No it shouldnt have taken the story to appear here for this to happen. However that has became the norm for most companies. Accept the free stuff and move on I guess.

One of the more bizarre facts of psychology is that we like most the people that we initially disagree with, but who then change their position to accommodate us. In other words, you're likely to feel better about a company that screws up then put things right than you are about one that never made a mistake to begin with.

The human brain is such a strange organ...

Well, it's not like retrieving an RV trailer from killer bees, but what the hey. Congratulations!

This would only "allay my concerns" if I knew that they were doing this for everyone. I hope they actually follow thru addressing their customer service issues, or else this is just another PR stunt.

Well the first response is pretty typical of companies that have a mismanaged call center.

When number of resolutions per day is your major benchmark for call center operations, your staff is incentivized to skim, copy and paste form letters, and hope they get it right.

Benefits next two communications, one (it seems to me) sincerely apologizing, and one from a PR exec apologizing and offering freebies, stand a cut above, IMO.

Personally, I would think that once the complaint was understood, they should have offered a freebie, so that was their major goof, IMO.

Their *actual* biggest goof is very likely the metrics they use to evaluate customer rep performance (and their manager's unit performance).

Stop using calls/emails per hour as a metric and start using quality of resolution! This goes to all companies, not just the one in question! If operator A closes 20 complaints in an hour, but permanently damages your relationship with 5 of them, ensuring no repeat business, and operator B only closes 12 but makes them all happy customers, operator B is the more valuable operator!

I didn't read "taking this seriously" anywhere.

All is forgiven. My pot-bellied pig will resume being a "Benefit Gal" again.

I would continue using their product because of this, but honestly, it shouldn't have taken a PR stunt like this to fix the problem. It should have been fixed in the first place.

There are companies that can't even be publicly embarrassed into good service, so, Benetint beats them. Based on this, I would give them a second shot. I try to be a 'benefit of the doubt' kind of person.

Thank the Lord for the internet! Time to show these companies how we really feel about their crappy, overpriced services!

Honestly this letter isn't genuine at all! Its a copy and paste.
I use their fabulously flawless powder stuff and love it but why did it take so long for them to just replace it/ give her money back...its only $28.
This shows the power/beauty of blogs, you can't screw over the customer or you will have a PR nightmare to deal with

@WiglyWorm: It is mind blowing that companies don't figure this out. Actually solve problems instead of pissing off 75% of the people who contact your company and only solve 25% of the easy fix problems first time around.

This is how customer service and even the basic buying relationship has become such a mess. It is just another factor that is a dis-incentive towards buying things.

@Bourque77: I agree. No patience for the 'better to ask forgivness' mentality of customer service. Obviously they don't care unless shamed. Which reduces to simply, they don't care.

@verucalise-T minus 17 days: Agreed. I also wish they had given a more definitive answer on whether they're improving the packaging. In this case, a new bottle of this stuff is useless to the OP, because it's likely to break again.

I don't know Benefit from whatnot, but I kind of think it's pretty good as far as responses go. No, it shouldn't have taken this to get that response, and yes, the first response was bad, and their silly little slogan played right into that, but I think good ole Valerie acknowledges that it was a poor response, and says that outright. I mean, some customer services is gonna get escalated one way or another, and judging from what we've seen, this isn't the worst.

I think a major issue that is being overlooked in this article is that Brianna is the one who broke the bottle, not Benefit. The product that Benefit sells - and which Brianna admits to hearing good things about - is the Benetint blush itself. The bottle is your standard, glass, 12.5 mL bottle that many different brands and kinds of cosmetics come in. If you screw anything too hard, its gonna break. And so what if the letters come off? You're wearing the makeup, not the bottle. If the consumerist only knew the amount and depth of nitpickery that customer service reps have to put up with daily - especially in the cosmetics industry - they would laugh Brianna's little "issue" right off the internets. Everytime I open a bag of cereal and the corner rips instead of down the middle, I don't send an email to Cap'n Crunch, I figure out how to do it, and next time open it correctly. Stop whining!

Hey, I'm not just "some Consumerist user", I'm GitEmSteveDave. Respect where respect is due, please.

As to the users who think this is cut&paste, if this was an exact copy of what was sent, it is NOT cut and paste. There are a few errors in there that make it appear genuine to me.

Sort of confused as to why Angelica was not trained to respond the same way Valerie did. If Valerie's response indeed complied with the company's "standard customer service practices," Angelica would have responded the same way. I suspect that like most companies, Benefit doesn't properly train or--more importantly-EMPOWER its reps to solve problems, but instead to deflect them and hope the customer gives up without a fight. Sad.

@WiglyWorm: my employer figured that out. and there's a huge push to make it happen in my department [pharma company]
it makes all of us much happier to be there, although we did lose one coworker who preferred to not have to be that nice to people.
no one was really surprised or upset with his choice.

To be totally honest, and to the point, if it were me I would tell them where they could shove their credit and free products.

If a company I deal with treats me like they treated Brianna, and it takes exposing them to get them to do what's right, then I say to hell with them.

There are more than enough companies who know how to take care of their customers and those are the companies I will deal with!

I do understand that "things happen". I don't think it should take exposing those things to the 'net to make any company do what's right. The only reason any of these companies finally do the right thing, once they are exposed, are for PR.

@geoffhazel: It's not being taken seriously, it's being taken sincerely.

"Should it have taken a blog entry with 10,000 pageviews to get a replacement item for Brianna?"

Wow, is that much snark warranted or necessary? These companies seem to be damned if they do, damned if they don't. The company screwed up, they're reaching out to make things right. Sometimes it's just that simple.

If everything these companies do is going to be twisted toward the negative here, no matter what, then after a while you're not even going to see this kind of response.

I hardly think the amount of pageviews is what made the company respond, I think it's the fact they found out that one of their customers had a crappy experience (and that a service rep didn't do their job properly).

Give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

@seamer: Now that I think about it, is the consumerist trying to impress other corporate identities with numbers justifying its usefulness?

The bailout from Consumer Reports is looking less and less ideal.

I think this is just a higher up brush off. They still aren't going to fix the problem that they know about with the tops of their nail polish breaking. They didn't mention anything about that just that once again they would like her to try their products. Honestly though why should she since they seem to be saying that they aren't going to fix anything, they are just going to give stuff to the more persistant complainers.

Man, so much negativity here. If I were the OP, I'd be pretty happy with this resolution. They have genuinely apologized, acknowledged the problem, and promised to identify how their customer service failed. They also agreed to replace the broken product, and added some more makeup as an apology for the inconvenience. I think this is a good response from the company.

@catastrophegirl - just add kittens: I was told at my call center the company who ran it was paid PER CALL by the company we took calls on behalf of, hence the more calls we could zip through the more money the company made, hence we were given an average call time metric to strive for.

>Please feel free to contact us at customerservice@benefitcosmetics.com
>with your contact details.

Done!

Thanks Bennie, you're the greatest!

@j3s: Nice try.

@Philly Falcon: Hey, some companies don't even do the right thing when they're exposed. There are lower rungs on the CS ladder than this.

@Nealjs: How would you answer that question? SHOULD it have taken this negative publicity in order to get them to act right? If they hadn't been on this snarky site, they would still be holding out.

@seamer: Baloney. They were informed of their crappy service by the customer, and did nothing. They didn't care what kind of experience she had until she embarrassed them on the internet.

Lame to blame CSRs: "Our customer service team did not respond ... according to our standard customer service practices"

Another lame company blaming CSRs for everything. I would like to see one company some time step up and take responsibility instead of blaming outsourced, low-paid people for their public relations problems!!!

@Magpie724: This isn't a cut n paste job. It directly addresses the concerns Briana had with her initial complaint AND her complaints about the poor customer service she received.

@Trencher93: So when someone fails to do the job they are paid/trained for, it's not their fault, it's someone elses? SWEET!

@Trencher93: Well, they are going to take responsibility. I'm guessing they'll address the training of that particular CSR. And if they discover that the problem is widespread, hopefully they'll change their training procedures. But it *is* the CSR's fault, really...

@dragonfire81: The call center I work for has call time metric simply to make getting the quarterly bonus more challenging. Yay.

@takes_so_little: I agree with you but I would feel the same way with those companies. The times I've had to deal with problems, from any company, I've always started with the CS department and usually the CSR has taken care of the problem.

Sometimes it was escalated to a supervisor or department manager and a few times I went to the top but with few exceptions the problem has always been resolved to my satisfaction. The couple of times the issue wasn't taken care of told me that the company just didn't give a damn about keeping me as a customer. They got their wish because, with those companies, I NEVER dealt with them again.

One of those companies, FedEx, I actually barred from entering my property about 4 years ago, in addition to closing my business account with them. I sent them a certified letter telling them they were not allowed on my property and if they received anything for me they were to return it to the shipper. I also let people and companies that I dealt with, in both my business and personal life, that they could not ship anything to me using FedEx, and if they inquired why I told them about why I barred them.

I made an exception with FedEx about 2 years ago. I relented and let them start delivering to my address again but I would have no qualms about stopping them once more if need be.

@seamer
"Give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.":

I subscribe to the saying "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.". Companies don't change the way they generally handle things. Look at Best Buy and Monster Cable as two great examples. If you need more than just those two I suggest you scan Consumerist.

@takes_so_little: Exactly! I've been using Benefit for years and I doubt seriously I ever will again after this. Plain and simple Benefit did not anticipate something like this getting out and reaching so many people. They should have had a proper response initially. Your customer service has failed miserably anytime someone else has to come back behind them and do damage control.

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: You aren't looking at the possibility that the CSR employees are told to do just what was done in Briana's case. If they were handling the situation as directed to by the company they should not be blamed.

In addition, if the CSR's were handling the situation as directed to by the company, it's obvious that the company is using them as excuse and the letter to Consumerist is just damage control, as these type of letters usually are.

This is why our company does not use pre-made responses that "best fit" the problem

Each and every customer is responded to based on their complaint.

This company is only taking action because consumerist makes a lot of noise about this complaint.

It shouldn't be taken to this level.

I will say not bringing the product back in a plastic bag is poor judgment and the complaint becomes hearsay since you cannot see it. The company did acknowledge it was a problem they are aware of, so I believe her!

@TheyCallMeStacey_GitEmSteveDave: They only consider you "Some Consumerist User" because you live in Jersey and drink Wawa coffee.

'nuff said, Stacey.

@Bourque77: So you've never been smack in the middle of a comedy of errors? Remember, people, companies are made up of people, and people are fallible. Unless you've never made a compound mistake, deal with it.

@Bourque77: I'd turn the free stuff down on principle. Tell 'em that I'm not going to accept their buy-off, and that if they really want to make sure their name doesn't hit sites like this in the future, they really need to get a handle on customer service. Band-aid solutions that come after the fact don't impress me.

I still stand by what I said in the first article. She should have contacted Sephora, not Benefit. Sephora has excellent customer service.

@Philly Falcon: Well now I want to know why you had to bar them from your property..

@alternatestory: I'm sorry, no. It's an acceptable ending, not really a happy one. Consumerist doesn't post everything, so next time a company hoses you, you might not get the exposure necessary to get it fixed.

I'm glad that companies watch this site, and glad they often act to clear up the problem. But they can't gain my admiration by fixing one problem. They have to actually fix their business. Hampton Toyota may have made a genuine improvement. From this response, we can hope that Benefit did too, but we can't be certain.

I, like Briana, never buy expensive makeup yet made an exception for Benetint, which I was certain would solve my hating-to-wear-make-up-yet-looking-sickly problem. The first cap refused to seal, ever, and the stuff spilled all over my bathroom. It tinted my sink with pink streaks. Years later I went to a free makeover with girlfriends and was given another of these bottles. And yet again the thing would come unscrewed when traveling and spill it's pink tint all over the place. Seems like a fairly serious design flaw, and I doubt Briana is the first to alert the company. Agree?