Kim’s Beauty.com order was eligible for a pretty neat “free gift with purchase” deal, but the free item ran out before her order went through. She, and other customers, took to the company’s Facebook page to complain about the situation. A company representative reached out on Facebook, offering to send a new free item out to the dissatisfied customers. This representative turned out to be the company president.

Yesterday, I was very, pleasantly surprised by the customer service of Beauty.com. I had posted a reply to their Facebook page, regarding a short-live promotion that had “ran out” unexpectedly. I had developed a love/hate relationship with “free gift with purchase” promotions that catered to my weakness to vie for any excuse to purchase more beauty products. However, my frustration was ultimately due to the lack of “free gift” with my previous purchase.

I posted my comment to Beauty.com’s Facebook page at 10:14 PM, and then at 10:59 PM, a woman named Kathleen asked me to send my order information to her so that she could pass it along to their customer service team to “send something special my way” to make up for it. So, I sent her the following message:

These [promotions] really bothered me because I wasn’t informed you were out of stock until the paid portions of my order had already shipped. I’ve been a loyal customer since 2007, and just find that some of the best promotions are misleading in the sense that the system will let you place the order, reflecting the gift promotion in your cart and in the order confirmation email. Furthermore, if I do get an email to inform me the gift is out of stock, I’m led to believe that it will later ship separately. It isn’t until after the paid portion of my order has been billed and shipped that I’m informed again by email that the free gift with purchase portion of my order had been canceled. I think that the system shouldn’t let you add the free gift promotion to your cart if it is out of stock.

Thanks for caring,
Kim

To which she replied:

Kim,
I am so sorry! We are trying to work with brands to get really high value offers and I hate when they run out and disappoint our customers.

Send your address to my work email at [redacted]@beauty.com, and I will have customer care send you something special.

Thank you for being a customer!

Have a great weekend!
Kathleen

President, Beauty.com
Vice President, drugstore.com

So, you see, not only was I promptly contacting in an attempt to reconcile the matter, but I was contacted by the president of the company itself! I thought this was definitely worth mentioning, given it is such a rare occasion that I feel people at the top of national companies still really care about their customers.

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