QuietBounce Basketball Review – You Should Probably Stay Away
First things first. We did receive a QuietBounce basketball for free for the purposes of a review – not that I think that will be an issue, as even receiving this ball for free I wouldn’t call it a glowing review.
The QuietBounce basketball is marketed as a basketball that can be used anywhere. It’s not loud – and that’s true, it’s not. It’s supposed to be the ball that will let you develop your skills indoors and not even wake your family.
The QuietBounce site claims 5 stars and 1,188 reviews and is trusted by over 30,000 players – impressive stuff. This makes it all the more interesting that when clicking reviews from the header bar, they only feature 85 reviews. 84 five-star and 1 four-star reviews, I would be extremely interested in what happened to the other 1,104 reviews.
So with all these self-proclaimed glowing reviews, does the QuietBounce basketball live up to the hype?
The Basketball Details
When they reached out to me for this article, I was interested because our 3 boys all love basketball. Their uncle got them an outdoor hoop for Christmas last year and we’ve spent many hours playing basketball as a family out front of our house.
The idea of a quiet basketball was interesting. Any parent knows how irritating the sound of a basketball bouncing in your house is – and at times we’ve had 3 going.
I skimmed the product page before it was sent and was intrigued. How they could get even a semi-realistic feel of a basketball for dribbling to be quiet sounded too good to be true. And it was.
The basketball does not simulate a basketball in any real way. They are both orange and round, those are about the only similarities to a real basketball.
The ball is essentially a Nerf ball. The lines appear to be drawn on and don’t all line up with each other. It’s relatively round and a soft foam, so it doesn’t make any noise.
True to its marketing, however, it is quiet when it’s bounced. But it doesn’t bounce very high and I wouldn’t say there is anything replicating the feel of a real basketball.
The QuietBounce Play Test
Now as deceptive as the marketing is on the site, our kids have enjoyed playing with the ball.
The soft foam is great for our kids’ ages, they are 7, 4, and 3. Our youngest two, want to be just like their older brother playing basketball and all of them love dribbling and trying to do crossovers.
Especially when the 4 and 3-year-olds play pass, it’s nice to have a soft option for indoors so if they do hit anything, it’s not causing too much damage.
The ball bounces enough that they can have some fun batting the ball around, but besides playing pass with his younger brothers there isn’t any dribbling our 7-year-old could realistically practice with the QuietBounce ball.
If price, which we will get into in the next section, wasn’t a factor and the marketing wasn’t so deceptive, I’d say it’s a fun toy for young kids. Our 3 and 4-year-olds are probably the perfect age group for a ball like this. The soft foam ball is much better for indoor playing at that age than a harder ball that can cause damage to so many things around the house.
QuietBounce Value For The Money
The QuietBounce basketball is currently being sold for at the time of writing:
| Toddler Size 3 | $30.99 (USD) |
| Youth Size 5 | $34.97 (USD) |
| Standard Size 7 | $38.97 (USD) |
They then also offer a buy 2 balls and get a free wall hoop.
I wouldn’t say this is a particularly good deal or value for the money. The marketing on QuietBounce’s site does claim them to be the authentic and premium version of these soft, quiet basketballs. But a quick search on Amazon turns up a dozen extremely similar balls from $9 to $30.
For example, this generically named ball seems to be extremely similar and is $8 US at the time of writing, normally $10. This ball also has very average reviews with complaints of deforming and poor bouncing. But like I said above, if the aim is for a nice soft foam ball for young kids to play with it’s great. But these are not basketball replacements or alternatives.
There is nothing about the QuietBounce ball that indicates to me it’s worth 2 or 3 times the price of other foam balls if that’s what you’re looking for. Despite their claims, this is not a premium ball and is not worth the premium price.
Company Concerns
If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate it. But I have further concerns besides the ball itself.
I was reached out to by a marketing and SEO company who sent us the basketball for a review. I have not dealt with the company directly.
Phone Number Is Not In Service
The website lists a customer service number as 1-346-257-8703. This number is not in service, an auto recording plays saying the wireless customer you are calling is not available, please try again later. I have tried 3 times now on 3 different days, the same result each time.
Company Address Is A Post Office
As you can see from the images above, the address 1900 W Gray St, Houston, Texas is a United States Post Office branch. Now, I have absolutely nothing against somebody starting a side business from home and wanting to protect their identity. We do it here on this site, we don’t list our home address, nor do we post photos of our kids. We want to provide them with a level of safety.
My problem with this is that they list it as if it’s their physical location, you can’t mail a post office, this isn’t a PO box. And then they list hours like they have a physical location or hours where they are actually available. This is false and just more misleading.
Overwhelming Negative Reviews on Trust Pilot and Better Business Review
There are currently 69 ratings on the BBB site for QuietBounce. They are all 1 star.
Constant claims of the company being a straight scam, no product received, fake tracking numbers, and the list goes on. At the time of writing, there are over 139 open complaints about the company on BBB.
On Trust Pilot, there are 152 reviews. 1 is a four-star, 1 is a three-star, and the other 150 are all 1-star reviews with the same common threads as the BBB reviews.
The only comments on the single QuietBounce YouTube video complain of the same things as well.
Wrapping Up Our QuietBounce Basketball Review
I debated not writing this review at all. I don’t enjoy blasting companies. My first impression was wow, this is not what I expected at all.
Then I looked into the company more and felt like I wanted to say something.
We have a lot of great parents who read this site and make it possible for us to have a pretty awesome little side hobby. I didn’t want to sit by when maybe I could save somebody some money that could be so much better spent than on a QuietBounce Basketball.
I wouldn’t trust this company with my own money. Receiving a ball for free to review doesn’t change that.
I wouldn’t recommend anybody else to buy this ball either. Even without the concerns about the company, it is not worth the asking price. Add in the concerns with the rest of the company and it is a hard recommendation to stay very far away.
In the interest of hearing the company out, we did reach out to both the marketing company who reached out to us to provide the ball, and to QuietBounce directly for comment on the article. We did not receive a response.