The fuckery continues!
NOTE: If you want a recap of the original incident, please click
here to read up on it. It's been covered by several other bloggers as well, most notably
Anastasia at Lipsticks and Lightsabers.So for the past fifteen days I've been under the impression that my Sleek order has been dispatched and is winging it's way to me, albeit incredibly fucking slowly. When I log into my account on the website, it has my order written there all legit looking, the money has been taken from my account and I've reimbursed father dearest for the colossal amount I spent (yes, even with the 50% off sale). In fact, I'd conversed with the General Manager of Sleek MakeUp, over a second, different order which had mysteriously appeared in my "Open Orders" tab about a week after the incident, which he cancelled for me. That would have been a great time to say, "Oh Lena, by the way, your order is rotting in cyberspace right now." At least give me a bit of heads up and a refund so I can blow my money at Superdrug as they're doing 3 for 2 on cosmetics right now.
Even the parcel I ordered from Hong Kong for about a quid, free postage, got to me earlier than fifteen days, let alone a domestic parcel for which I've actually paid for shipping. I'd actually been contemplating contacting Sleek about the whereabouts of my products, but I cut them some slack, though, aware that there must be a backlog or some shit with the sale.
So I'm just chillin' on Facebook, excited over the fact we have a five day weekend (two INSET days at my school, fuck yeah) and whatnot, and I notice Sleek have got a new note up. Good job that they put it up late at night so it would fly under the radar because what I read next basically made me want to throw a cute baby animal into my monitor.
"Unfortunately if you have not received the email indicated above we will not be able to process your order."What is this.
Your website has acknowleged that my order is valid. The credit card company has acknowleged that my order is valid. My savings jar is weeping because that order is valid. So where's my email?
Perhaps I'm not understanding this correctly, because this email was longass and incredibly confusing.
"Some of you would have received an email from our General Manager Saif Pathan within the few hours (Please check your Junk Mail also). This email confirmed that your order was successful and your items have or will be dispatched shortly. This email has been addressed specifically to customers who have paid by PayPal, placed an order on the website on the 11th or 12th of November where the payment was not rejected initially or subsequently."Cool story bro! I didn't pay by PayPal. I paid by your Sagewhatever it is. I didn't recieve an email, but because your website said my order was fine, and the money had been taken from my account,
and none of you said anything to the contrary at the time, or posted this I dunno, two weeks earlier, I'd thought I was done and dusted. Silly me!
Oh, and I asked on your website before the sale began whether you accepted PayPal, and you said you didn't. So how is everyone managing to pay by PayPal? It would have saved me a lot of hassle, let me tell you.
But apparantly, it's all OK because I still have my money. Wait, I wasn't aware that I still had my money. Explain this to me, Sleek.
"A few of you are concerned that money may have been taken out of your account but that we are saying you have not paid for your goods. To explain, when an order is placed on the website no money is taken until your goods are dispatched and invoiced."What a great system! Until you read on.
"We only began doing this on Thursday 18th of November."Well that's fucking amazing, Sleek. But I ordered on the 11th, you know, when you held the SALE IN FUCKING QUESTION. So what was the point in even writing that? Save some pixels and stop trying to make yourself look good.
The bit that we're concerned with is this:
"However our payment system providers SagePay do have the ability to reserve funds for up to 30 days"So these people have the right to hold onto my money for a month, during the Christmas period when I, miss broke student, have things to buy for people. And at the end of it, I don't get my products. w0t a Gr8 sistem! U guize R sooooo clevaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!1111!!!!11
What irks me the most is the lack of personal contact, and I don't mean a rushed Twitter message. A mass email informing everyone of the situation isn't so hard to do now, is it? Judging by the amount of spam that I recieve...
It's the unspoken assumption that everyone logs onto the Sleek MakeUp Facebook page daily. Hell, I stumbled on it by chance - it wasn't even in my newsfeed. An email, just repeating what they said in the note, would have done wonders, and even better would have been an email to everyone detailing where exactly they stood, order wise, and their website to be updated or something so that it doesn't "mislead" people.
I'm taking my sarcastic bitchface mask off, now, and putting it on my desk. Sleek do acknowlege their fail.
"Initially we received updates of what payments had been successful however this turned out to be not entirely accurate we received this confirmation of errors some 5 days after the sale had ended...I know there has been a lot of frustration expressed (and quite rightly so) as a result of our delayed response in getting back to you regarding the status of your order and dispatch dates and we can only apologise again for the delay. As our server struggled to cope with traffic and transactions the information it was sending to our payment provider was skewed and we have had to wait for over a week to receive accurate information."Thank you. Consumers need more of this, please, and less of tweets about pizza that you "deserve" and cheesecake.
And Sleek generously offer us a chance to partake in the sale - again - :
"For those of you that still wish to benefit from this offer we are putting things into place so that everyone who contacted us by email regarding attempted orders but were unable to buy successfully will be sent an individual one time only 50% off discount code."Thanks again! This sounds like a great idea! Only:
"Since the sale the expected pre-xmas order rate has come through the website"That and:
"The distribution of these codes will be staggered and this process will not begin until after at least 14 days."Makes it all a tad moot, actually.
So Sleek have unwittingly mentioned that orders have spiked for their cosmetics as Christmas presents and the like, which means that they're going to be facing increased orders/work anyway, and we're not going to get this new code until
at least after fourteen days - well into the Christmas shopping period. So the website is going to be busy and they're going to be rushed off their feet dispatching orders. Who's to say the same thing won't happen again? It's likely that we won't get any products (using this system) ordered until well after Christmas. Which sucks if you wanted to give some away as Christmas presents. Which sucks if you wanted to purchase the limited edition Good Girl, which most likely won't be in stock by the time this second promotion rolls around. Which sucks if you just wanted look pretty for the Christmas parties. Which sucks if you wanted some, like me, to give away to your readers who don't live in the UK and don't have easy access to Sleek, so that they'd fall in love with Sleek products too, so much that they might even contemplate paying thirteen fucking dollars for postage outside the Eurozone.
The situation sucks all around, basically, for everyone.
EDIT: I appreciate that the staff are trying to do all they can to rectify the situation, it's not a personal attack on anyone. This probably sounds like an incredibly bitchy post but right now, I've got no product, no money and no giveaway, which is why it sounds like it does.
