So, Birchbox is a monthly beauty box subscription service. You pay $10 per month and they mail you five deluxe sample sized beauty products. Basically it's the equivalent of a CSA produce box delivered right to your door every month....but instead of vegetables you get beauty products. What girl wouldn't love that?!
I've been a member for a few months so far and I'm sad to have to report that they are not as fantastic as they seem. *Sad face*
The good...
It's pretty cool to be exposed to new beauty products. Usually most of the items are sample size but generally one item will be a full size item...which is always nice. They work with awesome high end brands such as Stila, Nars, Kerastase, Dior, Tarte, Jurlique and more. So when you get a full size Stila item plus a few other deluxe sample items you really do get a good bang for your buck.
The bad…
The downside is that you don’t get to pick which samples you want. Upon signing up you fill out a beauty profile which is supposed to help the Birchbox team select the best type of products for you. But it doesn’t always work like that. They have a few different versions of their boxes each month and I get the feeling you just get assigned one probably by random computer generation. So there will be times when you get things that may not work with your skin tone or something that doesn’t work for you.
The ugly…
Customer service is horrid! My first month’s box never showed up. So I emailed Birchbox to let them know and I promptly received a generated email response telling me that someone from the team would be in contact within two working days. A week went by until I finally heard back from someone at Birchbox. And the only thing the email said was “Sorry it took so long to get back to you…blah blah blah. I’m sure you’re box has arrived by now.” The end. No help.
So I emailed them again to let them know that it hadn’t arrived yet. Another four or five days passed before I heard anything from the Birchbox team after which they mailed me a replacement box.
The second month rolled around and my box didn’t show up. The tracking information didn’t even work. I emailed them and it was a week before I heard back from anyone. Finally they mailed me a replacement box. But the products that I was sent in my replacement box were not the products I was told I was getting in my online account. Which is pretty lame. When I emailed them to let them know I was super unhappy about the box and my experience. They basically said “I’m sorry, blah blah blah.” And claimed they were just oh so busy that they didn’t have enough customer service support members to keep up with the emails and complaints. Bottom line is that is you don’t have enough customer support members to keep up with your client base…stop selling your product or hire more staff members!
I'm thinking about cancelling my subscription because Birchbox isnt the only beauty box subscription service on the block. There are plenty out there including Beauty Army, The Look Bag, Glossy Box, and more.
Post a Comment