Jinger (Duggar) Vuolo and her husband Jeremy Vuolo may not be cut out for their latest retail business venture. After launching their online store Hope & Stead in December 2020, the online boutique is being slammed with negative reviews, with the couple even facing allegations from some fans that the store is a scam.
Now living life in the sunny city of Los Angeles, the couple has been paving their own path away from the land of reality TV by launching a number of business ventures, with one of their most recent being Hope & Stead. The website promotes “the message and lifestyle of Hope through creating designs that point to our ultimate Hope — Christ,” Duggar explained when announcing the launch. The brand sells everything from hats for $23 to candles for $18.75 and numerous other products. But those who shelled out the cash to help support the couple’s business are regretting it.
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According to the Cheat Sheet, customers have taken to social media to blast the brand, claiming that they’ve received faulty products and, in some instances, no merchandise at all. One person accused the couple of taking “money for baseball hats and never sent out my purchase,” with another stating that they “owe me money for damaged candles I received.” Several people said that after receiving their defective items or after experiencing other issues with the store, they attempted to email Hope & Stead, but “emails never answered. Now a message on the website saying no orders being sent out for a further month with no apologies or explanation??”
“Complaints mostly started being posted around 10 weeks ago (the woman with the broken candles commented 13 weeks ago about her original order having a chip, as well) and they stopped posting completely about eight weeks ago,” one Reddit user wrote. “I wouldn’t be surprised if issues like this were happening fairly frequently to the point they needed to step away because of how in over their heads they were.”
Amid the backlash, which the couple has not yet addressed, Duggar and her husband have changed course on their latest business endeavor. In fact, fans venturing to the Hope & Stead website will find that it is no longer open for business. Instead, people are greeted with a page stating they will be “opening soon” and will “be back shortly with new goodies!” The boutique’s Instagram page has also been wiped clean, with the bio directing people to the couple’s newest Instagram account, Hope We Hold. The couple shared their first post to the account Monday, officially unveiling some of their big plans. Duggar and Vuolo explained that they “took a break to focus on our family” and also “merged Hope & Stead under the Hope We Hold umbrella,” promising that fans “will be seeing a bigger variety of updates, posts, products and more over here” and teasing that “there are a couple announcements coming that we don’t want you to miss this week!”
While details of this latest business venture remain unclear, some fans don’t seem particularly excited about it. In fact, the comments section on the post has flooded with remarks from those lamenting their experiences with the Hope & Stead brand, suggesting that the couple “should focus on actually getting money back to the customers that you completely scammed.”
