Sephora customers bringing ‘mass returns’ to stores over rewards confusion
Last week, the beauty products chain promised to ‘make it right’ after customers found themselves unable to get the rewards they believe they were promised.
Several Sephora customers have sent pictures in to Consumerist of return receipts that total as much as $1,000.
Why are they returning such huge amounts of merchandise? It’s a sort of customer protest in the aftermath of a promotion gone wrong.
This month, Sephora celebrated its “beauty insider appreciation week,” promising that customers could earn up to four times the points they normally do through its rewards program. (Typically $1 spent equals one point.) The brand encouraged people to spend and earn points for the chance to use those points to get “epic rewards” on Aug. 10.
Only customers with at least 1,000 points had the chance to get those rewards, which included prizes as big as trips to Paris and Los Angeles. Fine print on the emails touting those rewards noted that there were “extremely limited quantities.”
Consumerist explains what happened once Aug. 10 rolled around:
Customers report having the page ready on their computers or phones and their refreshing fingers primed. Finally, it happened around noon Pacific time.
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