face it cosmetics: a follow up

Like most normal people, I don't enjoy confrontations and negativity. I thought hard before I posted my review of Face It Cosmetics, and before I left negative feedback on Etsy. I would normally leave it there, but my experience with Heather and FIC has been so unpleasant that I feel the need to write about it again.

As you may remember from my review (you can go here to read it before you carry on) I found that the products I purchased were of middling to poor quality. As well as that, one of the products (Sparrow eyeshadow) was very different to the product photo, and one (gold gel eyeliner) was misrepresented by its name and description.

I wrote my review, and left the following feedback:

Now, let me make this clear: I take feedback very seriously. There have been a couple of occasions on which the wrong item was accidentally sent, or an item had gone bad during travel. I contacted the seller and allowed them to rectify the problem, and then gave good feedback.

However, the Face It Cosmetics order wasn't a mistake. These were sub-par products, and some of them were actually misleading. I left 2 negative feedback reviews and one neutral feedback review as a service to my fellow Etsy buyers, who deserve an honest review. Buying make-up over the net is risky, and I personally rely on reviews to help me decide what to buy. I feel that not posting honest feedback would have been unethical.

After I posted my feedback, I received a message from Heather:

I was a surprised by her tone and felt uncomfortable, but tried to respond in a respectful but honest way.

She responded:

Now I was really unimpressed. It is very unprofessional to a) take a customer to task for being honest about your products and b) ignore the actual criticism and instead make up excuses unrelated to the actual problems. Once again, I tried to answer politely and explain my position:

She did not respond to this email. I assumed this was the end of the matter, until I saw that my feedback rating on Etsy had dropped from 100% positive to 98%. Heather had left me negative feedback (even giving me three negative reviews when I had given her two negative and one neutral):

I was flabbergasted. As a buyer, my responsibility is to a) pay promptly and b) leave honest feedback. I am not obligated to contact a seller before I leave feedback, although Etsy suggests that buyers should do this (and under other circumstances, I do).

I am particularly disgusted by the note that "If she was unsure of the color then you [sic] should have asked." It is in no way my responsibility to contact a seller to ask if her product photo is accurate! In fact, here is feedback from another unhappy buyer:

(Indeed, there is a growing number of negative comments on the FIC feedback page, although sadly some people are leaving neutral feedback although they have had a very negative experience.) This buyer mentions the very same product (Sparrow eyeshadow) which I had a problem with. And if that wasn't damning enough, Heather has changed the product photo.

Before:


Now:

I don't think that my long, carefully thought-out messages to Heather can be called "poor communication." What she means is, "I tried to get her to change her feedback by offering her free products, and she refused, so I am giving her back feedback out of spite."

Normally I wouldn't care less about this, but I have an Etsy store. And now customers of my store will see a lower feedback score.

This experience has made me wary of buying from indie companies. From now on, I will be sticking to companies for whom I have read good reviews, like Linnaeus or Shiro, rather than trying out new ones. And it has definitely made me wary of Heartsy. (Speaking of which, Face It Cosmetics just had a second Heartsy sale, about a month after the first one. I have no idea why this would be a good move for a business.)

Ah well. I've learnt my lesson!

nails: grurple

After seeing Michelle of Eat Paint Sniff Glue rave about Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in 370: Commander in Chic in her Monday Manicure post, I had to try it! It's a really hard colour to describe: the closest I can come is a grey-mauve, which my husband dubbed "grurple."

It's kind of silly but the thing I really like about this colour is that it contains all colours and shades. It's got blue and red to make the purple; yellow to muddy it and add a little brown; and black and white for the grey. It looks a bit like a paint palette when you mix everything together before you wash it (not because you need to, just because it's fun).

The application was okay but not amazing, which was surprising; I thought that since Sally Hansen products are synonymous with nails it would be the best application ever, but it was a little more slow-drying than my beloved Rimmel polishes. Still miles better than cheapo brands, but for $16 (as opposed to Rimmel for less than $10) I was expecting a miracle.

I'll definitely be reapplying it, though. It's a lovely soft, chic colour for winter. Grurple!

review: face it cosmetics

This was my second Heartsy order (my first still has not arrived, and you had better believe I have a head of steam building up for a blog post about that). Face It Cosmetics are an Etsy store located in the US. This is their shop description:

Face It Cosmetics are fabulous healthy products that will help you put your best face forward no matter what life throws at you…FACE IT. Our Cosmetics will make you feel beautiful inside and out. All of our products contain a minimum number of ingredients (mostly natural ones) but still promise amazing products that really perform. The result is a professional product that is synthetic free. Makeup collections are perfectly pigmented products for eyes, lips, and face that are gentle and pure enough to use on all skin types. Indulge in something that is good for your skin and good for the environment.

I ordered five products: four eyeshadows and an eyeliner.



They arrived in a padded envelope: no note, no business card, no invoice, no samples. Here is where I think Face It made a big mistake. As I mentioned in my Heartsy post, this discount process only really works for a business if they manage to convert buyers into returning customers (which of course is what every business should be doing). For example, I recently bought some samples from Shiro Cosmetics (not through Heartsy). Even though I had only bought a bunch of samples, Caitlin included a business card, an invoice with a personal written note, two free samples, and two little Japanese candies. The whole lot was beautifully wrapped in a little gift bag inside the envelope. Now, I don't fault anyone for not adding more than I've paid for. However, what Caitlin managed to do was to turn opening that envelope into a fun, exciting, pleasurable experience. Even before I had tried the product, I was happy. As a result of that (and also the great quality of her product), I'm already planning my next purchase, and perhaps more importantly, I've been telling others about her.

Anyway, this is not a review of Shiro (although I will do one of those eventually). My point is that, perhaps because of the increased pressure that the Heartsy orders put them under, they did not manage to impress me with the package.



I swatched these onto my hand and was immediately disappointed. From the Etsy photos and descriptions, I had thought I was buying four very different colours; I had ended up with a white and three greys.



Photos taken outside, but not in direct light; I did no manipulation of the image. Colours were applied over Australis Eyeshadow Primer. (If you'd like to see a frighteningly large version of this photo, go here. Warning: it is freaky, and my apparently smooth arm skin is actually origami.)

All four colours had a LOT of fallout, as you can see in the photo, and were quite sheer-- I had to carefully dab them on to get them to look this pigmented.

First of all, I have no idea what possessed me to buy white eyeshadow, but Billowy Clouds was crazy with the fallout and very sheer. Sparrow was the biggest disappointment, because the product picture looks like this:



I was expecting the shadow to have a similar blue-pink colourshift effect, but all I can see is silver.

Sterling looks pretty much like the Etsy photo I guess, although poorly pigmented. Toasted Walnut is probably the prettiest of the colours, and I have worn it a couple of times, but it's not the intense party colour shown in the product photo, more of a work-safe colour.

The other big disappointment was the Gold Gel Eyeliner.



This is not a colour that I would describe as 'gold'. I imagined something akin to gold leaf; this is really more of a flat light tan or beige colour, with little to no shimmer. It's also not a gel by any stretch of the imagination, definitely a cream. The first stripe in the photo is with an eyeliner brush, the second a swatch with my finger.

So, I've left my first ever negative Etsy feedback. I felt pretty uncomfortable doing this; there is such a supportive tea-and-hugs ethos to Etsy, and bad feedback is taken very seriously. But I was disappointed in the product, and it wasn't due to an accident, it was due to poor product. While Suzanne has had some success with FIC's facial products, I will not be ordering from them again.