So I made some photo sales off my Redbubble.com gallery in December 2018. A bit more than I usually make. The person who bought the stuff asked me if I’d been paid yet. I realized I’d received no follow up email from RB, and no deposits in my account. When I checked my Sales page, all the sales from December were marked Cancelled. This hasn’t happened before or since.
These items were actually received by the customer, who had no wish to return them and says the money they paid was deducted from their Paypal account. In other words, no way the sales were cancelled. The items were manufactured and shipped out. I know the customer personally, that’s why the topic came up in the first place and why they were concerned I never got paid.
We both had to send RB several emails from December 2018 to April 2019, the customer even included the Paypal receipt showing that the items were paid for. Of course, RB should have had all this info on their end but they kept putting us off and dancing around it.
in April, 2019, I finally received a useful response from RB. They apologized, claimed it was a computer error. LISTEN, I don’t care why it happened. I never cared. I only wanted to get paid on time. If I’d been a regular employee of their offices (like a janitor or secretary or programmer) and they’d had a “computer error”, they would be legally obligated to come up with the money and pay me anyway. If I was a vendor, they’d have a legal obligation to pay the bill (and if enough vendors complained or the bill was big enough a court could force them to give me the money). But RB can get away with not paying their artists, because technically, they never promised you’d earn anything from the site. You’re not a contracted employee or vendor, you’re someone they’re allowing to host on their site for free in exchange for a cut of the profits IF you ever sell something. And it isn’t their responsibility to ensure that you sell anything or make a profit.
Technically, if this were a scam instead of a computer error, all they’d have to do to keep all the money without having to share it with the artist, is to claim the sale never went through.
Then just give the artist, who probably can’t afford a lawyer and/or is growing increasingly exhausted fighting it, the run around until they give up. Especially if they’re assuming artist and customer have never met, and the customer has no reason to know or care, that the artist never actually saw any money. Make no mistake, RB definitely prioritizes the needs of customers over artists- my customer didn’t have much more success than I did getting an answer, but RB certainly responded more quickly in giving them vague, unhelpful answers.
RB provides no phone number which connects to a real human being, so good luck there.
It’s also funny that this is the first time this has ever happened, and coincidentally, only when I made some money worth stealing? I have heard from other RB artists that they didn’t have any problems with the site or with getting the money owed them until they started really doing well... And since most of their artists never sell enough to realize that (I’ve been selling there for ten years, and most of that time I’ve been ignored/invisible, apparently, despite my repeated promos, a lot of people I know say they didn’t realize I was trying to sell stuff!), they’re able to get away with it.
They also hit you with so many fees and taxes before giving you what’s left as “profit” that the only way you can make money is to have a sky high markup. And this results in customers going “Why is your stuff so expensive?” Well, if I try to save you money, I earn almost nothing, because while RB takes care of all the expenses and shipping, that also means they pay all the bills for it before the artist sees a penny. And the artist has to take whatever RB claims their “profits” are as the truth.
The email promised I’d have the money between the 15th and 22. I logged into Paypal on the 15th of April and saw that $45 had been deposited on April 8th. As of today, the 20th, there’s no other money from RB in the account.
But the Sales page still has all those sales marked as “Cancelled”. And there’s no record of any new sales. So what is the $45 from/for? That can’t be what they think my owed back payment is. If you look at
The $ the customer spent on my photos
The $ the customer thought I’d get
The $ my Sales page says RB owes me
and the $ I’ve actually received so far, this does not add up no matter how I calculate it.
So, American Girl was threatening to close the Boston and Mall of America stores. There was a petition, but it didn’t get anywhere.
I had been planning to go one last time, but I didn’t have the money yet. And I just learned that the Boston store isn’t closing some time in the near future, it’s closing NOW. As in, it’s all pretty much picked over already.
I’m too old for the store to have been a part of my childhood, but it’s been around long enough that it was a part of a lot of other people’s childhoods. And it certainly has played a large role in my collecting experience. So please don’t laugh, this is quite upsetting.
But what upsets me the most is that whenever we shopped there, it was never ever not busy. It was often so crowded it was hard to move in certain areas. Like, I love AG and I love shopping but sometimes I’d breathe a sigh of relief when I left because of how crowded and noisy it could get. Reports are saying that even after the merchandise was picked over, customers were still flooding in for cafe reservations and salon appointments.
Generally, the Natick Mall is never NOT absurdly crowded. It’s a “light” day when you’re lucky to find a space without having to make more than one pass around the parking lot. I do think that turning the lot in front of AG into the valet parking area was a mistake, a store which targets families with small children, which can only be accessed from the outside (you can’t get into AG from inside the mall itself) and is in a pretty cold climate, needs, like, free parking spaces as close as possible. But that’s the mall’s fault, so why are the customers paying for it
Since it was the only AG store in New England, in a mall with a lot of other stores you can’t go to anywhere else in the region, they had people coming to shop at Natick from six states. People wanted to visit that badly. And because it was such a pain to get to, customers spent as much as possible. This is famously stingy New England, so take that into account. But even though the store is located in one of our wealthiest, most free spending towns and it was a major tourist attraction which was always “I can’t breathe in here” packed, it apparently wasn’t enough for AG.
And it’s that customers just can’t seem to ever spend enough money to satisfy AG that ticks me off. The quality keeps lowering (I agree that the products are looking more and more indistinguishable from Our Generation), but they’re flooding us with products at increasingly higher prices, available for less and less time while they expand into markets they have no real business being in and ignore their original fans who were promised something different. It’s almost like they’re giving up on being an heirloom quality collectible brand, and they’re going for grabbing as much of our money as they can as they try to turn themselves into a lifestyle. They’ve been making a lot of stupid business decisions lately, from the PermaPanty Gate to the awful new eyes to the ToysRUS fiasco and instead of not...doing those things, they’re penalizing the customers for their mistakes.
Even the way they package the items is short sighted and money grubbing. Originally, items in a collection were sold individually. For example, a dinner set would have the food and dishes sold separately from the table and chairs. Shoes and socks would be sold separately from an outfit. This way, customers could choose which items they wanted to buy in any set. If you wanted more of a particular thing, you might not have to repurchase the whole set. This has changed, and now everything in a set comes packaged together, no matter how huge or expensive the set.
When I bought MaryEllen’s Diner, I had to buy the entire thing at once. All of it, from the food to the tables and chairs to the structure itself. I had to pay to ship it, and my mail carrier had to bring it up two flights of stairs.
I want a lot of the items from Blair’s restaurant but I can’t afford to buy the entire thing at once and I can’t store the structure in my apartment. This set, might I remind you, unlike the Seaside Diner, is available for one year. Unless something changes amazingly for me financially, I’ll have to buy her table and food on Ebay. Fine for me, not so fine for AG who won’t see that money from me.
Their desire to get as much money out of us upfront has resulted in a decrease in customers buying directly from them. Their average customer can’t spend $300+ shipping all at once on one thing especially if the set will be retired in 1-2 years. But I think people, New Englanders specifically, are more likely to buy something that big and expensive if they can go look at it in person and save on shipping by driving it home themselves.
I’m thrilled their efforts at diversity have increased, but they didn’t have to sacrifice so many other things at the same time. And I think I have maybe a a year left of wanting to buy anything direct from AG. We’ll see.
The Cozy Teacart in Brookline, NH. We went here for my sister’s birthday (and I keep forgetting what a long drive it actually is, I need to find a short cut). Always a good experience although the cookies I got for dessert needed to be warmed up, since they were caramel filled and I nearly chipped a tooth.
People have been getting friend requests from makeup gurus like Tati Westbrook and Jeffree Star which turn out to be scams.
Listen, if you’re a total unpopular nobody and a big Beauty community celebrity friends you and you didn’t friend them first, it probably is a scam.
Sorry.
So...Redbubble won’t give me my proceeds from December. Dec was an expensive month and if they’d paid me when they were supposed to, I might not be in the hole I’m in now. I can pay my rent and internet but I won’t be able to do anything else so I’ve been listing everything I can. Giving this a shot even though Tumbler doesn’t show posts with links anymore.
my Poshmark URL is weatherwax2 (mostly OPI polishes but I’ll be listing some BPAl too)
From Femme Fatale’s Never Ending Story collection. Top right, Luckdragon, middle The Nothing, bottom The Southern Oracle. I also bought Childlike Empress (a shimmer gray, not pictured). There are three more shades in the collection, I believe, but I just don’t have the room or the budget at this time.
I’ve only worn Southern Oracle so far.
Two pretty eyeshadow samples.
Every single swatch photo I saw of The Nothing online was purple. The color I actually held in my hands is a deep berry...red. It’s gorgeous but not what I thought I was ordering. Which would be easier if Luckdragon wasn’t also so red. Luckdragon should be pink, because the dragon was pink! Not reddish pink, pink pink! Like I would have done a sparkly peach thermal or something. Don’t @ me, I used to watch this movie literally backwards, my next door neighbor was obsessed with it.
Wouldn’t dark purple and a lighter pink just...make so much more sense?
The color on my nails is a smidge darker than the bottle indicated it would be, but that was the only change. It’s a really pretty turquoise blue, that’s just not what I bought it for. I painted some KL Polish Das Esspensive 26 over two nails as an accent nail thing and planned to do the rest later.
In the Youtube videos I watched, not only did everyone’s nails change instantly, one person’s nails started changing color as she was painting them.
But then the next evening, I was sitting in a restaurant. On a whim, I took an ice cube from my drink and pressed it against one of my nails. The nail immediately started developing streaks of purple. It didn’t last more than a moment, but the color did change. Merely pressing my nail against my drink glass created a faint color change as well.
So what was the difference between when I tried at home and my restaurant experiment? I soaked my fingertips for much longer at home than I did at the restaurant. We’re talking like four minutes vs four seconds.
Body temperature? Drinking a cold iced tea on a chilly night while trying this vs not drinking anything during a warm day? Are my at home ice cubes not as cold as ones I get in restaurants? I have slight evidence this might be true.
I don’t know.
The next morning I went out and t was quite cold. I looked down while getting out of the car at McDonald’s and saw that my nails were turning purple. It only lasts as long as the temperature does. So your nails are always changing color.
The purple and green ombre effect created by the temperature changes is especially pretty under the KL Polish glitter.
1) You don’t have to finish a collection. It’s okay to only buy the parts you love and will enjoy using. It’s makeup, even if it doesn’t have a short expiration date, once you crack the seal on the packaging, the value starts plummeting. Nail polish and perfume are really the only cosmetics you can truly “collect” and have the items retain any value.
2) Not always a great idea to buy products based on really loving the shade name . How many people are actually going to ask AND understand the reference?
3) Drugstore or high end, I always use less product than I initially assumed I would. Skincare and foundation are the only products I regularly run out of that I actually feel the need to repurchase. Sometimes I can save money on the high end stuff by getting the travel size.
4) Don’t buy products just because the packaging will look cool on display.
5) Don’t buy it just because everyone else uses it, if it doesn’t work for you.
Elizabeth I from Fancy Gloss via November’s Polish Pickup. This is a thermal. Top right pic is the warm mode, a burnt orange with brown flakies (indoors at the local Feztival of Trees) , on the right you can see “cold mode”, dark brown with auburn flakies (out on the street doing Christmas errands). Bottom pic is the polish moving between shades (in my bathroom). You’ve seen the warm mode in photos on my previous post about the Cargo palette.
So, I enjoyed this polish. I like Elizabeth I and it’s a great seasonal color.
But I just learned thermal polishes have about a 12 month shelf life before they get stuck in one mode or the other. So I need to make sure my thermals are stored correctly.
KL Polish Marshmallow Sunset, with KB Shimmer Take it or Leaf It over the top. This was a look I had pictured clearly in my mind, which I rarely do. An early winter look, inspired by the fall leaves still on the ground after the snow starts. It sort of worked out. Marshmallow Sunset took about three or four coats, because every time I thought it was dry, it smudged and I ended up with bald patches and finger prints in the polish. I’ve had this problem with other similar polishes, so either it’s an across the board problem with this type of formula or I’m just not great at working with that formula.
You can see it happened yet again on my index finger after added Take it or Leaf It
I also thought Leaf It would have more greens, oranges and browns according to the bottle but all that seems to come out are the red flakies. I mean, I like the look I came up with but it was a frustrating time trying to make it work.
(on my actual nails I’m wearing Elizabeth the 1st, from Flossy Gloss, my Polish Pickup choice from November’s Badass Women theme. This is getting its own post)
Cargo’s Chill in the Six palette. I discovered that Cargo has a whole series of eyeshadow palettes on various geographic themes. Venice, Havana, India, Hawaii, Seattle ( the Emerald City palette, which I’ve already posted about) and this one, which is inspired by Toronto.
Chill in the Six are at TJ Maxx for $8. There’s another one you can find right now, the All That Glitters palette, but I could only get one so I picked this one. These aren’t actually a new release, which explains why they’re at TJ’s but hard to find anywhere else.
Cargo...is kind of a weird thing. I used to think of it as a higher end brand, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen any of the beauty gurus talking about it. If they do, it’s mostly to praise their Swimmables waterproof line.
But I kind of see why? These shadows are beautiful, especially The North, and Blizzard (which go especially prettily together). I wore them yesterday and I was like “Wow, this hits all the Understated Snow Queen Holiday Glam notes I’d want”. But even with shadow primer (Too Faced Shadow Insurance) the color was gone by the time I got home. That means about three hours of wear time. That’s a little disappointing. A company famous for their waterproof makeup should be able to produce regular eyeshadow which also lasts.
So maybe Cargo eyeshadows aren’t worth full price. Maybe under $15 is all they deserve to be valued at.
And yet I kind of want to get more from this series. Just because I adore the themes and packaging. Ughgh. Only if they show up somewhere for $8, otherwise I have no room for more eyeshadow.
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