Brand Review: Tooth & Nail Cosmetics
I don’t normally do this...not to indie brands, anyway. If anything, I like to support them, uplift them and make sure to give them a fair advantage when trying them out and reviewing them...but when a company fails to even attempt to satisfy their customers while standing by their brand, I can’t sit back and let people fall into the same trap over and over again. As unbelievable as this is, I bought $66 worth of makeup while asleep. I tend to sleep with my phone right next to me in the bed. This is so when my alarm goes off in the morning, I can get to it before it has the chance to go off again or wake anyone else. I’ve texted people in my half- or full-sleep state before, so I’m not surprised that I actually bought makeup in my sleep.
I sleep-bought makeup from Tooth & Nail Cosmetics, an indie brand I never heard of. I don’t know how or where I found them, but I woke up the next morning and while checking my email, saw a receipt for a purchase I had made earlier. I opened it and saw that I bought a couple of highlighters (The Nightmare Before Christmas themed), some kind of eyeshadow or something and a couple of other things. I was floored. How did I--uhh... So I checked out their website. OK. The stuff I picked out looked kind of nice...and it was *only* $66...I’ll let it slide. Besides, who will believe me when I say I shopped in my sleep? A couple of weeks go by and I never received a package or any other notifications of the order. In fact, I even forgot about it until I was deleting emails and saw the initial one I had opened from PayPal. I decided to email them. A day or two later I got a response from a girl named Hannah Foote who asked for my order number so she could look into it. I replied to her a couple of days later and another week passed.
A little frustrated with the lack of communication, I emailed her again using the same contact email address. Finally on Easter, she emailed me back apologizing, saying she had been busy the past couple days and that she’s spending Easter with her sick mother and that my order was supposed to have been sent out before she left. Normally I would feel bad for being a bother and tell the person it’s okay, but mind you, my order was placed almost a month prior with zero communication on tracking or its whereabouts. She also was throwing a guilt trip in there, which I didn’t appreciate. Yes, I 100% understand when life gets in the way, especially the sick parents thing. Both of mine had cancer and I helped take care of both. I put my entire life on hold both times, with the second time resulting in me losing my father. So I do understand that sometimes, you just have to focus on what’s important and everything else can wait. HOWEVER...if you’re an entrepreneur with an active business, you need to take steps to ensure your business won’t suffer while you’re taking a hiatus or trying to juggle your busy life. This includes hiring a trusted person to be you in the business when you can’t, finding ways to stay in touch with clients when it’s important and making sure your jobs/products get pushed out in a timely manner. If that’s not doable, then you need to speak up, own up and figure it out. So I fired back. As a fellow entrepreneur of sorts, I know how this all works out. So I thanked her for the guilt trip (bitchy, unprofessional move--I know) and reminded her that as someone who owns/operates a business, she needs to figure out how to get her clients taken care of in the event she cannot. Of course, I told her this in so many words and assured her that this wasn’t a personal attack, but rather one entrepreneur looking out for another. She, in the email, said she had her partner back home taking care of everything and that she’d walk her through the process in case they needed to resend my order (which was never sent out in the first place), but I am pretty sure she has no partner and she’s running this show solo.
After my reply, I heard nothing. While waiting, I did a little research and found nothing but negative posts and comments on this business! All stories seemed to be the same: packages never received and no to very little communication or packaged received with damaged items, little to no communication and no replacements offered. It seems, though, the one thing Hannah and “her team” are on top of is issuing refunds.
Growing tired of this debacle, I waited a few days before finding them on Facebook and tagging them in an edit to a post (if you follow us on Facebook, you may have seen it) I made asking if anyone has ever purchased from Tooth & Nail Cosmetics. She immediately commented and told me to email her personal email and she’d take care of me. I told her that I was actually waiting for a response from her on her business email and what do you know? Still no answer.
Finally I gave up. “Only $66″ turns into “that’s $66″ really fast. I messaged her through PayPal and told her firmly that I wanted a refund. The next morning I woke up to a processed refund and no message whatsoever. Mess cleaned, I guess.
The point of this post is simple: please beware of businesses like Tooth & Nail Cosmetics. It’s hard when you’re dealing with indie brands (and even larger brands), but just remember to do your research first and maybe even reach out to the owner to get a feel for who they are and how strongly they stand by their product. It will also give you an idea of how they might be with customer service. Kind of like a Try Before You Buy idea.
I have no products from this business to test, swatch or tell you about and that sucks. The next indie brand I find, though...I’m going to research them and hopefully be able to grab some goodies that I can test and share with all of you! I do not recommend this brand due to the headache I, and apparently a bunch of others, endured just trying to support, but take all of this with a grain of salt and check them out for yourself.
http://www.toothandnailcosmetics.net/ XOXO Michelle
