One of the many things I write here is reviews. Sometimes these reviews are good, sometimes they are bad. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all my honest opinion. If I purchased from you or you sent me your product to review and I reviewed it, or you, negatively, I’m not doing it because I’m mean, or because I hate you, or because I’m jealous of your success and want you to fail. I’m not doing it because I’m fat, ugly, vindictive, or have been paid off by another company. I’m writing what I think about your product – which is what you asked me to do.

You’d think that would be pretty fucking obvious, but I still, on occasion, get complaints from companies who have gotten a bad review and feel I am at fault. Sometimes they don’t like it and get over it, sometimes they ask me to remove it, sometimes they threaten me to remove it, and sometimes they go one step further and actively and continually harass me with abusive comments, all of which come from the same IP. Yes, Facefront, I mean you.

If you’ve gotten a negative review, instead of blaming me, maybe you should read it and consider why I wrote it. It’s usually one of the following reasons:

1. Bad Customer Service
This is the number one reason I will write a negative review. If you lie to me, if you don’t ship my product within your stated time frame, or at all, if you ignore my e-mails or phone calls, I’ll consider that bad service. And so would you, if you were buying something from me. If I have to open a Paypal dispute to get a response or get what I paid for, that’s a problem. If it upsets me enough, I’ll blog about it. Strangely enough, my blog doesn’t exist solely to be your selling tool, it exists to voice my opinion.

2. Bad Product
If a product doesn’t work for me, but it’s a good product and it might work for someone else, it won’t get a negative review, I’ll just point that out. If a product is total crap, then it will get a bad review. This is not unfair and it’s not a complicated idea – I will tell the truth about what I think about it. If I think it is crap, I will say that I think it is crap. If I think it’s repackaged, overpriced, mis-sold, dangerous, or just unremarkable, I will say so, and I will say why I think that. That’s how reviews work.

If you look at the majority of my negative reviews, they’re a result of reason #1, bad service. In the entire life of my blog and its many hundreds of posts, I’ve written fewer than 20 reviews that I would consider completely negative.

Examples of my negative reviews:
Facefront Cosmetics – I had to open a Paypal claim to get what I paid for. I was repeatedly lied to by the company. I sent several e-mails that were ignored and phone calls which were never returned. I’ve been harassed ever since I posted my first negative review in February 2009 by people from this company, and continue to get abusive comments from them or a person connected to the company as recently as yesterday, from the same IP address of 63.116.149.163.

Orglamix – I didn’t like the product.  To me it didn’t appear to be unique and when compared to TKB micas they looked extremely similar in many cases.  They didn’t seem to have a base or be a finished eye shadow product. They didn’t work for me, and I said so. I received a cease & desist from the company because they didn’t like me telling people that I didn’t like the product. They have since contacted me with a request to “kiss & make up” in September 2010, and asked me to do a review/giveaway in February 2011.

Ms CuppyCakes – The company lied about when they shipped my order and exceeded their stated time frame considerably. The MTOR (Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Trade Regulation Rule) to which online sellers must adhere states that items must be shipped within the stated time frame, or if no time frame is stated, then within a period of 30 days, that the consumer must be informed of any delays in shipment (and their consent to the delays obtained) and that if the above is not possible, the consumer must be promptly given a full refund. This company not only broke these rules, but also lied to me repeatedly about the status of my order. It took a month to receive the items, none of which had to be custom-made (thus required no creation time).

Archetype Cosmetics –  I sent several e-mails and never received a response. I had to open a Paypal claim to get back the money I paid. I then received the product.  Because I received the product, I closed the PayPal dispute. The company never responded or contacted me in any way. There was a complete lack of any service whatsoever. In case you didn’t know, you need to open a PayPal Dispute and then escalate the claim if you’re in a situation where you haven’t gotten what you paid for, and you haven’t gotten a response back from the merchant. It sucks, but no customer service sucks, too.

Glittersniffer Cosmetics –  I didn’t like the product. I felt like it wasn’t unique, and when compared to my TKB micas they looked extremely similar in many cases. I was later contacted by the company to give them a second chance and declined. This was after I found out they were selling soap dyes as eye shadows.  With the recent drama, there’s now evidence of charity fraud and other sordid things. You can keep track of their many failings at Glittersniffer Scam Reports or Glittersniffer Complaints. When not one, but two websites exist entirely to discuss the numerous ways in which you have wronged or ripped people off, maybe you should start to consider that there was something in all those negative reviews you got.

Shoes.com – Sent me the wrong pair of shoes, twice, despite me calling to verify things. They also took forever to fix the website after I pro-actively pointed out their mistake and found and gave them the correct information, and then took forever to process my refund.

I would love for the result of this post to be that companies like these, who received poor reviews as a result of their horrible service, dishonesty or general mistreatment of their customers, to take a look at their own actions and consider running a good business, making a good product and giving a damn about their customers. It’s far more likely, though, that the people who run their businesses this way are beyond the simple common sense that it’s a bad idea to lie to your customers, harass them, take their money and not give them their product, ship late and never bother to keep them informed, never respond to their e-mails, their phone-calls, or contact them in any way when you’ve fucked things up. It shouldn’t need saying, and it shouldn’t need saying that repackaging isn’t OK, selling ingredients that aren’t even safe for your face as eyeshadow isn’t OK, and trying to sell crap, in general, isn’t OK. These practices will not win you long-term customers or good reviews, and no amount of bullying or harassing bloggers is going to change that.

If it isn’t me who gives you a bad review for behaving badly, it will be someone else. Then someone else, and someone else, and someone else, until you either change or die. So, if you’re looking to make a quick buck, you’re probably better off not doing it with makeup.