Dear Lip Monthly Team,
First off, I would like to thank you for finally pushing me into the realm of Youtube. Secondly, I wish to inform you that this is not a letter intended to bash or put down Lip Monthly, merely to allow for insight into a customer's experience with said company. Thirdly, I think it's important to point out to you the way that some (not all, but a fair number) of your customers have been feeling, and how some of us feel we've been treated by your company. Now I'm not saying that all of your customers are disappointed, but it's become more and more frequent that I see angry and frustrated customers on your social media. I have to say that I personally am very upset by the treatment I have received, and I no longer choose to recommend people to your company. To explain why, I will give you my first hand account of what I have experienced with Lip Monthly.
In August of 2014 I heard about a new subscription service. It seemed to fit well into my "smackdown series" on my blog, which compares and contrasts two beauty subscription boxes. For $10 a month and free shipping, I would receive four lip products and one non-lip item. Since there wasn't a whole lot I could dig up on the company, I decided to take a leap of faith and give it a shot. It was through the Lip Monthly Facebook page that I started speaking to a fellow blogger who was a big supporter of the company. I got my first bag in September of 2014 along with a lot of promises of greater things on the horizon. I enjoyed that bag quite a bit and along with the rest of your subscribers made a few well-received suggestions.
The next month you declared you would be switching bag designs every month, something most subscribers found very exciting. When the bag arrived I was extremely happy with the progress that seemed to be happening. At some point soon before my November bag I recall asking on your social media if I could still redeem points for an extra bag. The answer I got was yes and that I simply needed to contact customer service. After my November bag, I had enough points so I sent an email as previous;y instructed. The wait for a reply was longer than it should have been, but not painful. However the reply was very annoying. After being told I could redeem points for a bag via Facebook, I was told by customer care that this was no longer an option and I needed to spend my points in the shop.
Reluctantly I browsed the shop for something interesting, and finally decided on the deVine Lip Shimmer in Merlot since in a previous bag I got the same product in Pinot Noir, and I thought I could do a review on them. On November 31st I made my purchase and was a little peeved that I had to pay shipping.
I then waited and mostly forgot about my purchase when I saw promises of new features on the site, and got caught up in the holiday season. It was around Christmas when I realized I still hadn't received a package. I decided to contact customer service after I got on my account and realized I never even had a tracking code. Customer care again took too long to respond and when they did I got a very uncaring person telling me they'd refund my money and points and that was the last I heard from them. I actually suspect that if I hadn't said anything that they wouldn't have refunded my money or points.
At this point, I had already cancelled due to lack of funding (it was actually a Christmas gift that got me a Birchbox subscription) and I intended to resubscribe at a later date. Even though I was upset I decided to give you another chance and spend my shop points on some lip balms. I purchased two items and I have not seen any evidence that they were ever sent out. On top of that I hear stories about how people were charged for bags after they cancelled, have never received bags from months back or have had just as much if not more difficulty getting a hold of customer service. It was also around this time that I heard you were discontinuing the monthly mix up and putting more high end products in the bags. As far as I could tell the monthly mix up was brought back. I'm not sure how I feel about this anyway, but it definitely didn't motivate me to resubscribe.
On multiple occasions it took me around a week if not longer to get a response from customer support. I want to make it clear that I do not think Lip Monthly is a bad company, but I also have not had very many good experiences with them either. I will continue keeping tabs and hoping to see improvements. I'm writing this with the hope that it will make you take a closer look at your company and think about how your customers feel.
Sincerely,
Courtney
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