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| MyGlam Bag May 2012 |
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| Studio Gear Complete Color Lipstick |
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| Miss Beauty - Nail Bling |
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| Philosophy Love Sweet Love |
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| MyGlam Concealer Brush and Defining Eyeliner Brush |
MyGlam does require you to fill out some kind of beauty info page when you sign up, but apparently this is all about demographics. So they don't care to categorize groups of people by skin tone or hair color and send them appropriate products. It is clear from all the feedback I have received on my MyGlam videos that random colors are distributed and some people get colors that do not compliment them.
Not to mention the continuing debacle with shipping problems (many of their subscribers received multiple bags, meaning that others received nothing because they were shipped to the wrong address!), people being charged for bags that they never received and having issues obtaining refunds, bad customer service and having to update your credit card information because after a few months MyGlam decided to change their credit card processing service.
I did experience issues when I paid for but did not receive my first MyGlam bag, but after a few emails to MyGlam I was refunded.
And this month is no exception. I got "Nail Bling" that is appropriate for a 14 year old, but a sophisticated deep red lipstick by Studio Gear called "Autumn Red" - and guess what? It's SPRING! The color is lovely but it would look garish if I wore this right now. It's a color I'll keep until October.
This kind of thing does not benefit the company being featured - in this case, Studio Gear - because if I don't use the product now, like it and decide to buy more products in the near future, I doubt I'll get around to it in October.
If you are still on the fence, hold off on this one. For the same amount of money, Birchbox is infinitely better. More expensive sample boxes are now here - hello GlossyBox! And then there is always New Beauty's TestTube.
I'll continue to feature MyGlam for a few months, but at the rate they are going, the whole company appears to be a sloppy amateur afterthought and this shows no signs of abating.
- The Sassi Wench
4 comments:
Hi Sassi,
I love watching your Youtube channel and decided to follow you to this blog. While I'm sorry that this month's bag was really disappointing for you, I think you're misrepresenting the company a little in terms of the shipping and the billing services.
I don't know about the shipping issues during the month of May, but I know that they had shipping issues back in January and February. People were missing bags and they sent other people multiple bags instead during January and February. I think that they were really struggling during those monthes and so they shut down subscriptions for the month of March. Then during that month, they tried to fix their system to get everyone's information straight and I think that improvement was reflected in the monthes of March and April when the bags shipped on time with miminal issues. As for the billing goes, I think it was in mid March when they were trying to fix the shipping address problems, they tried to update their website so that people could change/update their billing methods and information. Since they wanted to sort of "reboot" everyone onto a new system, they needed to get all of their current subscribers to update their information onto their new system to avoid inconsistencies and to verify they had the correct information. I felt that you blog post was misinterpreting a messy situation they faced a few months ago and the remark about being an inconvenience of updating their information was a misinterpretion of their attempt to improve. Of course that being said, I still think they do have a long way to go. They do still need to figure out how to make a beauty profile that is fitted to a subscriber's personal preferences. They do need to get better selection of products. I wasn't too impressed with most of the products of May's bag, but I LOVED the lipstick. And reflecting back upon the previous month's items, the lipstick really makes it one of my favorite items from any subscription company, Birchbox or MyGlam. As for high end brands like the ones you find in Birchbox, I'm pretty sure that MyGlam won't get on board with them. I get the feeling they're a company that's targeting middle of the road (or moderately priced) cosmetic companies as opposed to luxury brands. For me, I think that's okay because realistically, I'm not going to shell out the money to pay for those kind of products since I'm only a poor student. But I definitely think that MyGlam has made some leaps in their customer service, their bag delivery, and their product selection. Their nadar was really in February, I think. Anyways, thanks for the blog post. I just wanted to provide a counter perspective to your thoughts.
Hello! Reading your post definitely gives me a different perspective on MG, but I think what really irked me was the fact that they appeared to be one thing - their first bag was really good, the website is glossy and professional, and Michelle Phan was representing - and then ended up being something else entirely.
I really got the impression that they would be better than or at least the same as Birchbox, although for the same price. Instead it seems as if they weren't really ready to go live and run a business and ultimately they couldn't cope with the workload and simply print out address labels and mail off our bags.
It happened to me in February - I emailed them several times and I was told I had two tracking numbers and maybe I would be "lucky" because they would refund me and anyway I would get two bags! I didn't appreciate the fact that I would maybe get two bags for free and someone else wouldn't get their bag.
As it turned out, I didn't get any bags and I just got a refund instead.
I have had subscribers of my YT channel email me and complain about all sorts of problems - MG not responding to emails, receiving dirty bags, receiving bags with missing products, receiving bags that smelt like chemicals... the list goes on.
From a business perspective - I do strongly feel that you really need to have a good business sense of how to run a company like this and actual experience and know what you are doing. With all of the problems they have been having with shipping and credit card processing, it's obvious they haven't had much experience.
I don't really want to talk about my own job here because I never go into all that but I do manage a similar kind of business (although in a completely different industry) for a large international company, and all of these issues could have been avoided if they had hired the right people in the first place. So I suppose what I mean is that it just all looks cheap - a great website but they maybe hired the wrong people (inexperienced) who caused all of these problems, sent some multiple bags, some dirty bags, email problems, etc.
It's not a great start, I agree, but I do think they will improve and I really hope their product selection will improve - I'm willing to give them a chance.
Thanks for the message, though - I appreciate the interaction.
Hi Sassi,
Thanks for responding to my comment! I definitely agree that I thought it would be an equal and alternative rival to Birchbox too after seeing its first box. However, I'm new to all of this subscription boxes stuff and so while the brands that MyGlam have been sending out are not as high end as Birchbox's, I still have been receiving products that I have been able to use. I do think that since it has been several months, their identity as a makeup subscription company has become clearer. To me, I see them as a middle-of-the-road subscription company who will try to grab brands from both moderately priced cosmetic companies to drugstore brands. However, with Birchbox, I see them more as a company that is trying to introduce high end brands that have more recognizability, and I'm not sure that MyGlam will ever be like Birchbox in terms of its product offerings. But then, I don't see that as a negative. It's just a company sampling alternative brands.
That being said, I think that the only rival alternative to Birchbox in terms of products and maybe points system will be Glossybox. But, they're $21 a month and that's not an affordable price, especially since for gambling on samples.
I have to agree with you in that MyGlam ran into all of these problems due to inexperience. From what I've seen from Twitter and Facebook, I feel that most of the people running company (customer service representatives AND IT technicians) are recent college graduates. The CEO himself, who studied at a prestigious business school, has only ever dealt with financial firms and running a comedy production company, which is a far cry from running a makeup subscription company. I personally believe that the May's bag was probably meant for February but something happened (that we don't know about) that prevented it from going out in February. As a result, they had to scramble to get random products to put into the February bag and that's why it was such an odd mixture of meager samples and strange products. The shipping problems only began to manifest itself when they got larger. Also, I don't think they ever thought about allowing people to change their billing information or shipping address until people started requesting for it.
Oh! I forgot to do what I came here to do. I just someone try on her stick of Autumn Red lipstick (the same color as the lipstick you received) and it looked great on her! Despite it's name, the color was a bright and vibrant reddish orange. She said it went on smoothly and was pretty moisturizing. So don't fear, try out the lipstick. Maybe it won't be too dark for you and you can wear it as a summer color?
She had medium toned skin by the way.
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