Alexis ordered a few bottles of, in her words, “fancy skin care stuff” from Sephora, and one bottle arrived broken and making a huge, soapy mess. Preparing to fight for a replacement, she was pleasantly surprised when the Sephora representative told her that they’d send her a replacement: no need to return the bottle.

I’m almost giddy with excitement at how much my customer service experience with Sephora did *not* suck. I ordered 3 bottles of fancy skin care stuff as a gift last week. The box arrived the other day with two bottles perfectly intact and one bottle broken almost in half and leaking soapy stuff everywhere. The tissue paper was soaked, the box was wet, it was a bad scene.

I was prepared to do battle over the phone. When I called customer service, I explained that this was supposed to be a gift, that the bottle was practically empty since it’d leaked everywhere and that the post office was not going to take too kindly to me trying to send a leaky broken bottle of liquid through the mail. I offered to take pictures and email them to prove I wasn’t a scam artist.

The customer service rep said, “Go ahead and pitch that thing. You don’t need to send me pictures. I can see from your purchasing history that you’re a loyal customer and you’ve never returned anything before. I’ll go ahead and process your refund.”

How great is that?

Pretty great. As we learned during the Benetint debacle, even when you have a problem with a specific product that you purchased from Sephora, you’re sometimes better off going to the retailer with your complaint than to the manufacturer.

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