmation email was a BIG surprise for $71.90!! NOTE: I did not finalize the order! This out to be illegal! Be careful - there is no "Review Order to Submit" "Submit Order" or any other similar command. No contact information - no phone number on the confirmation either. I went to www.CustomerStatus.com (the only contact information on the confirmation) and put in the requested information. No order found. Tried several times yesterday with the same results. I tried to stop the charge with my bank. Can't dispute it until it posts. Today, my order was found on the customerstatus site and there was an 866 number. Although they say to allow 2-6 weeks for delivery, my products are already in the mail and it is too late to cancel the order. Amazing, huh? I was charged $31.80 in shipping - and they credited half of that because I did not want 4 freakin' Emery Cat Boards - and I have to pay for the shipping to return the extra. These products are probably worth about $5.00 each, and here I will wind up paying over $60 in order and return shipping costs. I have ordered items from TV ads before with satisfactory results - but this outfit gives them all a bad name. Terrible Terrible Terrible experience. I've filed a BBB complaint as well today.

Seems like this thread is popular in the search engines and sending in new visitors to TCS. So, first - welcome to our new members posting here for the first time and to new visitors too (do join in by registering).

This thread had been temporarily removed due to its content and is now back online. We generally discourage bashing companies on this site, so I'd like to ask you all to keep your feedback on Emery products descriptive and share your experience with the company and products without any name-calling or use of derogatory terms. If you're new here, please do take a minute to read our rules before posting - thank you!

I don't know what everyone else did wrong, but I ordered this on the website, and my charge was the correct $35.85. There are a couple "suggested" upgrades you have to click though, but anyone with an ounce of common sense will read them and say "no-thanks".

I ordered it on Christmas Day, and just got it today, 5 days later.

So far, my cat loves it.

Thank you for sharing your experience. It might explain some of the problem, as not everyone knows how to skip the suggested upgrades, and the "no thanks" links tend to be small and, umm, unobtrusive

And welcome to TCS! Hope you stick around and keep posting.

Well, it has been 24 hours since I got the pair of emerycat things, and so far my cat loves them. He loves the fuzzy toys too, but they don't stay on the frame for long. He pulls them off and plays with them all over the house.

One of them I left inside the box that the pair came in, and he seems to like that one better because he just stands on top of it and scratches away (plus he loves being in boxes), while the one just on the floor he tends to only put his front feet on, and it moves around with him a bit. So if you do get one, I recommend either putting it in a box or tucked into a corner where it can't slide around. Plus we all know how cats like secluded little corners.

Just saw a TV ad for the product, thank goodness I saw all of these warnings! This company seems to be causing a string of increasingly worsening problems that I call fraud and scams (in postage and handling costs). Although I've just seen transactions that went okay, it seems like these folk should be corrected. Aside from the BBB, there's a more immediate scam site of links of places to report to, including the Fed: http://www.scambusters.org/scamlinks.html I hope it helps.

Ryffian: Thanks for keeping us updated. I'm very curious what your final charges are and if they try to add anything else later.

Ed85379. Can you keep us updated on how well this product works? Thanks.