The ULTA Fiasco

Okay, I didn't want to write about this until it was resolved, in order to have a full report on their customer service skills. I finally heard back from them, so I thought I'd explain my earlier post about being furious with them.

What Happened:
In an earlier entry, I wrote about how that when I purchased my Bare Minerals Starter Kit, i decided to buy from ULTA.com because they have a club where you earn points on your purchases. (Sephora has a club too, more on that later.) Since I don't have an ULTA store near me, I had to purchase online, and at that time I signed up for the club, printed my card, and earned points on my first purchase. When I was out of town a few weeks ago and made 3 visits to 2 ULTA stores, I used my printed card to claim points on all my purchases. It wasn't until my 2nd visit to the 2nd store that I and the cashier realized no points had been registering. (Bear in mind that each visit didn't include only ONE purchase. lol. There were MANY purchases.) So the cashier asked a manager who inspected my card and announced that it was "expired". I was confused since points expire once per year but cards do not. Regardless, she said my card was no good, set me up with a new one, and gave me a customer service number to call.

Doing the Math:
When i got home from my trip, I gathered all of my receipts and noticed that the points were at ZERO even for my original online purchase of $68. I totaled everything, did MATH *hurl* to figure out what my points should be, and discovered it should have been in the THOUSANDS.

The Worst Part:
ULTA Club points expire ONCE PER YEAR. And guess when that happens? JUNE. So if everything had worked out correctly, I would have been able to REDEEM my points in-store while i was on my trip. But because of this whole mess, I was going to be out of luck and have to start over from scratch. I was ticked. Call me petty, but this made me pretty flipping mad, and like i said, ULTA got my business over Sephora, over Bare Minerals direct, BECAUSE of this little club. I am a sucker for getting free whatevers by carrying a little card around.

Customer Service Experience:
I called the number I had gotten from the manager and spoke with a woman who CUT ME OFF while i was trying to explain what had happened. I HATE HATE that. Especially since I had 10 minutes of sitting on hold to get my facts straight so I could explain it as simply as possible.
Anyway, she cut me off to ask for my card numberS since i now had two. I had to keep repeating parts of the story out of order because she wouldn't just let me explain what had happened. Finally *I THINK* we were both on the same page and she told me to throw away the new card, it was pointless to worry about the few measly points i had collected on it that day. She then did some searching and found out that even though my register receipts said zero points, i had in fact been earning points on all my purchases with the online card. So now i have two cards with two different amounts of points, and the whole year of earning had expired anyway. GET THIS- then she tells me to throw away the online card - it's no good to have anyway. HUH? So i should have no card? At this point i think FINE, SINCE I'LL NEVER SHOP HERE AGAIN! She keeps contradicting herself a bunch until my head is spinning and i finally get ticked and tell her i want credit for all of my points because that was money i spent and it doesn't matter that their system is all screwy.

Here's where it gets interesting:
She goes on to explain that the online card is good anywhere, but the first 3 digits indicate which STATE i got it in (and it came up as ohio or something...). The in-store card i got is only good for California. So i can use the California card online, but only in California stores. I can use the online card anywhere but wont be sure of my points until i double check them later. "so throw away this one... no that one... well maybe keep them both..."

How they fixed it:
At the end of it all, she tells me she's going to talk to her manager (who conveniently isn't available) and see if she can go ahead and send me a $15 gift card for all of the points on my "online card", and I'll just lose out on the 2 purchases i made on the new "California card". She'll call me the next day to let me know. FOUR DAYS LATER, she calls to tell me the gift card is in the mail. So I'm happy they somewhat resolved it. I'm disappointed that my other purchases didn't count, and that i even used a new card because i was told my other one was no good, because their system is jacked up and didn't recognize that i WAS earning points. I'm also disappointed that they weren't HAPPY to resolve it and I had to get testy on the phone to even get anywhere.

I still don't know which card to keep and which to throw away.

The conclusion:
Overall, they did try to resolve it somehow and I'm grateful for that, even if I'm less than impressed with HOW it all went down. I still love make-up and ULTA is one of my dealers, so I'll make purchases there because ultimately i just want my "fix". The club was a bonus and I'll not be counting on that mattering from this point on.

Sephora:
In the midst of all this, I contacted Sephora to find out about their club. I emailed their customer service thru the website and got a response the NEXT DAY. It turns out that for Sephora, you don't even need a card so there is no confusion on which cards work where. (Although you MAY have a card if you'd just like to have one.) You are in their system by name or phone number and your points are always credited to you the same whether you purchase online or in-store. When you reach a certain number of points, you can redeem them for DELUXE SIZED SAMPLES with your purchases. It certainly isn't store credit like ULTA, but it's still a fun freebie and who doensn't like those? :)

Tell Me:
Do you have any exceptional (good or bad) experiences with either of these stores and their customer service? If so tell me about them! I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, I try to not be just a complainer, and tell people when I've had a really GREAT experience as well as contacting businesses with the bad stuff. I also like to give people a chance to make it right and in this case i guess they KIND OF did that. I'll still shop with ULTA and I'll anticipate great future experiences.

But I'm definitely excited to give Sephora a whirl and will report back about how well I'm courted by them. ;)