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This was posted by a former Sunday Riley employee on Reddit.....
What do you think? I find this so unethical.
Ugh. I hate to think that brands are posting fake comments. Not only is it unethical but such a betrayal to consumers. I relied heavily on comments to see if I should try certain products. Such a breach of trust when the comments are being used for commercial gain. Unfortunately, I may end up returning the product if it doesn’t live up to expectations. Still. If I find out that certain brands are faking it. They’re off my shopping list. 😡
I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't this fall under the FTC's sponsored content and endorsement guidelines? An employee is by definition sponsored by the company creating the product, and should have to disclose that fact in any reviews just the same way that an influencer would have to disclose it when endorsing a product. My understanding is that if Sunday Riley did not disclose sponsorship for the reviews, then that's not just unethical -- it's also illegal.
SundayRiley left a response on Estee Laundry's Instagram, so no. It is was not fabricated.
PS: they have reposted your responses on their Instagram. They aren't lying....
I am NewHampshirite on IG, FYI.
@ArmyChick84 Thanks for clarifying. I didn't understand that post was in the comments. I just couldn't see it in the ig feed or on their ig stories, or on twitter.
Eh. The fact they felt the need to "respond" sort of proves our point. I'll continue not using SR products, and the rest of it I won't even give another thought to.
This adds to the list of reasons why I don't and never will depend on reviews written on a product page. I trust people who have been on this forum for years to honestly share their thoughts with the forum and I appreciate them for that.
Also, if you have the chance to visit your local Sephora, get a sample of whatever product you're considering buying. It makes no sense to buy something, dislike it and keep it. Test it out before hand to ensure you're confident in that product.
Yeah saw that... a discussion is going on about this in the Beauty News thread where it's also posted. It's disgusting but not surprising. The Beauty world has become so toxic. 😞
@veronika23 @ArmyChick84 Now I'm wondering about the authenticity of that email because I saw a beauty gossip instagram site @esteelaundry that posted a screen shot with an alleged response from Sunday Riley on their instagram admitting to sending the email encouraging employees to post fake reviews. When I went to Sunday Riley's insta and twitter, I found no such messages posted, which leads me to believe that esteelaundry fabricated Sunday Riley's reaction IG post to the reddit email leak. I also saw that some websites have published this as a story already and cited the reddit email and esteelaundry's fake Sunday Riley reaction via IG as sources.
Add that to my list of things that irritate me: when people don't check sources. Flying Spaghetti Monster lives!!!
@veronika23 @itscarin @ArmyChick84
The comment from Sunday Riley is 100% legit. It’s a comment under a post on @esteelaundry Instagram account. (I went straight there to check it’s veracity before I even saw your comment lol). When you click on the name, it takes you to the Sunday Riley verified account. Tbh, it’s mind boggling to me that Sunday Riley would a)post such a response and b) not delete it.
Lol also, the person at esteelaundry highlighted your comment....
@nche Thanks -- like you, reading stuff on my phone/desktop and not always seeing the big picture. I hate looking at stuff on my phone because you always get an abridged version of what's going on. I did check the comments on the Sunday Riley instagram comment post, but I didn't check the comments on the Reddit email screen shot about Sunday Riley post. My mistake!
@itscarin @ArmyChick84 @veronika23
Omg I’m sorry, I didn’t see it’s all been cleared up. It’s so hard reading the forums on my phone.
@itscarin @veronika23 @ArmyChick84 Uuuhhh... what's more concerning to me is a beauty gossip site called "Estee Laundry." Okay, the name is clever credit where it's due, but as V said the beauty world has become so toxic because people want to gossip and stir up trouble! I like beauty for the PRODUCTS not the drama. I've seriously been so turned off to so many brands/people because of stupid crap. Why do people revel in this stuff? I don't get it. Can't I just use my skin care and wear my lipstick and be happy about it?
@alexasteph I agree with you. I don't follow them but when I was googling this issue to see what was out there I found these two random website which cited estee laundry as a source. So then I had to go over to estee laundry and check it out, and then I went to sunday riley and determined that estee laundry was lying. Either they posted someone else's lies without verification, or they made up the screenshot to make it look like sunday riley had said things which they had not.
Every now and then when beauty drama surfaces at a very mainstream level I'll dive in and check out some of the drama/gossip blogs. For example, when Marlena Stell of Beauty Geek posted how upset she was with influencers charging 60k a post, I started looking into that. (Man, where did I go wrong with my life?! LOL!)
My feelings are that a lot of the people running the gossip/drama social media are people who don't have other things to add to the world. You like makeup, but you're not particularly good at it, so you're going to start a youtube dedicated to bashing other youtubers.
That being said, I do like to put my money where my mouth is in terms of my ethos. I mean, I am a huge hypocrite because I still buy clothes made in sweatshops and am guilty of overconsuming, but I'm not going to buy makeup from a brand that has a found who says racist things or doesn't play nice with other people. That's where I draw the line.
@itscarinHoly wow! 60k a post?! Man what a life. And here I am getting messages from people saying if I buy their stuff and wear it they will feature me...
@itscarin@alexasteph wow this is making my head spin! I like beauty products for the products too and not the drama. Which is why I don't follow any youtubers, gurus or whatever... I mean I do like to watch some videos sometimes from very specific people but that's it. I think the whole world has gone crazy and it's spilling into everything. My attitude towards the beauty industry has definitely changed. I'm not as excited as I once was about certain things... It's like what I used to escape the crazy has become crazy. Can't we just go back to enjoying products and the artistry of makeup?
@ArmyChick84 That really irritates me.
@katiebt (I couldn't think of any other mods to tag) Can you bring this to the attention of whomever is responsible for verifying reviews? Based on their instructions, IT should be able to build some kind of algorithm for catching people posting from known VPNs (although I understand the Sunday Riley team may be using high quality vpns that may be difficult to detect).
If the IT department could make it so that you had to have at least 15 non-sunday riley reviews before you could post a review about Saturn or Space Race, that would be awesome. It would also be awesome if you could have your legal department send Sunday Riley a letter about the integrity of reviews and kindly remind them of FTC guidelines. Maybe there needs to be a third checkbox, after "I am a Sephora employee" that states "I am an employee of this brand".
well then they could just give them to their friends, or random people and pay them to do it instead...
I messaged Katie as soon as I saw the post on reddit. Haven't heard anything from her.
Yea I saw this on Reddit earlier and find it disgraceful. If Sephora dont address this in some way I will be extremely disappointed.
Im sick to death of reading reviews on here from Influenster - the site seems to be overrun with them lately - and definitely no longer trust the Sephora site for unbiased reviewing. Now there is this from a brand I used to think highly of!
Something needs to be done if Sephora want their reviews to mean something. I would suggest reviews should be allowed only if the product has been purchased here or at the very least be tagged 'verified purchase'. This isnt foolproof but it is a start.
@grizzlymaze That's a really good point about having the product verified as having been purchased through Sephora. There are reviews that come up all the time before an item has even shipped that don't actually review the product. If the product is still marked as "coming soon" it should not have reviews on it.