An Important Update on Lelo Luna Beads: Cleaning via Boiling

When I re-reviewed the Lelo Luna beads, I asked lots of questions of Lelo. I was told that one could boil them for no more than 5 minutes to help remove any lingering stains and/or better clean the nylon pull string. Seemed reasonable, but I didn’t yet try it.

Recently, a reader wrote and told me that she did this and her beads melted a bit, became deformed. I confirmed that she followed the “no more than 5 minutes” and promptly put her in touch with my Lelo rep so that her beads could be replaced. Lelo told me then to update and say that one should place a washcloth or something in the bottom of the pot to prevent the beads from banging around in metal. So I changed it, and then I heard from a few more readers who were STILL having problems with melting. This advice has since been updated and now is:

Pour boiling water over the Luna Beads whilst they are in a bowl and let them soak for up to 5 minutes. This will prevent the beads from coming into contact with the very hot bottom of the pot, which is what could deform the beads……not the water.

If you’ve previously dropped them in a pot of boiling water and had any damage, please do let Lelo know or let me know. I’m sure they will replace your damaged beads for you. I really do wish that these instructions would have been tested and further clarified before I made them public, but hopefully this info will reach enough people.

UPDATE: AGAIN:  I received an email from someone and I have contacted my latest rep at Lelo for clarification – see below the reader’s email for Lelo’s response. Frankly, I’m pissed. They gave me false information once before and now this? I don’t know what to believe anymore. My best advice NOW, if you’re dealing with a discolored string, is to clean it in a very mild bleach solution. Let it soak only a few minutes and then rinse, and let it soak and rinse twice more in clean water. If the plastic discolors, contact Lelo. You have a warranty on these, use it. According to the latest from LELO, boiling water should still be fine. Since this person purchased the Minis when they had the uncoated metal ball, I’m thinking that that run of Minis was defective altogether. I don’t think that the uncoated metal ball was intentional, but who knows.

Hello Lilly,

I own the Luna Beads Mini and the string became discoloured after a few weeks of washing with just soap and water, so I did a Google search for “how to sanitize luna beads” and yours was the first site that came up.

I followed your advice from the LELO rep (I put the beads in a bowl, added water from a kettle and let them sit for less than 5 minutes). Unfortunately, one of the beads must have had a weak seam because this treatment allowed water to enter the bead. I have the old version of the Minis with the bare metal ball and now the ball is rusting due to the trapped moisture.

I contacted LELO and they are sending me a replacement, but after my experience I will not expose the replacement beads to boiling water. The manual says to NEVER expose the Luna Beads to extreme heat, and the customer service rep who handled my claim warned me that boiling the Luna Beads voids the warranty.

Either there is some inconsistency among LELO reps or they have updated their cleaning advice again.

LELO updated me:

Boiling LUNA Beads in the way I explained before is a fine method for cleaning. We do apologize if our Customer Care representative passed on the information that it automatically voided the warranty for LUNA Beads to your reader, but as I understand we did continue to honor the warranty in this case.

As to what it says in the user manual about “extreme heat,” we are trying to make sure customers do not expose their LELO products to unnecessary heat such as intense, direct sunlight over sustained periods of time, or trying to sterilize in a flame directly/ boil them incorrectly etc…

 

I’ve been contacted a few more times by people who have damaged their Luna Beads following the instructions I posted.  Many times, they were ignored by LELO customer service. They never had a response. Or they were told that they did something that broke the warranty. I was able to get them help by contacting LELO on social media.