Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Epic Rewards to Epic Failures to $50 Apologies

A few weeks ago Sephora hosted what could easily be described as one of the most horribly executed events ever seen in the beauty industry. A week long bonus points event was held with the promise of EPIC REWARDS the next day! Which sounded awesome! The rewards were amazing!





See? AMAZING rewards! Now I work a pretty a flexible job and like many I was updating the website pretty much non stop for 12 hours. LITERALLY. I feel kind of embarrassed saying that but its true. And the reason I like many others was updating non stop is because Sephora REFUSED to tell anyone when the rewards would be loaded. And then at noon PST (2pm my time), BAM! They were there! But within seconds (Sephora denied when called later that the rewards only lasted a minute or two and say they lasted much longer) they were all gone. Literally by the time I was forced to log in again all the rewards were gone. If they had 20 of each reward I would honestly be shocked!

Now, having only a few, being ultra exclusive could have been ok. IF they had been honest about it. If they had not sent 3,323 emails to every beauty insider, VIB and Rouge member for the entire week leading up to it reminding everyone to shop now to get bonus points to use on the Monday. It was going to be EPIC! EPIC REWARDS!

That turned in to EPIC FAILURE! It also lead to mass returns from insiders who felt conned in to shopping. I bet Ulta couldn't have gotten as much publicity or sales that resulted if they tried! Not that us Canadians had that option. I was beyond annoyed. I then get this email from a friend on facebook:


I guess this was tweeted out, though I never ever would have seen it if not for the message from a friend. So I did email. I had NO IDEA what would come of it, though I was pretty sure it was going to be a totally lame discount code for 10 or 20% off. It turns out, we all got $50 gift cards! No minimum purchase amount, no hoops to jump through, and good unitl the end of September (and holiday sets should start coming out pretty soon!!).

Let me just say, this was a HORRIBLE way to solve the problem. Yes, I am happy. Yes, I am sure everyone who saw the tweet and got the $50 is at least somewhat happier. But what about everyone not on twitter? Everyone who got screwed who did not happen to see this email? There was no attempt on Sephoras part to distribute this to everyone. Sephora as a brand did not tweet this. Who is @Calvin_Sephora? I assume many of you know who this Calvin McDonald is, but I sure don't. And I bet a lot more also don't .

So while I am thrilled to get a $50 gift card, I feel awful for all those who were equally disappointed in the sale who are all sitting here now upset that they were not informed of this email.

What do you guys think? Did you take part? Did you GET an epic reward? Did you see this tweet and get a $50 I'm Sorry Gift Card?

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