Julep Mystery Box: Jewel Heist

[Gypsy]

Since it seems like I will have to stop this company unfortunately.   We are on a very tight budget.  My skin can be finicky and I dont get a chance to go to a mall anymore.  I hate to purchase full sized items unless I know I can use it and it not go to waist.

 

[tulosai]

Since it seems like I will have to stop this company unfortunately.   We are on a very tight budget.  My skin can be finicky and I dont get a chance to go to a mall anymore.  I hate to purchase full sized items unless I know I can use it and it not go to waist.

Yes, I took a box this month but regret it now.  Before that I don't even remember when I last took one.  I only keep my account because i am grandmothered into skips and $20 boxes. Without that, I'd be a goner and even now I am considering cancelling altogether.  I still hope they might turn things around though.

 

[AshleyBeauty13]

The sad thing is, they used to be pretty good. Not amazing, necessarily, but a lot better than this one.

Julep really  has gone downhill since i joined. I think it was like January of this year they got a whole round of venture capital funding ($7M I believe) and they removed a lot of the perks mavens who've been around liked. Even small things like getting a good bonus for taking the box. It seems now that Julep is just about the bottom line to these investors :/ But it is Jane's name and reputation on the line. Does she think she's reached a critical mass? sigh.

Yeah I got the Spring 2013 mystery box and loved it! I was new to Julep and had purchased two Sea Salt mystery boxes after, and when the temptation came for another mystery box, I just kept looking at the reviews and they got worse and worse :/

 

[AshleyBeauty13]

It's too bad this company seems so slimy now.  I have only taken the January box this year, and then the June box I got for free with my Jules.  That is it.  Money has been very tight, so I have had to skip all these months, even yesterday, my favorite month.  But, nothing I can do.   With the complaints of all of the old products in these mystery boxes, even though I haven't bought a mystery box in over a year, I literally only think I will buy new products from them, like the stuff in the monthly boxes. haha   I am blessed that I am allowed to skip without penalty.

 

[TooMuchElectric]

I've been going round and round on the lip gloss issue and added that I just opened my serum last night and it smells rancid. I asked if this was how it was supposed to smell.

I've gone through two bottles of the serum. When I started using it, it smelled nice. I can't remember what it smelled like, but it was pleasant. Towards the end of the second bottle, it smelled like canola oil. I've learned now that I should only buy oils when I need them, and not a sale earlier. Stockpiling is useless if it's a time-sensitive product like that.

 

[Lolo22]

Wow and 3 winners posted in the julep swap group and all 3 had broken polishes in their prize!

 

[JC327]

Wow and 3 winners posted in the julep swap group and all 3 had broken polishes in their prize!

Oh  I saw that, I hope Julep replaces it for them.

 

[JC327]

I wrote to Julep last week about the old mascara and my eye liner is dried up.  I still have not heard back from them. I wonder if they are just not responding to emails now or are just getting so many emails theyre behind. I was also looking for the eye liner on their page and it doesnt appear there anymore.

 

[itsoliviaaah]

So nobody on here has won the birthstone collection I assume? :/

 

[sparkles595959]

I wrote to Julep last week about the old mascara and my eye liner is dried up. I still have not heard back from them. I wonder if they are just not responding to emails now or are just getting so many emails theyre behind. I was also looking for the eye liner on their page and it doesnt appear there anymore.

Maybe your email got lost..I would email again. I emailed them around the same time for the same exact things. We have been going back and forth for the last week though bc I didn't notice the mascara date when I noticed the eyeliner. Basically they offered a nail polish for each thing. Plus they are say the mascara is not old. I told her I would like to know when it was manufactured then so I am waiting for that response. I definitely believe its old and now they are trying to cover it up and give other excuses.

 

[JC327]

Maybe your email got lost..I would email again. I emailed them around the same time for the same exact things. We have been going back and forth for the last week though bc I didn't notice the mascara date when I noticed the eyeliner. Basically they offered a nail polish for each thing. Plus they are say the mascara is not old. I told her I would like to know when it was manufactured then so I am waiting for that response. I definitely believe its old and now they are trying to cover it up and give other excuses.

I finally got a response from them offering an add on for free and pretty much saying that I ordered a mystery box so I knew the risks. I am not satisfied with this response since I got the expired mascara and the eye liner is dried. I dont know if anyone else had better luck getting anything else back from them. This experience has left a very sour taste in my mouth about the company and  I dont think I will be recommending them to anyone else in the future.

 

[boxesandboxes]

i kind of don't want to hear about the jewel heist again. i fee like such a fool for falling for it. then i see there are new posts in this thread /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" />

 

[zadidoll]

I finally got a response from them offering an add on for free and pretty much saying that I ordered a mystery box so I knew the risks. I am not satisfied with this response since I got the expired mascara and the eye liner is dried. I dont know if anyone else had better luck getting anything else back from them. This experience has left a very sour taste in my mouth about the company and  I dont think I will be recommending them to anyone else in the future.

I fought with them on that point because while a mystery box is a risk the risk is not that the products are old, expired, discontinued or unusable. Them sending out those types of products does fall under bait and switch as well as misleading advertising which is against not only Federal laws but Washington State RCWs.

 

[sparkles595959]

I fought with them on that point because while a mystery box is a risk the risk is not that the products are old, expired, discontinued or unusable. Them sending out those types of products does fall under bait and switch as well as misleading advertising which is against not only Federal laws but Washington State RCWs.

That's what I said as well. Mystery boxes should definitely be usable products and I would like to see Jane/julep employees using those things.

 

[DragonChick]

I finally got a response from them offering an add on for free and pretty much saying that I ordered a mystery box so I knew the risks. I am not satisfied with this response since I got the expired mascara and the eye liner is dried. I dont know if anyone else had better luck getting anything else back from them. This experience has left a very sour taste in my mouth about the company and  I dont think I will be recommending them to anyone else in the future.

So they're essentially saying that it's okay to send old, expired goods in mystery boxes. Did they not realise this was going to come back and bite them in the posterior at some point?

 

[kawaiimeows]

So now there's an inherent risk that you might get expired, discontinued, and unusuable products in the mystery boxes? Nice, Julep.  :laughing:

 

[normajean2008]

@ is right. The mystery boxes, when first launched, were amazing and contained unique polishes not released during the monthly boxes then somewhere along the line the mystery boxes became a dumping ground for Julep to sell their "sale" products. Newer subscribers wouldn't realize that the items in the mystery boxes are OLD products but older subscribers would.

Mystery boxes were a million times better than now, back when they did them only every 3 months or so at a time.  During their first year there wasn't a freaking mystery box EVERY single month, so they were cool and special and meant something.  I don't know why they thought it would be an awesome idea to change it early this year to a monthly mystery box (other than greed).  

My opinion is they suck so much now because of the frequency of them.  They don't have to entice as many people to buy each time, because there are so many. They are just common crap now, vs a timed out/planned/themed special box.  

Fact of the matter is, Jane is lying about not knowing any of this stuff like she claims in the recent article floating around the web.  Blatant lie.  She was participating on Facebook while person after person complained to her.  

Fact of the matter is, they knowingly mislead people into buying this mystery box.  They made sure to word it so people would technically know they wont get a box full of beautiful birthstone colors (unless they were the winner), but they knew they were lying about the value of the items.  They knew people would get pukey old colors that do NOT fit the theme.  As a customer, if a company tells me I'm buying a themed item, I expect to receive that.  It is also bunk that they put things that have been on deep discount for over a year in the box, but claim FULL retail value.  If it has been on official clearance for more than a month, it has no retail value to me as a customer.  It's value is the clearance price.  Items in retail stores that have been on clearance as long as these Julep products have been, get priced out to a dollar and written off after that.  It should be no different with Julep, in my opinion.  

Fact of the matter is, Julep has been using the SAME excuses why things go wrong since they started the sub service.  You can only use those kinds of excuses once, in my opinion.  After that you know what to do and how to go about it, to ensure things don't get to that point over and over.  How many times do they need to claim they're increasing their support team, if they're actually doing it?  Rinse and repeat on all the constant issues.  If they were being honest and respectable in their business practices, they wouldn't even need all that extra support and such.  They never had so many public complaints like today before they got the investment deal at the beginning of the year.  

Fact of the matter is, they sold out and no longer give a crap about their original program, what got them on the map in the first place, and now they clearly don't care much about their customer base.  All they care about is money, greed, and as long as they keep getting "suckers" to sign up (a good deal of them unaware of the hassles and what they're signing up for), they don't really care about all the older members leaving, especially the original mavens with skips etc still.  They are TRYING to push out the old ones, that's why they keep making changes to screw them over one by one.  

Julep doesn't seem to understand what makes people truly stick around as a loyal customer, and they don't understand how to ration out promotions.  Doing too much at once, changing things too fast/too much, running the same promos too often (mystery boxes), and constantly ignoring things until legal options are brought up publicly are going to be a true downfall for them if they don't step it up.  Quantity is more important that quality to them now.  

I think they owe everybody who didn't win a birthstone polish or big winner collection a refund, or at the very least a store credit in the same amount spent.  

 

[DragonChick]

They also can't be arsed to say when something's out of stock. My replacement lip pencil was apparently on back order, and neither the website or the CS rep who entered the order bothered to mention this. I only found this out after a week and a half with no shipping email and an almost half hour long phone call. The gal on the phone was helpful, but in general, I don't think their CS is improving.

 

[JC327]

I fought with them on that point because while a mystery box is a risk the risk is not that the products are old, expired, discontinued or unusable. Them sending out those types of products does fall under bait and switch as well as misleading advertising which is against not only Federal laws but Washington State RCWs.

I wrote  back to them so lets see what happens. I was so upset after that email that I felt I had to cool off before writting to them. I am so upset because I feel 950 jules doesnt makeup for 2 products that I cant use. So many people were misled by this box and I do hope they improve their boxes in the future. I dont see myself purchasing more mystery boxes for a long time.

 

[JC327]

So they're essentially saying that it's okay to send old, expired goods in mystery boxes. Did they not realise this was going to come back and bite them in the posterior at some point?

Thats what im thinking they probably did not realize the backlash they would be getting. I am more upset that they seem to be sweeping things under the rug and that the mavens that dont have facebook or are not on MuT have no idea they are using expired products.