A Message to our Clients about Epic Rewards

[sephoraadmin2]

Sephora is committed to offering our valued Beauty Insiders exceptional rewards to thank them for their loyalty and for being part of our community.  Yesterday we held an Epic Rewards promotion, and while we have held similar promotions in the past, yesterday’s promotion was the largest number of Epic Rewards we have made available to date.

Despite our best efforts to predict the response, demand was overwhelming, resulting in our being out of stock very quickly. We deeply regret this and apologize to our Beauty Insider clients who did not get a chance to participate.  

At Sephora our first and foremost priority is to give our clients an exciting and fulfilling shopping experience.  Those Beauty Insiders who were unable to get one of our limited quantity Epic Rewards, please email us by Tuesday, August 25, 2015, to epicrewards@sephora.com and include your Beauty Insider account number or email address associated with your account. 

Beyond that, please know that we are committed to learning from this experience. Thank you for your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate you.

Sephora is committed to offering our valued Beauty Insiders exceptional rewards to thank them for their loyalty and for being part of our community.  Yesterday we held an Epic Rewards promotion, and while we have held similar promotions in the past, yesterday’s promotion was the largest number of Epic Rewards we have made available to date.

Despite our best efforts to predict the response, demand was overwhelming, resulting in our being out of stock very quickly. We deeply regret this and apologize to our Beauty Insider clients who did not get a chance to participate.  

At Sephora our first and foremost priority is to give our clients an exciting and fulfilling shopping experience.  Those Beauty Insiders who were unable to get one of our limited quantity Epic Rewards, please email us by Tuesday, August 25, 2015, to epicrewards@sephora.com and include your Beauty Insider account number or email address associated with your account. 

Beyond that, please know that we are committed to learning from this experience. Thank you for your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate you.

**********************

Updated August 17

Thank you to everyone who has been reaching out to us about Epic Rewards. We value your feedback and recognize your ongoing loyalty to us, and we are working to get back to you quickly.

To that end, please know that if you have contacted us you will hear back from us in direct response to your inquiry during the period between Tuesday, August 25th through Tuesday, September 1st. The timing of the response to you will depend on when we received your initial contact regarding Epic Rewards.

If you haven’t contacted us yet, please email us at epicrewards@sephora.com. We’ve set up this dedicated mailbox to collect the right information quickly and accurately, separating you from the queue for general Sephora inquiries. When you email us at this address, it will generate an automated response that confirms we’ve received the message. You can then expect to hear back from us as quickly as possible with more information.

Please know that our team is listening, and we take your concerns to heart. We value your support, and we will be in touch soon.

With our sincerest thanks,

The Beauty Insider Team

*************************************

Updated September 1

Thank you to everyone who reached out to us about Epic Rewards. We have reached out to all of those members who emailed us on or before August 25th, and are no longer accepting new submissions. epicrewards@sephora.com has been closed. Please contact us at 1-877-SEPHORA (1-877-737-4672) regarding any other questions or concerns. We have reviewed your feedback and are taking it into consideration as we plan for future promotions. Our loyal Beauty Insiders are enormously important to us.

[Libellules]

Clearly you're missing the point. 

[wheeeee]

lol!  I only posted that because someone else wrote the same thing. But, yep, Sephora's website has a forum they call Beauty Talk. Welcome! 

Read the message above for the email where you can write to Sephora about the Epic Rewards.

[J191]

While I'm nowhere close to having enough points to qualify for an epic reward, I have made an effort to buy products from Sephora (even when I could get them somewhere else) because I wanted to continue building my points. I enjoy every aspect of shopping at Sephora (both online and in store) more than similar retailers, but find that there's really little reward with the reward system. 

I've cashed in points here and there, but now that I think of it, many of the point perks I've received were no greater than the GWPs you can get for spending $25/$35. Certainly not worth cashing in 100 points for, especially considering 100 points = 100 dollars spent! 

I will continue to shop at Sephora, but really hope they will listen to everyone that has asked for better 500/1000 point promos. If people are going to spend $500 or $1,000 at Sephora, the point perks should reflect that, rather than being dinky boxes of sample size products that are probably worth $10 or less. 

[elvismom]

Why is this not posted in a more public place, like the Facebook page, your website, or in an email?

[stelladr]

I agree. I only found this page through googling "sephora epic reward fail". I've been a rouge for 2 years now and I've never ventured into BT until this week. 

[KellW]

Sweetie, this community is ON the Sephora website. It's also where a take-over recently occurred with a barrage of people coming over to wait here and describe how excited they were to grab 2, 3, 4! Epic rewards before the rewards went in minutes. 

Beauty Talk is also a public forum as some people have defensively mentioned before AND if you search for it on Google, you can just as easily access it there. So not only is it in a public place, but it's also on their website.

[bea0t]

Sephora thank you for responding to us, your customers. You hear our complaints, I see your response and I still don’t understand how this will be solved.

Confused at the make-up aisle,
Bea0t

[Sonny4President]

Can ya'll stop before they take away the point system completely. They come out with new 100, 250 and 500 points each month. These Epic Rewards are just a bonus promotion they are willing to offer to their customers.

[Libellules]

Are you really saying you think the 100, 250, and 500 point "rewards" are worth anything close to the dollar amount spent to have to get those points?? 500 points = 500$$ for a set of products most people aren't interested in that are slightly larger than the free samples. 

[wheeeee]

Once upon a time Ulta had some sketchy products you could exchange for your points.  People complained and now it is a cash system.

[vasilissa]

I really wish Sephora would listen and do the same. Don't get me wrong, I love Sephora, otherwise I wouldn't be a rouge, buuut...  the selection of perks is always **bleep** - I can't even remember last time I claimed one, and if I do want a deluxe sample of something I'll just go across the street to Macy's and ask them for one for free, which I usually get. I wish Sephora would understand that they're not keeping Sephora "exclusive" by limiting sales and not having a good reward system, it makes us feel under-appreciated. I honestly find the system with **bleep** selection of "deluxe samples" that we have to pay for with points borderline offensive and half-assed.

I have 3k points, and I'd love to be able to use some of them either for cash redemption or to put towards discounts, or at least for them to expand the sample selection significantly so that I can actually get something I'm interested in. I feel very under-appreciated as a Rouge, which is why I'm not going to put in the effort to get it renewed when it expires at the end of the year and buy things at Ulta when possible, then Nordstrom and Macy's (storytime! Once a girl at the UD counter gave me four deluxe - and I mean real deluxe, not Sephora deluxe - samples of a revolution lipstick, naked lipgloss, all-nighter setting spray and a small tube of primer potion? The result? I loved everything and ended up buying all of it in a large size after I had used it up. Because of this, UD and Macy's won itself almost $100 of my business -  not counting the fact that I ended up buying more of the lipsticks and lipglosses later because then it's more like $300 -  and a lot of goodwill)

[spadersgirl]

Yeah, I mean, what makes the point system so special when Sephora is coming out with a subscription box anyway? I'd rather pay $10 outright and get 5+ samples than spend $500 to redeem the same amount in the current system. We need a worthwhile change!

[MUAStephM]

Excellent point. 

[wheeeee]

I like how you think!  

They should allow us to use our points to get the subscription boxes or make it a Rouge perk.  

With Flash Shipping available for $10 there are no more Rouge perks!

[Tracib1981]

This is so very true. There are also ALOT of people like me, who don't have a freestanding sephora. Only SiJCP who are rouge. I got the EXACT SAME THINGS AS A VIB. Honestly, i got the exact same things as a BI. We have none of the "events" that freestanding have. Free shipping? Done BEEN had it with flash. Makeup application? Used one time for a wedding when I was too lazy to do my own.

[fabulous44]

"Demand was over whelming".... There has to come a time when Sephora can no longer use this an excuse for shoddy customer service, games and manipulations. This was the excuse they passed out last November during the 20% VIB sale when their site "crashed" and customers lost out on items that sold out....

[heartsmyface]

Lol, if their site is crashing due to demand, that gives them a general idea of how many rewards they need to have available in order to be able to use tat excuse. 

[chocopudding]

YES. This. They had data from the last few rounds, and I'm pretty sure they have statisticians on their team. For the first epic reward, yes, I can buy that the demand was more than expect. But this time, I don't buy it. Honestly, if they just owned up to how many sets of each prize they had (full disclosure), I don't think anyone would be mad about the outcome of not getting it because they know the chances are low. (btw, I didn't stay up refreshing the rewards page or anything. I saw this round of epic rewards as a nice bonus opportunity. I just think it's good when a company is transparent that way.)

[BrideSona]

*still holding your hand choco*   I agree with some of your points. This round was more transparent but that resulted in more people vying for the products and it going OOS faster. This time around was a great improvement but it still has a bit to go. I would like it if there was a way to reserve the item in your basket for a min or two so that you can complete the check out process. I think this time it was more of an IT and server issue. For next time maybe more IT staff to help and prep. Some of the links went live before it even showed up on the rewards page. It was gone so fast that I didn't even see any of them. Last time I was able to see them for a whole 5 min before they disappeared. Maybe it would be best to stagger out the release times for different point levels.

I may get stones thrown at me for this one suggestion but...what if these rewards were only available to the BT crowd. I'd dig that.

[chocopudding]

I think being able to reserve rewards is a great system (and not just rewards, products too).

Haha, if it was only available to BT, you'll get the same crowd that was madness here for the last few days!

*yay still holding hands with BrideSona*

[heartsmyface]

They sort of were last time;). 

i agree that once it's in your cart you should be able to hold it for at least five minutes.