For my birthday a few years ago, I was given a Conair Body Benefits Bubbling Foot Spa by my adoring husband. My feet were painful almost constantly thanks to some bad tendonitis dating back to my skating days. He thought it might be nice to give me something to help alleviate some of the discomfort.

In the beginning, I loved my foot spa. It had nice big foot areas and you'd fill this puppy up with very warm water. Then I'd choose one of two settings using push buttons: "Vibrations & Heat" or "Bubbles & Heat". If I was feeling adventurous, I'd press both buttons at the same time to get all three effects. There is no option for just bubbles or just vibrations without the heat. Be aware that by "heat", it doesn't mean that the foot spa will make the water hot; it merely keeps it from cooling quite so quickly.

This foot spa is big enough to handle all the feet in our family from my toddler's size 5's to my husband's size 14. There's still room in there for larger sizes too if you have even larger feet. It's made of a hard plastic and is pretty sturdy in that respect.

The spa does feel nice on the feet, simply because of the massaging design of the foot of the basin where there are raised circles in various sizes which you can rub your feet upon for some massaging goodness in addition to the vibration mode. If that's not enough pressure, there are three "pedicure attachments" which are simply hard plastic and sit atop the center of the spa. One is covered in massage disks like the bottom of the spa, one and concentric circles and the third has these silly rubber spikes that remind me of those spike balls that kids can put on their heads. I've no idea what happened to my extra attachments other than the one installed on my spa. It would have been nice if Conair had designed a storage caddy for these somewhere on the spa.

The other design flaws I experienced dealt with the cord. In my large bathroom, unless I perch on the side of the tub, there's nowhere to sit. I don't feel comfortable carting large bins of water about the house atop carpeting so I'd prefer to use this in the bathroom. The cord is only 6 feet long so it simply doesn't reach from the side of the tub to any of the outlets in my bathroom. I also don't want to use an extension cord in the bathroom so I have to bring in a chair every time I want to use the spa. On top of this, there is no storage for the cord so it just sort of wraps around and usually comes loose.

Did the spa help my aching feet? Not really. You see, it was nice enough the first time I used it. I liked being able to keep my hot water hot. Unfortunately, I used some göt2b Spa Foot Retreat Soak the second time. My problems began as soon as I turned on the bubbles and the vibration options on my foot spa. All of a sudden, I had bubbles everywhere as the product lathered and started spilling over the sides of the spa, despite only using a very small amount of the product.

This could be a shortcoming in the foot soak department (and probably is based on other experiences with göt2b products) and the spa worked just fine the next time I used it without any type of foot soak. But when I used the spa the fourth time, the bubbles function no longer worked. I checked the aeration jet strips which did not appear to be clogged and even cleaned each one out to be sure using my Pampered Chef Cake Tester. Still no bubbles. The vibrating feature still worked so I figured I'd still hang on to the foot spa.

When I tried to use the spa one more time, try number five was unsuccessful. You see, neither the vibrations nor the bubbles worked this time. I might as well just use a bucket to soak my feet because all I'm getting is hot water and that's just what I started with. It's my belief that a consumer product such as the Conair Body Benefits Bubbling Foot Spa should last for at least five uses, and preferably many more.

Recommended: No