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Call it superstitious, but I implore you: Don't ever call HSN to do an on-air testimonial for something you've purchased, no matter how much you love whatever it is.

Why? Because the love affair will come to a crashing stop. And it's a crying shame — okay, not exactly crying, because that's a bit dramatic, so let's say disappointing — when love turns to hate.

A while back, Paul and I watched in awe as renowned chef Todd English demonstrated a full line of nonstick cookware called GreenPan. He and the HSN hosts showed even the most caramelized foods sliding right off the pans, as if the food itself were made of teflon. So, we ordered the full set.

The pots and pans performed beautifully. Nothing stuck. Idyllic cleanup. We giggled like schoolgirls. It was a blissful few months of cooking and cleanup.

And then came the evening we were flipping through the million channels of nothing to watch, and we came across another Todd English segment on HSN, and there it was: our beloved GreenPan set.

Paul said, "I should call in and do a testimonial."

"With your accent," I said, "they'll put you right on."

And so they did.

I immediately powered up the DVR and got ready for the hosts to take Paul's phone call live on HSN. (The segment is still on our DVR, by the way, but I lack the savvy to transfer it to any other medium.)

For three minutes, Paul kvelled over the quality of the pans and the nonstick ecstasy they'd delivered. "I threw our other pans in the trash," he stated dramatically.

Beginning the very next time we used a GreenPan, which was probably a couple of days later, the pans practically required sandblasting after use. No matter what we cooked, or how we cooked it, the food stuck to the pan. The pans began to develop stains we could not remove. Even soaking the pans overnight didn't help. We followed every care instruction for the pans, beginning on day one, so it's not as if we'd done something to compromise the nonstick feature.

It was as if the gods of irony had tuned in to HSN that evening and said, "You seem to be enjoying this cookware too much. We'll fix that."

We began to hate the GreenPan. "Ugh," I'd say. "You're going to cook with that? Get out the chisel."

Weeks later, Paul finally got fed up and called HSN, and they graciously agreed to exchange the blackened GreenPan pan for a new one — and it was just as bad. This repeated itself over and over. We've gotten several replacements, each as poor as the previous version.

I'm convinced that calling HSN to gush over something is pure jinx. Heed my warning: Even if you love those Huggable Hangers more than life itself, or that multipurpose ladder has helped you save a million kittens from trees ... don't call HSN and do a testimonial. Let it be your private joy. Trust me.