I want answers. As a loyal and huge spender of Sephora for a multitude of years and THOUSANDS of dollars later, I really cannot believe the audacity of this multi-billion dollar company. There is SO much wrong with what happened this year. There’s no answers. No shipments, no responses, no emails, just silence. Those who had their Sephoria session 2 in New York on Friday canceled know exactly what I’m talking about. Sephora owes a lot of people product that was already set aside for an event and has kept their mouth shut for almost a month regarding this embarrassing lack of propriety. I have attempted on 4 separate occasions to contact both Sephoria and Sephora regarding the canceled session, and this has been the most disrespectful absence of contact considering the volume of support that other customers have received. There has been ZERO correspondence regarding the promised VIP gold ticket bag of products, which is interesting considering I am also reading that many people who ordered and PAID for virtual swag bags still haven’t received product from an event that happened a month ago..? Not only that, but they robbed ticket buyers the opportunity to network, collaborate with brands, a multitude of samples provided by brands, master class speakers, and a large amount of product. There is so much wrong with this event, and the absolute cherry on top is the lack of communication, support, or desire to fix this by Sephora. Even worse, the email seems to be deactivated for the Sephoria event this year - excuse me? So you’re telling me that not only did you swindle a whole lot of product, but you also refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE any of your customers when it’s time to deal with the problem?
Those who purchased and traveled for the Friday session were royally screwed, and I don’t know why no one is talking about it. I think Sephora is hoping that this will quietly blow over and no one will talk about it.
It’s interesting that not many people are familiar with the annual Sephoria event hosted by Sephora, which took place in-person this year in New York September 29th-30th. For background, this is an event that promised a variety of master class guest speakers ranging from Charlotte Tillbury, Natasha Denona, Patrick Ta, Dr. Dennis Gross, and lots of other brands represented in Sephora. Additionally, depending on the ticket purchased (silver or gold), you’re given a swag bag worth somewhere between $500-$1300+, and from my understanding they also had a virtual swag bag option that would be shipped.
I spent a LOT of money traveling to New York from out of state booking my flight, a hotel, purchasing ubers, etc. and spent months making the decision to come to this event. I came to New York by myself very excited to network and experience something really neat created by Sephora. Most people I talked to had no idea what Sephoria was, which I found weird. Safe to say all money went to waste attending this event as I was not allowed into the event even for 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, due to New York weather conditions, the Friday sessions had to be canceled as people were advised to not travel that day.Early that morning there was an automated email at 8:00am sent saying see you today, we can’t wait to welcome you. The early session time was 11am-2pm, and I already started seeing content that morning of people at Sephoria. At 12:39pm, as I was getting ready to make my way down to the area, Sephoria sent an email (way later than they should have) telling us that due to the state of emergency and dangerous rainfall, they were pre-emptively canceling session 2 (5pm-8pm). This was certainly some of the worst weather that New York saw, and it was very understandable they did not want people traveling to the event (even though it was indoors), as lots of subways were flooding, and it was hard to catch an uber. In this same email, they indicated “please send us your full name and home address to experiential@sephora.com and you will receive your gift bag that is associated with the tickets you purchased”. The kicker? They promised a response in 2-3 days. It has been a month, multiple emails later, and not a single word. Even worse? The email is deactivated and no longer works LOL. Not sure what they thought was going to happen. Pretty sure this is grounds for a lawsuit in some way.
Next day, I made an attempt to come to the second day of Sephoria as the weather cleared up and the event wasn’t canceled. There was no email indicating you could not attend the event the next day. I took a 40 minute uber down to the venue, and saw that there was no one in the line at all, apart from two other girls. I walked up to the first “security” guy I could see and asked if this was the Sephoria event. Right off the bat he rudely says “why.” I said what do you mean why….? I have a ticket. He then directed me to their next glorified gatekeeper who was berating these two girls about how they can’t keep harassing him about being let in (they were quiet and definitely not berating him). These girls also traveled out of state and just wanted to be let in to take a look around as there were a lot of photo ops and of course, their gift bag. Mind you, the day before, from my understanding, a lot of people showed up to Sephoria even though it was canceled and they STILL handed out their gift bags to them at the door, even though they were turned away. There were also people posting they were let into the event the next day, even though they were Friday ticketholders. They were picking and choosing who they let into the event. This “security” was so overtly rude and disrespectful to these girls about not letting them in, that this entire event should be ashamed they were letting paying customers be spoken to this way. If he was frustrated about people coming to the door, imagine how the ticketholders felt being turned away and spoken to harshly. The best part was watching all the ticketholders upstairs in the building enjoying the event I paid for, traveled for, anticipated, and was a single door away from attending. We missed out on networking, samples, the gift bag, the master class, and meeting brands. People who attended the event also got to pick up an entire additional bag of samples and gifts from the brands that I know they won’t be shipping. Instead we have been ghosted by this huge brand with no explanation, nothing to respond to, no reparations, no amends, no information, literally nothing. What I don’t understand is if you were handing out bags at the door, and they were already ready for customers, what is so difficult about shipping them out to the emails sent to you in a timely manner, following up with your customers, and tackling the problem right away. I am baffled.
The absolute bare minimum was receiving the refunded ticket for this event, which was thankfully processed very quickly (next day). I have watched video after video of people posting their hauls from this event, and it has been such a bitter experience from start to finish. I have no idea why this isn’t being discussed as I know I’m not the only person that has experienced this. I emailed every person I could find on Sephora and Sephoria, and no response except from
“Sephora Client Services” saying my virtual swag bag has shipped (no tracking information or anything included, so a flat out lie), even though I never ordered this bag, and she completely disregarded my very heated email explaining in detail what the issue was. When I told her that she did not address a single thing, she said sorry, go email troubleshoot@sephoria-2023.com, which of course has not responded to anyone since the event. Basically, this isn’t our problem, go figure it out. No response from experiential, no response from the troubleshoot email, no additional contact information provided. The worst part is I see other people have had shipment emails back from October 6th which is insane considering its October 26th now and people still haven’t gotten any movement on their shipments. What exactly happened here? Where did the product go? Surely the postage services didn’t lose hundreds of peoples packages from this event. I have read that people are stuck in “label created”. Meanwhile, I never got a shipment email or anything regarding these bags, so those who actually got labels created got lucky. Additionally, I believe there is some confusion going on with virtual swag bags, which also haven’t been shipped since purchased a month ago? Why?
Who do we contact at this point?
Why is Sephora not showing any regard for their loyal customers?
Why was the email taken down?
How many people have experienced this?
Did they just decide to call it a day and think no one would notice?
The fact I have to sit here and type this out with no resolution is extremely frustrating. There are so many factors to this event that went wrong and not a single department of Sephora/Sephoria willing to handle it. I’m sure the event was great, and those who attended had a lot of fun, but I will strongly advise against going to anything Sephoria related ever just based on the pure disrespect it has shown their loyal customers. This is no longer even about the gift bags, but about the lack of courtesy or respect shown to ticketholders, customers, and loyal patrons of Sephora.
I saw some other posters writing about a Better Business Bureau complaint, and I’m interested in following up with how this could be related. Sephora, put me in touch with someone, and confront this problem that you have created. This is honestly shameful that anyone even has to make a post related to this as you have such a huge team of people to make your business successful. It has been so stressful trying to understand why you have responded to certain people, and ignored others. It also doesn’t make sense being turned away at the door after traveling from out of state, not being shipped the bag, treated poorly at the door, and not a single solution offered.
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