Firstly, apologies for not being around as often. As most of you know, I'm currently 7 months pregnant with twins, so my energy levels are all over the shop. I have a lot of photos and drafts, I just need to get them into some posts! Please bear with me, I really appreciate that so many of you are still reading despite the infrequent posting of late.
Now - on to the tale of Beautybay and the Deborah Lippmann polish.
I turned 30 on June 21st this year. My sister, insisting that I'm impossible to buy for, gave me some money to spend online instead. It was right in the middle of the Beautybay sale - which included Deborah Lippmann polishes for less than half price. I've never owned a Lippmann - even though I'm a huge nail polish junkie, I can't justify spending €17-€20+ for one nail polish. The most expensive one I own is a Chanel that I won in a giveaway ages ago. Can you imagine my excitement when I saw a whole range of DL polishes reduced to half price? The one I chose was Ruby Red Slippers and it was on sale for just over €10 with free delivery. I thought I'd treat myself, given that it was a special birthday and a one-off treat.
I've written about my experience with Beautybay here before on this post - on that occasion, while my delivery was delayed, I praised their customer service for keeping me up to date and making me feel valued as a customer.
Not this time.
I placed my order on June 21st, 2013. By July 9th, it still hadn't arrived. I sent a friend a tweet asking if her order had arrived yet as I knew she'd ordered from the sale too, and she said hers had arrived the previous Friday. Beautybay hopped on the tweet and after checking my order number, explained that it had been posted on June 24th, but it would be delayed due to them not being allowed to send nail polish via airmail any longer. I said this was fine, I understood, I'd ordered before and I was expecting a delay. I still had no order by July 12th - 21 days after ordering - the first time I'd ordered, it had arrived at this point. I tweeted them telling them I wasn't impressed and that they might want to put a note on the site for international customers ordering nail polish and they replied that they already do - hidden in the "further information" category on the delivery page. On that page, they state that hazardous materials may take up to 10 days longer to reach their destination. Added to the 5-7 working days that's stated as the norm for them, this makes 17 days max. Not 21.
By July 19th (Day 28), I still didn't have an order and beautybay were no longer responding to my tweets. They did, however, respond to a group conversation in which I recommended someone NOT order from the sale. I received an e-mail almost immediately from Customer Services who obviously presumed it was lost, because they sent me a lost item declaration form and would not issue any sort of refund or replacement until I had printed it, signed it, scanned it, and e-mailed it. Or faxed it. Or, I could print it out and post it back to them at my own time and expense, therefore extending the whole sorry mess by another few weeks.
That was of absolutely no use to me - I didn't have printer ink at the time, I don't have a scanner, I don't have a fax machine, and I don't have the time or energy to go traipsing around to find somewhere to print, scan or fax.
I decided I'd just suffer the loss in the end and got so annoyed with the whole lot that I left it.
Until.........Praise Jeebus! It arrived! THIRTY TWO DAYS after I ordered it.
To put that into perspective - it was coming from the UK. Which is about five hours away from my front door. In the meantime, I'd actually designed a bag on a Chinese website, had it made, and had it in my hands almost two weeks before. I'd ordered nail polish from the UK, from China, from Hong Kong, from the USA, and it had all arrived. How is it that ASOS can post nail polish from the UK with absolutely no problems, and it arrives within a week?
I replied to the Customer Services e-mail to tell them that the item had, at last, made an appearance, and that I was incredibly dissatisfied with their service and would not be ordering from them again. Their response came a few days later - in the form of a generic "we are glad your item has arrived, we hope you are happy with it, can you fill out this delivery survey for a chance to win £50 so we can improve our services?"
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
I'll tell you what I told them - I think the fact that something took 32 days to get from the UK to Ireland should tell you all you need to know about your delivery service, cheers. I will never, ever, EVER order from that website again.
I haven't even taken the polish out of the box - it was supposed to be a special memento and all it does is remind me of the crap service I received.
I'll stick to Asos and my trustworthy eBay sellers in future.