Hello readers,
I was recently invited to review a new Canadian website,
HealthSnap.ca. Along with a variety of other health related products they offer beauty and skin care items at good prices. I was given the chance to try out $25 worth of beauty products for free to test out their site and customer experience.
My initial experience with the site was a little frustrating. I did find that some of the lipstick colours I tried to add to my cart were immediately out of stock. Also, the colour representations were not always accurate. I definitely had to look up pictures and swatches for everything. I decided to go with three lipsticks, two Revlon Super Lustrous Lipsticks and a Rimmel Lasting Finish Lipstick. The checkout process was easy and my order shipped one business day later. I received my items no problem and all of the lipsticks were sealed.
Here's where things started to get strange. Right now HealthSnap.ca is offering a free gift with every order. I ended up getting a bottle of vitamin D pills. This seemed a little random since I was reviewing the beauty product offerings of their site. However, what stood out to me instantly was that they expire in June 2015, all of 5 months from now. I checked the vitamin D pills I already had at home that I purchased several months ago to compare expiry dates. My vitamins have an expiry date of September 2016 and I've already had them for a while. I feel like this free gift is the equivalent of getting rid of soon to expire stock.
This prompted to me to look up the batch codes of the three lipsticks I received. On the Rimmel this is the imprinted number on the bottom label. For the Revlons it is etched on the side of the tube. I used
www.checkfresh.com to get the following production dates.
- Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Berry Haute - batch 12073 - production date 2012-03-13
- Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Violet Frenzy - batch 12034 - production date 2012-02-03
- Rimmel Lasting Finish Lipstick in In Vogue - batch 0309 - production date 2010-11-05
This isn't acceptable
. The newest of the three lipsticks, Revlon Berry Haute, is just under three years old and the oldest, Rimmel In Vogue, is over four years old. Berry Haute also has a strong smell... you know the one... the kind of sweet and musty at the same time 'this lipstick isn't good anymore' smell. There's no way I'm putting it on my lips. The Rimmel lipstick has a strong artificial sweet smell. I'm not sure if this is how it is intended to smell or if it too has gone bad but I'm not taking the risk
I also wanted to make sure these dates weren't typical so I looked up the batch codes for some Revlon and Rimmel products that I had purchased myself in store over the last year. The oldest, a Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter, had a production date of 2013-08-27. This is a year and a half later than the newest of the three HealthSnap lipsticks
and I've already owned it for several months.
I contacted the rep at HealthSnap.ca who I was working with to let them know about the production dates of the products I had received and the comparison to similar products I had purchased myself in store. After they investigated the matter I received the following response:
Thanks for being the manufacturing date concern to my attention. I’ve only
been here just over a week so still getting to know the processes,
inventory etc.
I
went investigating into this issue with the team here. What seems to
have happened is since beauty/cosmetics is very new category for Kohl
& Frisch (the parent company for HealthSnap), some new staff in the
warehouse were unfamiliar with inventory control in this category. The
company as a whole is used to dealing with OTC with a clear expiry date
on the packaging vs a lot/batch # in beauty/cosmetics which requires
more understanding as you know.
With
that said, with beauty/cosmetic products of this nature, there are no
regulations by the government in both USA/Canada. A focus when dealing
with ‘expiry’ is Period After Opening. Many brands have a stamp on their
products with an expiry – after the packaging is opened. Some are 6 months, some are 24 months etc.
Hope that helps!
Actually, that doesn't help at all. I'm still left with lipsticks that are very old, some of which have clearly gone bad. They did note that had I been a paying customer rather than someone receiving a press sample then my customer service experience would have been different and my items would have been refunded and/or replaced. However, I can only comment on the customer service that I received, not a hypothetical resolution for someone else. I received old cosmetics - some have expired, brought it to their attention and was basically told to deal with it. I didn't receive replacements for my unusable lipsticks.
For a company with 'Health' in the name they don't seem concerned about selling healthy beauty products. I will not be making any purchases from them in the future and based on my experience I wouldn't recommend HealthSnap.ca to others. In general, when buying cosmetics online be sure to check the batch numbers of the items you receive to ensure they are still good to use. Another good option to do this along with
www.checkfresh.com is
https://checkcosmetic.net.
Happy polishing,
- Michelle
