Sephora's Black Friday Sale or a Black Eye for Customer Service?

[kkkk7721]

Every year, I look forward to Sephora’s Black Friday sale. It’s a tradition—I carefully pick my favorite products, snag the deals, and wait excitedly for my packages to arrive. This year, however, Sephora turned that excitement into sheer frustration.

On November 30th, I placed three separate orders during the sale. Everything was processed, my payment information was verified, and I received order confirmations. But when I logged into my Sephora account on December 4th, I discovered all three orders had been cancelled—without so much as an email or notification to let me know.

When I reached out to customer service, I was told the cancellations were due to “inability to verify my payment information.” This made no sense. I’ve used the same information—billing address, name, phone number, credit card—for years without issue. I immediately contacted my bank, and they confirmed everything was accurate.

I shared this with Sephora, expecting a solution. Instead, I received a generic response, not once but twice, repeating the same advice to “contact my bank” and “replace my order.” The last message didn’t even invite a reply, as though Sephora has decided the matter is resolved when nothing has been resolved at all.

Now, I’m left empty-handed, forced to either pay full price for the products I carefully selected or find them elsewhere. This isn’t just bad customer service—it’s a failure of basic communication and transparency.

Sephora, let me remind you: in today’s online retail world, where convenience and customer care are everything, loyalty can only go so far. When you make shopping inconvenient and frustrating for your customers, they’ll look elsewhere. You’re not the cheapest option, and you’re not the only option.

If this is how Sephora handles loyal customers during one of the biggest shopping events of the year, it’s no wonder people are taking their business to competitors.

I’ve escalated this matter to Sephora’s executive team and am awaiting a response. In the meantime, has anyone else experienced something similar?

Cancelled Orders:

[LaurieBT]

Hi @kkkk7721,

I'm so sorry to hear of your order experience, and appreciate you sharing this with us. We're happy to look into this further for you. It looks like your private messages are turned off, and you can adjust your preferences in your Community settings (on the browser only, not the app). If you would like to send me a private message with your registered email address, I'll look into this. Thank you!