Bondi - The Fall Out

Now I already posted a warning about Bondi, but I wanted to let you know the way everything has played out since my blogpost. First off, we all knew Richard had a temper. Posts like this are the norm for this gentleman. 

So I knew he was going to be very unhappy when I posted the blogpost and I figured he would threaten me with legal action. So when he told me he was sending his lawyer after me I was not surprised. I WAS surprised (not so much actually) that the letter came from Richard himself, typos and all!

I am a smartass and while I did take down the picture of theirs, I otherwise was not worried and sent him a response. I thanked him (Richard by name) and told him I was not concerned. And would be leaving the post up.

He did not respond to ME again, but he was very unhappy and turned off commenting on his facebook page, deleted a whole lot of his posts, and started blaming me for EVERY cancelled susbcription.

The irony is, the girl who got this letter posted above was NOT cancelling because of me.

But really people, DONT WORRY! Hes 35 and ripped of people in ELEVEN other businesses! Doesn't that make you feel better?! I wont list all the companies and charges against them, google his name and you can find them yourselves.

He really does blame ME though. He hasnt sent boxes out in two months and has started charging for November boxes. And yet its MY FAULT? (and I did quote my sources thank you).

Now the biggest irony of this rant above (made in a private group) is that I was NOT a part of the Bondi Hate Group. I was actually added a few weeks ago, disgusted by a group that was essentially created just to bully someone and not ONLY did I leave straight away, I posted a long rant on my facebook page in protest and FOUGHT with the creator of the group about it! And the post is STILL on my wall! I wonder how Richard will explain THAT?

But. now comes the MOST concerning thing as far as I am concerned. I already noted the charity does not exist. But if he were to be lying about donating money to charity, there could be legal ramifications for HIM. I wanted to know where and since I was pretty sure he would not answer me, I had someone ask on my behalf. 

Doing some past research, another company of his, eazyrecruit has a press release where he even gives a date he is going to give them a 5,000 pounds sterling check. to a charity. And, besides not giving them money, he bounced a check for his gala dinner tickets. The girl who spoke to them got persmission to post the letter, and here it is:

So people started looking into OTHER charities he supposedly donates too. Afterall, the above letter is four years ago. Maybe this immature lying  32 year old grew up! 

Now, a response was received  from the Food Bank but they asked the original poster of the email to take it down. Their legal team is looking into things! The summary is that they have an agreement with Richard, that he will donate $25,000 and that to date they have received no money from him. So I guess he LIED at least about sending them $5000 already. 

How about the Red Cross?

And the email someone got back from the Red Cross?

Now, if you scam the red cross and disaster relief victims by claiming to raise money for them, and then you don't donate the proceeds to them, the Federal Department of Justice steps in. Anyone have a contact number for them? Wouldn't this be a good time to have them do some looking?

Got to love the girls on MakeupTalk - when they arent bashing me for hating on Bondi!

Well, I guess all this has been too much for Bondi to handle today, as they just sent subscribers a message. 

Now, someone asked me, do I feel responsible for this? Am I patting myself on the back? I really dont, and am not. Did my blogpost push or suggest to SOME subscribers to possibly be a little less trusting and maybe ask a few more questions? I hope so. Did my post maybe give a few people the push they needed to do some digging of their own? Maybe. But did I cause or start this? I merely gave people some more information. If I did ANYTHING, it was merely to speed up the process that Bondi was already in the midst of. 

BEWARE Of Bondi NY!!

Let me start by explaining the reason behind this post. I posted recently about how I disgusted I was with the Julep promotion. I seem to have had a lot of people think that I liked the company and just disliked the promotion. The idea seems to be that I was disappointed in a company I liked for such a disgusting add campaign. Let me start by saying this.

Now lets make sure I keep this all nice and legal and such. These are just MY opinions. My opinion is I wouldn't trust this company or the owner as far as I could throw him. And again, MY OPINION. I don't quite know why I am so worried about legal stuff since the lawyer and law firm he claims represents him and threatens to use doesn't exist and its address is an empty building. But I will be careful none the less. 

Ok, so the obvious question at this point is why don't I trust him? Oh so many reasons! Lets start with properly introducing him to all of you. His name is Richard Annington. You can see his Linked In profile here:

Now just in this page there are MAJOR issues that need to be addressed. The Founder and Board Member at Beauty Gives Back sounds like a snazzy title! Too bad this is a non existent charity. It has not yet actually been created. Hmm..... Thats interesting.... And issue number one I have. 

Now issue number two. Gotham Beauty. His LAST beauty box service. What? Whats that you ask? You didnt know Bondi is not his first rodeo?

At the most simplistic and basic level, I dont want to deal with someone whose previous yet very similar business was rated with an F on the Better Buisness Bureau site. But lets go to the review centre page and see, maybe they have some more in depth information. 

So basically, according to the reviews, he doesn't pay people, people don't get their stuff, and then he closes up shop and runs away. That sounds like someone I want to subscribe to a beauty box from. Not. 

Now I did make a snide comment about his "lawyers". I guess he does have SOME lawyers since you can also find this piece of info online:

I guess its a good thing. With all the shady dealings from Gotham Beauty, I think the owners of Gotham Beauty Lounge should be THANKING Richard for making them change their names (if they did). I wouldn't WANT to risk being confused with them! That would NOT be good for business!

Now lets move on to Bondi. The point of this article. According to the Bondi website in  the about page. 

"We're working on some awesome content for this page as text is just plain boring, however, in the meantime, here's a little something about us:
Launched in 2013, Bondi New York is a collection of twenty fashion forward colors that are five free (formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin, camphor, toluene and DBP). Based out of New York, our brand is American made with all of the net profits going to our non-profit foundation which supports a wide variety of charitable causes throughout the United States."

But once more, their non profit foundation has not yet been liscensed. It is pending, but as of yet does not exist. If I were creating a company with the intent of funnelling all profits to a charity, I think I would get that started first. Yes, it can take up to a year, but it takes that long to start a company, get the product, and production and everything else ready to sell product. If Bondi has been around for 9 months, he should have had this foundation up and running by now.

"Beauty Gives Back exists solely to channel the profits from the sale of Bondi New York brand nail polish to charitable causes in the countries that we operate. More information on our giving back efforts is available by emailing hello at bondinewyork.com"

But yes, nowhere in the state of Delaware is this charity ACTUALLY registered as far as I can find. 9 months in its still pending. And yet that is supposedly where the money all goes.

Richard claims that its not tasteless because Julep doesnt respond to messages online withing 120 minutes like he does. He is correct there. They dont. But they do all sorts of crazy things that Bondi DOESNT do. Like ship boxes. Thats right. These posts were all made last week. And at that point NO September OR October boxes had been shipped out. Yet he started this promotion to get new members to join. I guess he needed to replace all the people cancelling due to NOT GETTING BOXES.

They are super different from the competition. Absolutely! Competition SENDS boxes. oops. I guess that is NOT what he meant. He shortly afterwards posted a facebook message thanking the 700+ new subscribers who signed up that day. I would think when you are behind TWO MONTHS you should not actively seek 700+ subscribers but  what do I know? I am merely a beauty addict who subscribes to services such as this one (such as, but NOT).

Hmm....... so this was just posted the other day. Seems people will be charged for NOVEMBER before they ever get SEPTEMBER.

And if you happen to be in the NYC area, you may decide to go pick up your box. And forget about waiting for it to be shipped. But wait. Thats been done. It doesnt work too well either! OOPS!! (this post was taken off of makeuptalk.

So yes, for those and so many more reasons I wont go into (google his name, check him out yourself!) I wont be purchasing from him. Now he started sending out september shipping notices at the beginning of this week. But so far all the tracking information suggests they printed labels, but have not yet shipped anything. I dont know if that is true or not. I find it hard to believe usps would mess up EVERYONE'S tracking but its possible. So people MIGHT get September and October boxes. But I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the company will eventually pick up and pull a Glym. Again, this is NOT fact.

Bondi NY - Quite AMAZING Flexibility!

no original source able to be found!

So I am working on a review of Bondi New York polishes even as I type this post. But I must say, the ability of the company to stick its foot in its mouth OVER AND OVER is quite astounding.  I can forgive quite a bit. Especially if I think its coming from a place of good intentions of if I think it was simply a regrettable comment.

This however, is INEXCUSABLE! How can one small indie brand do this? How about this tweet "Love @JulepMaven? Sign up with @BondiNYC for a double dose of polish every month!" That would have been nice. The code JULEPANDBONDI would have worked! But to trash a company like this is inexcusable. I am NOT impressed!!!

Bondi - How do you get your foot so far in your mouth? Its quite astounding!