My thoughts on the NYX 12 Year Anniversary Sale

As many of you know, I was one of the many people trying to take part in the NYX 12 Year Anniversary Sale. I have always loved the creative range of colors & finishes available in their products. As well as being available to me locally & at a decent price. While I was greatly frustrated with attempting to use their website I was not really angry. Later, after I had given up, I became furious. The complete & utter rudeness & lack of concern from their customers coming from their social media team as well as their customer service representatives was appalling. I have never seen the worst, most inexperienced companies act like this & believe that it is ok. Below I have attached my very lengthy e-mail to NYX regarding the way that they have treated their customers.

 

To: feedback@nyxcosmetics.com;

Subject: please understand our the problem with what happened during the sale, it's not that we didn't get our stuff!

 

I had spent 16+ hours trying to take advantage of your sale. I would finally get a products page to load then things would fail when I tried to get the item in my cart. When I finally did get something into my cart, it would add 2 & (due to the fact that you don’t have a quantity adjustment feature) I would have to delete it & start over. Then, when I am finally ready to check out, I find some things have been deleted from my cart & I need to spend a few hours trying to get them back in. Then I have to spend 4 hours trying to get my cart to load so I can hit check out. Then checkout would fail or bring me back to another page. When I finally got checkout to load there would be no place to enter credit information or the shipping wouldn’t load or it would give me an error & tell me to call you (long distance). When I would be able to get the checkout page to work, I would hit review & it would crash again. Eventually I did give up.

 

I understand having technical difficulties but, there are still a great many issues I would like to explain to you. A great many of your customers are furious because of the things that have been being posted by your social media representatives, not the fact that there were technical issues that were never resolved during the sale.

 

First of all, when you got an unestimated amount of traffic due to the large & faithful following of your products, your representatives should have stated that you were not prepared for this amount of a reaction. You do not post things implying that it is your customers fault for overloading the server on your social sites. This only makes your customers feel like you are insulting them for wanting to take part in your sale.

When you do need to take down the server to try to fix the problem, your representatives should just say that. There is no need to tell us to be patient or that you are working on it without giving further information. Just let us know that you will be taking the server down for a specific amount of time to increase your bandwidth & fix the problem. I am sure that we will understand. It does still make it a little bit difficult to understand since you had clearly stated that had already done this before the sale was scheduled to happen though.

What makes this portion of the problem more difficult to deal with is that your representatives continued to switch between telling us that it was because of too much traffic to the site & that you were having technical issues the night before, when you had stated that you were trying to get everything ready for the sale. I still am unsure of which it is but, this makes me feel like your company is trying to get away from the blame being placed on you by anxious customers. Unfortunately, this only makes your customers feel like you are trying to deceive them.

In the future you may want to follow this very simple form for responding to issues:

“Apologize

Acknowledge your customers

State the problem

Clearly explain how it is being resolved

Thank your customers”

It should read something like this:

“We are sorry that our website is currently unavailable. We understand that you are all very excite to take part in our event & help us celebrate our 12 year anniversary. The server has been overloaded due to the amount of traffic beyond our expectations. Our tech team will be pulling the website down until 5pm pst to fix this problem for you. The sale will commence at this time. Thank you for understanding. We appreciate your business.”

If the site was still not ready an hour before the given time, then your company should have stated so. Instead you let a dysfunctional site remain up that caused your loyal customers a lot of hassle & difficulty, with the majority being unable to get it to work. Most people would have been more then happy to wait until the site was ready, as long as they were clearly updated on the current situation.

 

Then telling your customers that you will be extending the sale due to the massive response, while at the same time understanding that your website is still experiencing difficulties is not a standard business practice. If your company had wanted your loyal customer to be able to take part in the sale you should have completely pulled everything down & given a date & time when the server would be available for everyone to take part in the sale. If you were extending it because you knew that it was reacting very slowly, then your representatives should have stated just that. Please do not act like you are doing your customers a favor when you are still unable to hold up to your original claims, it only makes them feel like are being belittled.

Defending the companies stand point, issues, or generosity instead of reflecting on the customers issues is never a good idea. As a retail service orientated company, your representatives concern should lye with the customer & their issues or needs. While your social representatives stated that this was their concern, they didn’t seem to listen to what were your customers needs & wants. Your customers very clearly stated what their needs were & they were never discussed or given a response with a reason.

Also, your representatives responding to customers with issues that other customers are able to reach the website when others cannot doesn’t solve anything. Eluding to the fact that one person is able to what others are not will only hurt your customers & make them feel like they are being swindled in some way or another.

 

When you state that you are going to reward someone for their patience & loyalty, it is typically understood to be something worth equal or greater then what was originally offered. Telling thousands of customers that clearly were still very eager to shop with you, even after they had been trying to work with a dysfunctional site with no customer service for several hours, that they will be getting a reward worth far less then they were originally promised is incomprehensible. How am I being rewarded for my patience, persistence, & loyalty by getting less of a discount? The company that I have been loyal to will be taking more while I get less? Choosing your words more carefully would have bypassed all of these problems. Once again, just have your representatives be honest with us. Tell us that you are unable to continue with the sale & apologize to anyone that was unable to get the site to work properly but, if we are still interested you will be more them happy to give them the stated discount. Do not tell us that you are rewarding us with a less valuable offer when we have done all that was asked of us & your company was unable to handle the workload for one reason or another. If your company had decided to let people know that they could choose to shop at another time & get a discount, that would have been fine. However, you should have honored your original discount to those customers that tried to take part in your sale, since you choose not to postpone it. Why should your devoted customers not get what they came for when there is no valuable reason that they were unable to receive them?

Also, telling your customers that they need to contact you to get their consolidation coupon is unacceptable, especially when you had already stated that you would be announcing it. Stating that you wanted to address each persons concerns doesn’t make a lot of sense either. This is not a private dispute between two people or a single customer having an issue with your company. This is a public dispute, with the same issues for everyone. Customers do not feel that they should have to work more to get less then they were already expecting. Even those that did try to contact you for their lesser discount code have not received it. E-mails & telephone calls have gone un-responded, stating that there is too high of a volume, when that is what your representatives asked customers to do.

So many people have done exactly what your representatives have asked of them & they are getting nothing in return, not even their consolidation coupon & none of their needs are being met. If you know that you have a great deal of upset customers that you are already having difficulty maintaining, your representatives should not have encouraged more people to try to contact them. Once again, this only makes people feel ignored. If a person is experiencing an issue that your team understood they could not help them with, they should never have redirected them someplace else. They simply need to inform the person that they cannot help fix their problem at this time. Repeatedly stating that your company is listening to the customer, while continually responding to the situation in a manner that is clearly unacceptable according to public opinion is not listening to your customers.

I also do not feel that anyone, in any situation, would appreciate being rudely treated or ignored because they are upset. Many customers have tried to reach out to your customer service representatives in a calmly manner & been responded to with being hung up on, told that others were able to make transactions, told that they weren’t making up for the issues with the sale & many many other very rude things. When a situation like this happens your best option is damage control. All representatives should have done everything in their power to be a nice as possible to upset customers. Many of us understood that there was a massive amount of technical issues but, the statements that we were getting from your company’s social representatives made us enraged. Statements such as “Hello! No, we are not. Thank you!” “Our sale has spread faster than our gloves can reach!” “Yes! We had several hundred. Thanks!'” “Congratulations to all those that shopped with us during our #12yrbash!” “We had kept our word and extended the sale, but it was unfortunate that many people couldn't join in on our fun! We hope the next time you along with others will be coming back. Thanks!” & “No one likes when their party is ruined, especially when you have beautiful guests coming to your party! :(”

Not one of these comments offers a shred of sympathy for your customers. A great more deal of tact should have been used by your team when addressing questions & issues. Myself, along with a great many others, felt like we were being laughed at for trying so dedicatedly to participate in your sale. Rather then apologizing vigorously to the great deal of us that had struggled with your website, your companies team congratulate those that were able to make a purchase & give the runaround to those of us that were unable to. Instead of making statements regarding how sorry your company is that so many of your customers are upset & so few of us got to participate in your sale, your representatives make it sound like it was a pleasurable experience for them. I do not imagine it was a pleasant experience for even the few people that were able to take part in the sale due to the trouble they had to go through with the website & the rudeness from your staff that they experienced with the rest of us.

 

A great deal of the customers that were trying to participate in your sale are beauty bloggers & youtubers. We were trying to get products to use as giveaways to promote our love for your brand to our fans. I will not be featuring your products on my blog or youtube any longer. I will not use them in tutorials or feature them in my reviews as I have done in the past. As a makeup artist, I have also recommended your products to a great deal of my clients & which I will no longer do.

 

I am sure that a great deal of the people that are upset over this would be far more willing to listen to your company if your representatives gave a full & detailed explanation of what happened on your end, a sincere apology for the rudeness, & a discount that reflects what they have already stated was fair to them.

 

Makeup By Ariel

 

 
While I cannot promise that I will never buy another thing from them ever again, I can say that I will most definitely not promote their company until I feel that they have made a solid attempt to rectify the situation they caused.
 
I encourage you to comment & respond as to your experience but, please do so with tact & an adult manner. I know that many of us are mad beyond words but, I would like to keep this particular blog as a message to the company & everyone else that we deserve to be treated with respect by acting the same.