Is the customer always right?
NYX 12th Anniversary Sale + Resulting Chaos
It’s one of the hardest lessons to learn no matter what kind of business you’re in, because as long as you have clients or customers, it’s a lesson you have to learn. The customer is always right has to be an attitude held whenever you work with clients, because even when they may not be or if it isn’t even your fault, it is the company’s obligation to do what they can to smooth things over.
Over the weekend, NYX kicked off a 12-hour super sale where all products were $1.20–anywhere from 75-90% off retail prices–to celebrate their 12th anniversary and show thanks to their customers. It was expected that people would be excited, but NYX encountered server issues with late Saturday night traffic (likely people browsing in advance to create wish lists and the like) that continued into Sunday, the website just wasn’t able to cope with the surge of traffic.
I reached out to NYX this morning to get their perspective and see how they are handling things, and NYX said that the tech team has been working on their website functionality for 72 hours now, everything from new servers, adding servers, and rebuilding the site. Everyone is answering phones, and I’m sure you can imagine the kind of day NYX’s customer service representatives are having (so be kind if you call). NYX says they remain committed to working through these issues, rebuilding, and making their website stronger going forward so that this will never happen again. They believe that this learning experience will make them a better, stronger brand.
It’s easier to solve problems in hindsight than when you’re in the thick of it–because it’s like the sky is falling and you’re struggling to figure out how to hold up the pieces (trust me, we’ve had growing pains here on Temptalia, and shelling out big money didn’t fix anything for us instantly–took us weeks of working with and hiring experts). As an e-commerce business, down time means lost sales, and down time as dramatic as what NYX has experienced during a pivotal time period means not just lost sales but angry, betrayed, and hurt customers. Life is not black and white, and neither is this situation.
As a business graduate, I recognize and sympathize with NYX’s plight, but as patron of NYX and one who hit the refresh button often enough during the past day, I sympathize with customers, too. What happened to NYX’s websites may have been out of their control, but it’s not in the customers’ control either, and at the end of the day, it is NYX’s burden to shoulder. Now, we see that no fix ever resolved the issues of site connectivity, and it would have been so much better on everyone if NYX had postponed the sale until full site functionality could be restored and assured. Unfortunately, the sale continued on (and has now officially ended as of noon PST), which meant that customers continued to plug away and hope they were able to put in an order. I tried throughout the sale, as late as 2AM PST, but I couldn’t get to checkout (which seemed to be where things really bottlenecked).
NYX will be offering 50% off along with free shipping for seven days for customers who were not able to take advantage of the sale because of site functionality issues. The point many have already made is that this is not the same as the anniversary sale itself. It is a concession, and one that meets at halfway to try to appease unhappy customers. NYX stressed their apologies to me when I spoke with them as well as on their Facebook/Twitter pages.
We are extending 50% off coupon as well as free shipping. You will be able to utilize this 50% off coupon code for seven days. All of our items will be honored with this code with the exception of makeup train cases, makeup artist chairs, brush sets and makeup sets. This discount cannot be combined with any other offerings or promotions such as the NYX Professional Discount. In order to attain your code please email feedback@nyxcosmetics.com with your full name and email address for your one time code offer.
At the end of the day, it’s about finding ways to restore confidence in your customer base to make the future better, even if the immediate profit loss is hard to swallow. With so many social media channels available for customers to express themselves to their favorite brands, we are now more empowered today to do so. It is your thoughtful, rational comments and feedback that will inspire brands to make the right choices, but what is right is in the eye of the customer, which is why it can be a hard lesson to learn.
I would expect Nyx to extend the $1.20 sale. Their not doing so is their right, however it means I will no longer be a nyx customer.
And the fact that you have to give nyx your personal info for the 50% off? That’s just a kick in the teeth to customers who already feel like nyx has trodden on them by wasting their time.
I have a question to all you US shoppers.
For my background, this sale could not be taken part in for anyone outside the US and those I’m looking to spend $7 on a jumbo pencil in store up here in Canada.
My question is for those that wanted to take part in the $1.20 sale, you had not seen a sale of this magnitude from NYX and but had bough items at trade-show price online more then likely and never though that the items were expensive at that time.
I know that this sale had a lot of you excited and planning things out. In the end you didn’t get your carrot for the energy you put into it. I and can understand the frustration.
Just recently I put in an order for textile on a project. I place my ordee mid April and payed for FexEx shipping on it. A week later I started to get emails about one of the fabric getting out of stock. 4 days latter another email saying another textile was out of stock. Finally a full week latter after my last email sent they came back and said NONE of the textiles were in stock. This is the point I will not recommend them to ANYONE not only did a lose 2 weeks of production time (after 3 weeks of messaging) but the were still advertising the fabric was in stock on the sales site! I don’t care how highly recommended they came and how nice the swatches I preorder were I just don’t want to the chance to be screwed over again.
In the ended I had to pay about 40% more with another company but the CS was fast and had a short their processing time. The even phoned when an item was not in the right length I requested the next day.
So my point on this tangent is that even though your not get that insane deal there willing to come half way people and run the sales longer. You can still GET the makeup you wanted and would have bought maybe less of when if the sale wasn’t on.
I can’t change anyones mind that want to boycott this brand because of a sale issue but there are plenty of things out there that deserve your ire more.
I’m sorry to but in, but there’s just a lot of misconceptions in this comment. Actually, if you look it up, NYX has had a “sale of this magnitude” before. Also, I’m not sure how your point actually reflects on this sale, as a lot of people were going to buy stuff they’d never spend the money on, otherwise, such as a $25 grinding powder, etc. You had to buy those textiles no matter what, not just to check out new textiles. Also, as you specifically said, the company that had jerked you around is one that you will never use again, never recommend, etc. A boycott takes zero energy, literally, who cares if they do that or for some cause you believe is more deserving?
I’ve been in line at retail stores and seen customers who are in the wrong (because a coupon or something will be in writing proving they are wrong) screaming at the cashier, SA, MUA, whoever, because they are the customer and they are always right. Most times the employee handles the situation with tact, but there are definitely times when the customer is wrong. Not to say that the companies are ALWAYS right, I’m just saying I see both sides of the issue.
Agreed, the customer is NOT always right. Luckily I work for a place where we can “fire” customers who are too difficult and end up costing us too much. That said, I do think a 50% coupon that does not equal the discount the customers would have gotten if Nyx had not had their problems is not really a sufficient resolution in this situation. I sympathize with them – we’ve recently had sudden equipment problems that resulted in a job being late (and thus free) so I somewhat understand – but in this case I think they should have postponed or extended the sale.
I absolutely agree with you. I didn’t partake in this sale although I know people who tried to and were frustrated like you. I definitely think the obvious solution would have been to postpone the sale like you suggested since most of the time most people who wanted to buy stuff weren’t able to access the site… 50% off is nice and all, but it’s no $1.20. At all.
I think their 50% off coupon is crap. They should honor the sale to those of us that had items in our carts and were unable to ever checkout. This has turned me off of EVER buying anything from them ever again.
It’s not just that their website wasn’t working, but how they’ve responded to it. Leaving snarky comments on social media sites in response to customers and hanging up instantly when customers call IS NOT how you do customer service.
Ugh that’s just awful. A lot of the time I am willing to forgive shops/brands I like for having issues when they seem genuinely apologetic about the problem or take steps to make it up to me that aren’t half assed like this 50% off coupon.
what did they say that was snarky? I think they made mistakes but feedback from some customers really scared me. They were so violent!!!
They tweeted a few times how exciting this sale was. First they said it was traffic because 25,000 orders went through than they said that a few hundred people got orders in.
I was a long supporter of NYX. Not anymore. I can’t support a company who treats their customers like this. They promised a sale to customers and they didn’t deliver.
They said things like in their note “We are overjoyed and happy that some of our customers were able to purchase from our sale…” huh? If you looked on the thread (and I was updating like mad..no pun intended!) you saw MAYBE 3 people who said they got through. Overjoyed? Happy? that they literally disappointed thousands? Felt like a knife in the back to nearly 50K. Not cool, def not cool.
They did alot of really mean and nasty things to customers. I can’t even list them all. But in the end, I hope justice finds them. Youtube and gurus made them who they are today. I remember when they were just another cheap cosmetic company and products were .99 cents. Maybe the gurus made them famous but I hope its the non-fans that take them down.
The Facebook page was getting crazy yesterday, but I have to agree, NYX dropped the ball on this one. If you’re going to have a sale of this magnitude, you should have been better prepared. No one is going to wait basically the entire day waiting on a website to function properly, even though many hopeful customers did yesterday.
Well, I do love NYX products, but yesterday and today was simple NOT acceptable. I tried and tried for hours , and I am a patient person, even wnet on at odd hours , to see if I could get in.I was on twitter to see if anything was comping up and saw many reactions there. They should have made an executive decision at that time and postpone…. I read a lot of angry posts and think they will definitely loose some customers…
This is a case where the customer is always right, but it’s difficult to honor that when you see what kinds of customers are making the complaints – very poor grammar, seven exclamation points in a row, repetitious posts by the same person, even complaints about other people in the same boat!
I agree, Jenna- some of the customers, particularly on the Facebook page, were not making a very good case for themselves when some of their posts read as completely ignorant. I think it’s disappointing that it turned out the way it did…but I, for one, was not surprised. Has anyone else noticed that their website has never operated very well? It never has for me. So their server crashing seems inevitable in hindsight.
Unfortunately for NYX, ignorance in comments has little impact on their loss of future sales when the holy dollar comes into play. Those customers may have returned to their website time and again during normal business/non-sale hours if they felt their complaints were heard and cared for in a fair and equitable manner. Poor manners on the part of potential customers means nothing when NYX is in the red at the end of the year or doesn’t make the profit they could have due to poor customer relations.
I reallllllly do not think they will end up in the red over this….just saying.
Exactly. And the threats of suing? Kind of ridiculous and even hysterical.
Totally, Jincy! I’m glad you see what I’m saying…totally out of control over something that is not the end of the world.
People, if NYX’s sale being a bust is the worst thing going in your life, consider yourselves lucky. 🙂
I think many of the over-reaction messages on the Facebook page were meant to be jokes. The Cafe girls on MUA were having a ball posting over-reactive spam like that on NYX’s Facebook page.
Whatta ya know.. the website is not working again lol
Also I wanted to add that I do not believe in the phrase “the customer is always right” because they aren’t, although SA etc. should still try to keep their cool when a customer goes nuts IMO. However in this case I do think NYX was in the wrong.
Thanks for this Christine. I was really hoping you would cover this at some point today and it feels nice to get the perspective of someone who can relate to both the consumer and business owners.
However, I, for one, am not pleased. Along with NYX’s 50,000 other fans, I sat down at my desk at exactly 3 pm EST anticipating there might be a few problems with all the traffic, but excited and ready to push through. What I wasn’t expecting was to spend the rest of my Sunday evening running back and forth from the couch to my laptop desperately trying to make something, anything happen. I tried again before work this morning and again during my lunch break to absolutely no avail.
A 50% off coupon code doesn’t cut it. I was following the entire debacle on Twitter and Facebook, and it was amazing how few people managed to get purchases all the way through. In fact, I think a lot of people either stayed up all night, or stayed home from work and/or school just to keep trying. On Twitter, they recently posted that they received “several hundred” orders. Is that 800 orders, 500, or 200? Even 999 orders is absolutely ridiculous considering there were tens of thousands of people trying to take advantage of the sale.
When I think about how they could’ve done this correctly, I think of a situation the BF was recently in. He works for a major entertainment corporation who recently completely redesigned and launched their new website. The week of the launch, employees were prepared to work through the night (and given lots of incentives, like food and alcohol to boot) in case anything went wrong. Well, things did go wrong, but instead of attempting to launch the site as they’d planned on that Saturday morning, they postponed the launch by a week, giving themselves ample time to fix all the issues they were having. The site launch went exactly as planned the following Saturday. THIS is what NYX should’ve done.
At this point, I’m so disappointed I feel as though I may give up the brand. But in the end, it’s just makeup…so who knows. I’m really curious to know how the rest of the world (outside of angry followers on Facebook) feel about this.
As this is the first time I’m hearing about this, yes it’s annoying when you really want something but not on the level of a world disaster. It is just makeup in the end. Yes when they saw the problem they should have postponed the sale until they had sufficient tech power to handle it but 50% off is not a bad deal either – they have to make some money to cover their expenses after fixing the site after all. Plus they aren’t the first company to have issues when things like popular products come out (i.e. MAC) and their websites go down.
Anyway, remember, you’re talking to the little people when you call customer service. It’s the head of the company that makes the decisions so when you act in an uncivilized manner to them you’re just embarrassing yourself and giving them an undeserved bad day for something out of their control. Now, if they are impolite to you, please feel free to yell at them. 🙂
I do feel like some people were in the wrong for how they reacted, But I also don’t think that the 50% off is really the way to fix the situation. I think it was more then just poor judgment of NYX to keep the sale going when so very many customers could not purchase their items, it’s almost bordering on cruel. Honestly, in my opinion it would have been far far better to shut the site down completely until it could function properly and then hold the sale again. I do like NYX products, but I am also hurt with how they are trying to propose a solution. 50% off is not $1.20 on the products I wanted to buy, so I will no loner be purchasing 🙁
You hit the nail on the head. What is offensive to me about this whole scenario is NOT that tech issues prevented people from taking advantage of the sale–it’s that the people who run NYX continually told their anxious customers to just be patient, to just keep trying, to just hang on a little while longer because they were getting the problems fixed and the sale would go like planned. Even when it became clear (or should have become clear) that the website issues were not fixable, NYX customer service reps advised customers to “just keep trying” to get through the website. At some point during the 24 hour debacle, the company knew (or certainly should have known) that the website issues could not be resolved before the end of the sale. But rather than admitting “hey, this isn’t working out, we screwed up, we’ll figure out what went wrong and do this right next month,” they basically told their customers “if you really want this great deal, you’re going to have to sit in front of your computer for 24+ hours hitting F5, and maybe it will work.”
Of course, each customer chose whether the potential discount was worth sitting in front of a computer, without sleeping, skipping work/school/etc. for 24+ hours, but that’s another subject and has nothing to do with what, to me, came across as NYX’s shirking some level of corporate responsibility to not make their customers suffer needlessly. I don’t know, on some abstract level, the whole thing just didn’t sit right with me.
It’s entirely possible, it would be weeks until they’re ready. Is that too late? I myself work in IT for a company that gets high traffic and we have our bad days. I know the kinds of problems they must have had. I just wonder if it was delayed, say weeks or a month would that still be enough for customers?
Working in retail, I can tell that NO ! customers aren’t always right! It’s so getting on my nerves!
Now let’s talk about NYX.. A website is a big “computer” and it can crash! I can understand customer’s frustration but in the meantime.. It is just make up! I read some comments on NYX facebook page and i’m really discourage with humanity!(ok ok just some percentage of humanity ahah)
At least there is a 50% sale.. Anyhow relax people it’s just freaking make up!
It’s not “just make up” to some people. It was a promise that was not upheld and a lot of wasted time. I am not one of the people who wasted my time waiting for the site to become available again, but I can certainly sympathize with their situation. The fact that NYX did not extend the sale only leaves me to believe that this was intentional on their part.
I am very much into customer service. Bad customer service will make me quit a place no matter how much I love it.
@Candee, I believe you hit the nail right on the head. It isn’t “just makeup”. If it was, companies like MAC wouldn’t have such a devoted fan base and businesses wouldn’t spend billions (BILLIONS) in advertising and market research. Just like with anything in life, if a promise is broken, it is human to feel betrayed; this is especially so when there is money involved. I do agree that it can be taken to extremes, but if you read any comments, anywhere on the web, it’s quite likely there are more than a few ignorant, profane, hurtful, down right ugly, things written by cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the world wide web. This does not excuse what happened with NYX. This is not the first time a company has offered an outrageous sale only to have their sites basically shut down due to the volume of traffic. NYX did not anticipate this? At all? A slowly loading web site is one thing, not being able to check out after FIVE hours of trying (my sad experience) is a complete debacle. I have never tried NYX cosmetics but was very excited to. Like many on here, I refuse to patronize them in any way from here on out. There are just too many companies out there doing it RIGHT to worry about one that is not. I can, however, imagine the anger that someone could feel as a fan or long time user of this brand.
@Abby:”Successful commerce can only be achieved when there is mutual respect from both parties.” Yes! And the word commerce can be replaced by any other word representing a relationship between two or more people and the statement remains absolutely true.
I completely agree. It may just seem like makeup to some people. But makeup is my passion. It’s also not something I get to splurge on often and my fiance and I both were excited for this sale. He was excited because it made me happy. And I was excited to spend a little on myself that I rarely get to do with having a 4 year old. Times are hard. And makeup isn’t something I have to have. So it’s always put on the back burner.
What upsets me about this whole situation was just how NYX handled the situation. I am quite aware that things happen. And that’s to be expected. I honestly knew it was going to happen….AGAIN. Seeing how it happened last year as well. I just honestly thought they would handle it professionally. And that, they did not.
I think the people who are angry about this sale and trying to take advantage of it (I did not) have really undervalued their time! Just as another poster stated about Black Friday, is it really worth one of the few days off work you may get to sit out in the cold or continually try to get through a crashed website for a few bucks? How much money would you make in that time working: more or less than what you might save? I am a person that pays more for conveniences because my time is worth too much.
I think it’s ridiculous that people are getting so worked up over a sale on products that are already cheap. It brings to mind the angry mobs of people who rush into the doors of a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. I laughed out loud when I read “angry, betrayed, and hurt customers.” I’m sorry, but if someone gets that worked up over a sale on already super cheap makeup, then you need a reality check.
I entirely agree. I’m glad someone else is with me!
I agree! Its already cheap and high quality. Even 50% off is a steal when other companies only do 20%. Its seriously over the top drama.
It might be a billion dollar industry, but at the end of the day, it is still just makeup. We’re not talking about life-saving medications and essentials for life here. Add to that the fact that a lot of it is already priced at bargain basement rates and no, I don’t understand people on Facebook losing their marbles over it. I don’t believe the customer is always right because some people are downright rude or have horrible entitled attitudes (not saying that about anyone here, but in general). Frustration is understandable, but that would be the extent of my feelings about it.
Okay, well I guess I’m not rolling in dough like you ladies are. 25 bucks for a powder or blush is not cheap to me. 10.00 for neat looking eyelashes is not cheap to me. I would’ve saved like 300 bucks if I got my list of items I wanted. But remember, none of these women wanted to waste their whole day waiting to buy makeup. They thought it would take a few minutes. NYX kept stringing everyone along with their facebook and twitter posts making it seem like the site would be up in minutes. Well, minutes turned into hours. Anyway, I’m not rich like I’m surmising you ladies are. One high end product for me is an absolute luxury.
It is all relative but I am pretty sure it is made in china for 25 cents anyways, if that. These companies make astronomical amounts of profit. Sure, they are allowed to do that, more power to them if we keep buying it. To me though, it just makes them look a little greedy that they couldn’t deliver the “appreciation sale” to it’s fullest extent.
It sounds like NYX handled this pretty poorly, to be sure. I agree they should extend the sale.
I want to chime in as a former customer service rep (for a totally different company): As Temptalia said, you can imagine what kind of day the customer service reps are having. Even if you are angry, remember that they’re real people on the other end- and the decision probably isn’t up to them. You’ll get a the best results with a polite and carefully articulated explanation of what you need that they can relay to their boss. Even when the customer is right, being rude to a customer service rep is still rude.
Definitely true – it’s hard not to take your anger out on someone, but customer service representatives aren’t the ones who caused the problems and can’t fix it themselves… just relay what you say to those above.
BS- if your site does not work- postpone the sale- that was the right thing to do if you really wanted to do the whole 1.20 sale (which is really really doubtful at this point). I did not even know about the sale until late at night and I finally got a bunch of things into my cart at like 3am and it was checking out for an hour with me having to hit refresh several times, until it said that my CC was wrong, which was BS. Also for servers to be down for more than 24hrs? Come on, totally unreal they could have rented some and once again they could have postponed the sale if they really cared about the customer. They stopped updating their twitter and FB with the last statement basically saying -keep trying, which of course people did. I think this whole thing was more of a publicity stunt and a scam than anything else, also now all of a sudden the prices of a lot of products are jacked up (single e/s – $5.50?) to make up for promo codes they are giving out. I seriously will probably never buy another NYX product, this was very very disappointing experience and hope they get what they deserve for it.
Hey Nez!
We’ve ran into MAJOR server issues just being a small website, and it can take weeks to resolve an issue, depending on the root cause. We used to continually crash and slug through on our higher days, and now we spend thousands to be able to keep our uptime consistent – but it took a lot of fine-tuning, optimization, and the like. It is entirely possible to resolve things, too, but I know that at one point we had reached a level where we had to switch our entire architecture, which resulted in down time for as long as 72 hours for some readers. Just wanted to add that as someone who has gone through, personally, trying to figure out servers and the like. 🙂 I would hope that NYX’s IT team has much more expertise than we do/did, of course.
Hey Christine,
I would expect more resources and planning are involved with a company that is actually trying to venture out and be a mid-end hip cosmetic company. After what seems like a careful, deliberate ad campaign on this Awesomely amazing sale that never happened, they should have gauged their resources and should have reacted appropriately when they realized (which I am sure they did), that probably the issue will not be resolved.
I understand that a small company might encounter problems but when you advertise on a large scale you gotta be ready, or at least be honest with your customers! Now they are basically acting as if nothing ever happened!
Thank you for pointing this out Christine.
but the diffrence is (atleast for me ) when somthing happens with this site you know (especialy if you are on facebook or twitter).
I totally understand – I don’t think this was handled perfectly at all, which is what prompted me to write the post, because I thought it would be good to create a place for thoughtful discussion that isn’t flooded by trolling comments and petty insults. I also wanted to shed some light on the technical aspect, just because we’ve totally been there, and I don’t think everyone is aware that it’s not just a flip of the switch to fix all the time 🙂
very true.im not trying to be catty,although to say that i dont feel negitvely about this i would be lying.i understand and accept that the problem could not be fixed during the timespand of the sale and that communication was the best that the nyx team could provide while staying attentive to the sever issues.i feel let down with the promise of sale (that as far as i could tell most of the thier consumers were not able to partake of) being considered a sale.i feel i was advertised somthing i should rececive it.i feel like they should come up with a better way to solve this problem than a 50 % sale . i dont think the should give us the shirts off thr back but atleast provide a sale that that is much closer to what we missed .
I did call their customer service line, and the representative was quite nice, but extremely unhelpful. Her response was that orders could only be placed through the website, and that she had nothing to do with the website. Of course customers can be wrong (and some of the comments on NYX’s facebook page are appalling), but in this case, the company advertised the sale widely and then essentially refused to honor it. I would be happy if they could take orders over the phone, but the 50% off code is a paltry substitute for what they offered. In this case, they certainly handled the situation poorly, although many customers’ reactions were just as bad.
It’s of course a given that customers aren’t always right. And it’s never right for anyone to literally lose their shit at someone else. For me, I just keep my cool (or appear to I guess, if they’re super getting on my nerves) and explain it to them rationally, and if that’s not good enough for them, that’s not my problem. They’re the ones embarrassing themselves anyway. It’s more of a right as a customer to be treated politely and not told outright that they’re wrong.
I was interested in the sale and I tried every hour or so to log on but I couldn’t, so I gave up. $1.20 for decent quality makeup? Of course, I’m interested but it’s not the end of the world if I miss it. Life will still go on.
They should have the $1.20 sale still but only when their servers can handle the amount of traffic it will generate. I do believe 50% is pretty decent since they could just be like “Well, whatever. Sorry. You missed the sale. Deal with it.” But they’re not. They probably lose a LOT of money from this sale and they have to make up for those lost profits somehow.
However, the majority of the comments on twitter and facebook are downright irrational. There is NO reason to be rude. Yes, they were snarky and I don’t agree with them doing that but they were NEVER as rude as the people leaving comments. They’re up to their elbows in work and people are just not being patient enough. It takes time for servers to come up and it takes time to get things to work. And now there’s a group saying they’re going to boycott them. For what? Missing a sale because of server issue? Say what?
Listen to me people who are mad and being irrational and leaving nasty comments, this is all just make up. It’s not serious. When I hear about people freaking out or getting mad over makeup I have to shake my head. It’s not the end of the world.
I hate to speak in absolutes, but I have to say, if any salesperson EVER implies that they’re losing money on a sale, it’s BS. The markup on cosmetics is astronomical- I worked management for one of the big mamas of beauty and can tell you that they pay less than $1.50 for lipsticks that they retail at $24.
A sale like this that cuts cost but drives incrementally more traffic to the website will always raise profits, don’t doubt it for a second 🙂
As a student of computer science, you are taught to anticipate technical difficulties and handling exceptions in your programs. I have spent night after night working hard to ensure my programs run properly in every imaginable instance and in a case as common as server overload, I feel NYX should have anticipated an influx of traffic. This is clearly their fault and they should have taken preventative measures. It is extremely frustrating to continually run into these sorts of issues since they are all too common.
I think it would do everyone justice to reintroduce the original sale once the internal issues are corrected. And as some of us may have noticed, the there is still too much traffic for the server to manage at this point in time.
I would like to append the fact that, no, I do not think the customer is always right. As a young lass I had some terrible experiences as a sales associate when dealing unreasonable, irrational, self-absorbed customers. Unfortunately the management didn’t help to ensure the mental well being of its associates either.
I think 50% off PLUS free shipping is a fair response to grumpy customers. Definitely not as good as what *was* being offered, but for the time being, it’s a decent band-aid solution. Hopefully once they have their site fixed and ready for high traffic, they’ll be able to run another “event” sale to really make it up to customers.
I work at a huge company (previously as a sales associate/customer service representative and now as a Safety & Security agent) and I witness a lot. I feel like they get customers get away with so much and they don’t take coworkers seriously. I do not think that customers are always right (mind you, I’m a customer to many other places), because some people abuse that right. I have never yelled at a CS representative or SA regardless of how mad/stressed out I am because 9 times out of 10 it’s not their fault and they’re probably just trying to help. I wish everyone understood that.
They were hanging up on customers who were calling in….that is rude and unacceptable IMO. Now, I do not know of those callers were being jerks themselves and cursing and screaming BUT still. I personally think it was semi on purpose w/ the server/website thing. They had to have known there would be a lot of traffic and truth be told they didn’t want to sell any more items than they had to at $1.20. If NYX did, they would have extended the sale or done a re-do once things were sorted out. 50% off isn’t good enough. I can see why people are angry.
I just wanted to write that I worked a customer service rep job for a year before I was promoted to manager of the department. Even then, I would still answer calls when traffic was busy. It’s the golden rule of CS to let an upset customer vent without interruption, then set about helping them as best you can.
In many instances, as Manager, I was able to make things more than right for an upset customer. But, there were still people who wanted to curse out whoever was on the other end of the line. In those instances, we had the owner’s complete support in telling the customer to stop using such language and, if they didn’t, we were allowed to hang up on them after issuing the warning.
There is NO reason for a CS rep to be verbally abused for something that isn’t their fault and is well beyond their jurisdiction.
All that being said, I think that NYX should shut down the site and issue a statement saying that the site will be shut down until the repairs are made and in place. That way, folks aren’t trying in vain to log on. Once the site is fixed and tested, I think they should re-issue the sale with apologies to their customers. After the sale is over, customers who purchased items should be issued a special “thank you” and be offered a coupon for 50% off one item or free shipping on a future order – in order to promote customer loyalty and really get the message across that they are sorry and value the business.
In the case of this NYX sale, I would have expected them to prepare better – it was obvious such a great offer would have high demand. But since things did not work, I agree they should re-open the sale as soon as their site and system are ready to respond. They advertised a great anniversary sale as a thank you for their customers, yet they were unable to accept the orders of many of them because of technical difficulties. They should honor their commitment and extend the sale. NYX is a great brand and everything, but no brand is indispensable; there are too many choices out there to believe customers won’t turn their backs due to a faulty service.
I believe the customer is not always right, but the least a company can do is provide very clear guidelines (and good service!) when they have promotions like cupons or special sales; be willing to provide reasonable explanations when they make a mistake, find a good way to make up for these mistakes and have real people (not answering machines) to provide customer service.
and on that note… The NYX site is still not working…
I tried all day yesterday to try to take a look at what was available, and the site didn’t load correctly once! and I wasn’t able to add any items to the cart either.
This is my first and last time trying ot purchase from the NYX site.
I personally do not think the customer is always right. I have worked in retail for ten years, and trained to kiss ass and make sure the customer is satisfy so they will continue to come back. I think Nyx is in the wrong. They should set up a new date for the sale. Most likely they wont because they will probably loose just as much money. What a horrible company. Thank god I now work in the medical field!
That’s a pretty gross oversight on NYX part to put up a sale and NOT expect a surge of traffic. I would be extremely concerned for transactions where payment was sent (and CCs charged) but the order never made it to the receiving room!
While the NYX incident is an exception, I don’t totally agree with the sentiment that the customer is always right. Successful commerce can only be achieved when there is mutual respect from both parties. I’ve worked in retail, waded through shopping sprees, and read enough reviews on Yelp to realize that there are A LOT of totally unreasonable people out there who will hide behind this adage in an effort to justify wholly inappropriate actions. Customers often forget that the vast majority of businesses are privately owned and operated, and there are people just like them behind the business sign.
We don’t have Nyx up here as far as I know, so the sale issue doesn’t effect me, but I have to say that in my experience, almost every company makes the mistake of under-estimating the traffic this sort of promotion will bring to their web site. So chances are that they never tested their servers for the volume they received and, of course, they failed. This also means that they never budgeted for the hit they would take selling that volume of merchandise at the discounts you mentioned.
I have no problem believing that their servers could have gone down for 24 hours- all of blogger went down for that length of time just this past week and that’s a company that knows web business. Server problems can be incredibly difficult to diagnose properly and until you know exactly what’s causing the problem, you can’t fix it.
None of this helps the people who were stranded trying to buy and I feel for you guys. I hope you’re all able to get a good amount of what you want despite the change in the promotion.
And Christine, I wanted to congratulate you on a very articulate, balanced and well-written piece.
Tech problems = PITA!! LOL, it can be the LITTLEST thing wrecking all that is a website and then it’s searching for a needle in a haystack.
Thank you, Kate! 🙂
Not accounting for a large surge in traffic when you offer a great sale is poor business practice. What’s the purpose of a sale? To bring in old AND new customers, so you would/should expect a surge in traffic.
“Poor business practice.”
Nailed it. I waited tables in high-end restaurants all through college, and I’ve had to go to the tedious process of explaining that if you want a 40 ounce NY strip well-done, it’s going to take close to 45 minutes. I had to do this same explanation for so many different guests at different establishments, and whether or not the experience for the guest turned out positive depended more on the business practices of the establishment than an isolated incident of waiting 45 minutes for a steak. I’ve been screamed at in the middle of a dining room of a place because of poor management and I’ve also gotten smiles, thumbs up and the phrase “just how I like it!” in places with good management. So it really comes down to the management at the top who are suppose to coordinate the whole sha-bang.
For example, good management would not have only anticipated a surge in web traffic, but would have been technically prepared for it BEFORE the sale started. So why weren’t their servers prepared before the sale? I’m gonna guess that such things require investing in the business itself, as in spending money on equipment. But if they invest money into their business, that might have an impact on short-term profits and on managements’ take-home pay. So instead of risking their paychecks, they instead subject their customer base and their employees to endless frustration. Customer service is on damage control and tech support is probably ready to intentionally crash servers themselves because of the cluster-$%^& their bosses made for them. And then you have the let-down customer on the other end, constantly hitting refresh, unknowingly further exasperating the condition by adding to the mounting server requests that the servers just can’t handle. The whole sale has instead turned into a denial of service attack, unwittingly and non-maliciously done by the customers themselves, which is why no one’s order could go through.
So, I think the real issue isn’t about customers being right or wrong, but what causes catastrophic business failures like this in the first place. The people responsible for the organizing and execution of projects, management, failed to do their jobs. And sadly, it’s usually the powerless customer service representatives that takes the emotional brunt from the let-down customers and the tech guys in back end who lose their free time and sleep.
In the meantime, disappointed NYX customers should request the sale be reinstated and cite the management’s poor planning as the reason why. If not, the best thing to do is walk away and try to be nice to fellow human beings while we’re at it.
I am really really frustrated with NYX right now! I sat up late night trying to get on their website for hours. I know that they have had previous sales in the past with bundles, eyeshadow packs, etc. For them to drop the ball on this sale seems very unprofessional. Yes, technical difficulties happen to everyone. But, they are a fairly large company who can afford to invest in better servers and website maintenance.
However, this does not excuse the language I saw from some individuals on Facebook. You should not treat another human being like that. If you have a comment, you can easily make yourself heard without being rude. I used to work in customer service. It was always the customers who explained their situation calmly who got what they wanted.
NYX should extend the $1.20 sale for customers. Or postpone until everything is working again. Simple as that. Although the 50% percent coupon is nice, it is not the fault of NYX customers that NYX was not better prepared for the sale.
Expect huge rant coming up:
I’ve never been a huge NYX fan but I saw a tweet about this on Saturday or Sunday so I decided this would be a great time to try out everything I was interested in from the brand, particularly those HD grinding blushes, from $16 down to $1.20 don’t mind if I do. When a hugely popular company has a sale like this where they are offering things for dirt-cheap, people will come by the boatload and I don’t understand why they didn’t prepare. It is not like it was a spur of the moment sale; this was in the works for a long time so they had a long time to beef up their servers and whatever else to get the site ready for the sale. At the end of the day they wasted A LOT of my time, and that is unacceptable in my opinion. Their responses on twitter were ungrateful at best and normally completely unhelpful.
Now this takes me back to the time I had the (dis)pleasure of taking part in the Sleek Makeup 50% off sale in November. Actually the sales almost took exactly the same path, with the company rep on twitter and fb hyping them up to the max and as soon as the sale went live, the site all but nearly shut down. They too had to bump up their servers but that didn’t really help. I actually finally got in an order with Sleek only for them to hold the funds in my account for 30 days and then tell me that my order didn’t actually go through. Eventually they sent out a coupon code but I know lots of people who weren’t so lucky.
So back to the NYX sale. I spent about an hour yesterday when the sale went live trying to access the site, another hour when I got back home, I woke up 3-4 in the middle of the night to see how the site was doing (silly, but I can’t sleep when I have something on my mind), and finally I woke up at 8 and spent 3 hours until 11 adding things to my cart when I reached the checkout review page and it got stuck there for hmm another 7 hours with my periodically hitting the refresh button 50 times. So is it fair for me to say that NYX really wasted my time? YES NYX YOU WASTED MY FREAKING TIME. What is even worse is that they offer no real solution other than the 50% off. We didn’t want 50% off, we wanted $1.20. Their twitter person says that unless you got an order through that you’re screwed. Lots of people started shouting SCAM and I really can’t help but agree; I cannot imagine more than a handful of purchases actually going through. So NYX gets loads of publicity and hits to their site and only has to actually send out a few things at the $1.20 price. I am from here on out boycotting the brand.
Oh and yes the customer always is right unless they are just being um wrong. As long as the customer is within the guidelines for a sale or something, she is right. (Plus i don’t really think this is a question of customers being right, of course they are being right. We were promised $1.20 items and we didn’t get them. End of story) This is why I like Nordstrom better than any store… the customer is ALWAYS #1 there. I’ll save my $66 that was going to this Nyx crap and buy myself a nice cosmetic or two from Nordstrom 🙂
I’m glad that NYX is offering some kind of semi-solution here for what happened yesterday but really, I do not understand how they honestly thought they could just have such a massive sale without having their site completely crash. Their site’s always been really slow, especially during sales, and I had hoped that they’d upgraded their server since the last time I shopped a sale but nope…Like everyone else I was ready at 3pm and sat attempting to refresh a completely crashed site until about 7pm. I’m a night owl so I was up late anyway and after coming home from a friend’s house attempted to shop again around 330 am after I heard they’d extended the sale till 12, and although it kept crashing and I honestly must have hit refresh about 3,000 times, I was able to get all the things I wanted. I took 3 and a half hours. No exaggeration at all, it took from 330am until 7am. yes, I was still up at 7am lol. Checkout was epically slow, that alone used up about an hour and a half trying to load those pages. I didn’t care though, I (and I’m sure many others as well) have been a NYX fan for too long to miss out on that sale and I was buying stuff even if it took all night and all the slow servers in the world. They weren’t going to get away with having such an amazing sale but having no one able to take advantage of it! (I know it wasn’t intentional but still).
I agree with what others have said, they really should have postponed the sale until they fixed their site or maybe 2 weeks before, have customers email in for access codes (anyone remember the Spice Girls Reunion Tour? You had to register for a code in order to be able to buy tickets) with assigned times so that so many people can go on with their code (individual codes like nxbxb755 nothing like NYXSALE1 or anything) from say 1-2pm, next group 2-3pm, and so on. It would all still work on a first come first served basis since whoever emailed in for a code first would get an earlier group.
I hope in the future if they do big sales like this they sort out their tech issues first it’s really unfair to both sides. Customers can’t make purchases and NYX isn’t making any money, it makes the whole thing entirely pointless
nope, the costumer isn’t always right!! unkind people deserve nothing!
That’s very kind of you.
From a technical pov (an EE here): servers are not easy to debug. If a server crashes completely, it can take weeks, if not months to figure out what caused it. Quite honestly, I feel that NYX probably underestimated the number of people who wanted a good deal and it crashed their server. Since they never predicted the high numbers, they could not have prepared for it. So delaying the sale to get more servers would be a moot point.
As someone who worked as an retail associate for a long time and through many Boxing Days (Canada’s Black Friday), customers are usually wrong but we give in so that they leave the store. In times like Boxing Day and other great sales, people suddenly become rude, impatient and obnoxious. If the sale is so great, you should expect delays, line-ups and annoyances but apparently they want the full-price experience at 70% off prices. Also, if not being able to get a seriously cheap deal on not even originally expensive makeup leads you to feel “angry, betrayed, and hurt” then you should reprioritize. I remember when the first outnet $2 designer products sale sold out in 2 minutes and then the server crashed (which is way better than the $1.20 deal this is). I wasn’t going to cry because I couldn’t even log-on (and I was awake and trying at the start time, not hours later) and when I finally did, everything was gone. All they gave was 20% off or free shipping, can’t remember what but it wasn’t anything special. Last I heard, Outnet is doing great and I still shop there.
Reprioritize? No thanks, I expect companies to run honest advertising and to have good customer service.
One of my priorities is spending money wisely so why would I waste my time patronizing any company that clearly doesn’t value their customers?
The difference, IMO, is that in the case you use as an example, apparently enough people were able to log on to purchase everything outnet had for sale (since you say that when you eventually were able to access the sale, everything was sold out). In this case, the technical difficulties were so extreme that virtually no one was able to access the sale. By Nyx’s own admission, they processed “hundreds” of orders, which is a tiny amount for a mainstream cosmetics company sold nationwide at major retailers and with over 50,000 Facebook fans. The failure was even more apparent by looking at their products pages before and after the “sale”–nothing, not even the most expensive items on mark-down, sold out during the sale.
I agree that in the situation you describe, which could be compared to showing up for a great sale at a brick & mortar sale but not being able to get a parking space, any concession by the company is over and above the call of duty. But the Nyx debacle is more akin to a brick & mortar store advertising a sale and then refusing to unlock the doors until the sale ended.
I just wrote them @ the feedback@nyx. I have been trying, refreshing and nothing is working. The website is refreshing as I am commenting and emailing them (multitasking ;)) I don’t know what to do, but hope I make it in time for the code! I have been a loyal customer since highschool! My brother is a techie with a degree and I understand the littlest thing or spike in traffic can be a detriment to anybodys business. Especisally in an age of instant gratification on the internet and cell phone. Eveerything is right in your pocket and everybody wants what they want asap and can get very nasty about it. I will still be a loyal customer regardless, but would be dissappointed.
I spent HOURS refreshing page after page trying to fill my cart and fixing it here and there. Then spent even MORE time refreshing the checkout to get it to work. Kind of ironic that right after I tweeted them it worked. So I was one of the lucky ones who got through with the 1.20 order. I do believe it is bull for them to offer %50 off. That’s not helping anything. Yes it’s a sale, but why should the customers that spent hours get jipped out of money? Because that’s surely not the sale they were going after. I think they could’ve and should’ve been more prepared. I mean with a sale at this magnitude, how can you not expect tons of orders? This was my first order with Nyx and it’ll probably be a while till I order again. I’m just hoping that nothing with my order messes up, because I really don’t want to go through with customer service. Now I’m just hoping that the products are actually worth all of the trouble I went through, and sorry to all who couldn’t get through with their orders.
Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over the way the customers are reacting on their Facebook page. People are blaming NYX for wasting their entire day. Others are yelling because they TOOK THE DAY OFF FROM WORK/SCHOOL. What rational person does that for discounted makeup?
Yeah, it sucks that we don’t get the $1.20 sale but a week long one is STILL them giving away enormous amounts of makeup for an incredibly good price, doing something they absolutely do not have to do.
Other people have been yelling that NYX KNEW this would happen and didn’t care enough to try to fix it. Really? I honestly believe they’re doing the best they can to try to fix this.
In the end, it’s just makeup. I read a post wishing that the people in NYX Customer Service would experience the same thing happen to them. What kind of horrible person writes that? And is it really worth your while to waste your own day refreshing the page and then yelling at innocent people for something as stupid as makeup?? (Disclaimer: I freaking LOVE makeup, but the reactions to this are so disproportionate.) There are so many better ways to be using your lives. Do something productive please.
I completely agree with you. I appreciate hearing someone else say its just makeup! Missing one sale isn’t a big deal, there will be more to come 🙂
I’m not from the US, so had no idea about this whole fiasco until I read this post, but I have to say I disagree with you. What irks me about this entire situation is not the fact that people missed out on buying discounted makeup – it’s that NYX failed to uphold their promise.
In deciding to hold such a large scale event, they SHOULD have predicted the influx of customers which would affect their servers. Even someone who knows the slightest bit about computers would know this, and NYX have experts working on their team. It’s unacceptable that they did not take preventative measures to ensure their customers’ satisfaction.
Also – if they were going to adhere to the sale as a thank you to their customers, when witnessing that there were clearly huge problems growing exponentially, they should have postponed the sale. It’s not a thank you to their customers if over 90% couldn’t even enjoy the discount.
This isn’t just about makeup. It’s about the brand’s integrity and its ability to hold true to their promises, as well as deliver what is expected of them to their customers – something which NYX clearly failed to do in this case. You have to look beyond the superficial veil of makeup to comprehend the underlying problem that is displeasing so many customers.
NYX doesn’t even have anything to do with me since I don’t live in the US, but even I can see what a disaster this has been.
Hiromi, I agree with you 1000%. I didn’t even know about the NYX sale or the resulting fiasco until I came to Temptalia today, and even if I had I probably wouldn’t have ordered anything from them. But NYX’s behavior is totally unacceptable. I can’t even fathom the kind of management stupidity responsible for such poor planning — how could you *not* anticipate a huge influx of people coming to your site? And once they did screw up, it should be their responsibility to fix it by suspending the sale and making it available at a later date.
And I agree that the way NYX reacted is a big part of the problem. Makeup purchases, like most unnecessary purchases, are about so much more than just the product. It’s about the experience, the way it makes you feel, the overall feeling of being pampered and treated well. If it was just about buying what you need, most of us wouldn’t regularly visit blogs like this one to track the latest beauty release. I love makeup and will admit I have a crazy-huge stash, but at the end of the day, let’s be honest: this isn’t food, gas, or a mortgage. People could live without another lipstick or eye shadow if they had to. All companies should strive for good customer service, but those who are selling something that is at heart a luxury should really be careful to treat people well.
I haven’t been on the Facebook site or on Twitter, so I don’t know what people were saying. But even if people were being rude, that’s a separate issue entirely and does not in any way excuse the company.
The internet isn’t perfect. That many people on a website trying to do the same thing will crash any site no matter how perfect it may seem on a normal day. Their site wasn’t prepared for the traffic, lesson learned, hopefully it will be the next time a sale like this comes around. Big companies like MAC are ready for the mad rush, but some smaller companies that don’t get this much traffic. Even Temptalia had to update their serves due to all of our traffic looking at swatches. That didn’t make us ditch this website did it? If you love the product that much or want it so badly, but it at normal price. Just because you didn’t get exactly what you want for the lowest price possible does not mean you blame the company, no matter what company. Yes, it would have been smarter to extend the sale after they had fixed the problem. That being said, I think it is silly that so many people are up in arms over this. It is makeup, not life or death medicine that we all need. So we missed a sale? Big deal. Not the end of the world. Move on and try their products again another day.
honestly? no, the customer is NOT always right. i had a woman the other day trying to return a product she allegedly broke the other night (apparently from having it break in her bag when the cap fractured, and we drop said product countless times and have NEVER had any form of breakage only spillage). to make it worse, she claimed to have bought the product A YEAR ago (excuse me?!?) and didn’t have a receipt. when i told her we couldnt exchange it, “well you’ve just lost a customer!!”
yuck, retail!
but in NYX’s case i am with those who want them to extend the sale or hold it again. i wasn’t part of the bunch ordering but as i’ve spend forever trying to get carts from other sites to work i can sympathise.
No, the customer is not always right. It’s not right to be rude or act like a child when something unexpected happens. It is however the customer’s right to have their ends met, which obviously didn’t happen in this case. I don’t think it’s fair to be upset with NYX over the failure of the site – sh*t happens ALL the time. You cannot possibly be prepared for every bad thing that could potentially happen. After all, we’re all human and the Internet is a human invention! They are in the wrong with how they handled the whole situation. Even the way they spoke to their followers on Facebook and Twitter kind of turned me off. “We will reward you with this coupon!” Uh…no. You do not “reward” your customers especially not when they’re very, very upset with you. I felt they were very condescending with how they responded to their fans.
This is why companies need great publicists. They need to have someone equipped with the right language and a good plan. Someone who knows what to say and when to say it. Not at one point did they sympathize with their customers’ frustrations, which I think is really crucial when trying to deal with backlash. Demanding patience so that the customer can receive an “award” is hardly a good strategy.
As someone who’s worked in the customer service field in one way or another for 10 years, and who also expects fabulous customer service (holding others to the same standard of service, I myself give.) I can certainly stand behind saying that the customer is NOT always right. There are a lot of cases where the customer is right or entitled to a resolution from the company (this NYX craziness being one of those), but there are many many times when a complaining customer is simply in the wrong. Sometimes they’ve misread something, or have been given false information somewhere else that they’re basing their claim on, other times they’re just being completely unreasonable for their own warped reasons, but either way, there are just as many instances of the customer being wrong as they are right. A customer and a company come together to make the experience and neither is always right or wrong, and sometimes it’s somewhere in the middle.
As for NYX, they should have prepared beforehand for the influx of traffic to their site, but since they didn’t, it’s nice to see them offering a coupon. I know it’s not the $1.20 sale, but it’s better than nothing. The best resolution would have been to postpone the sale while they upgraded their systems, but since that didn’t happen. I’d suggest they do a re-do of the $1.20 sale later on, whether it’s a week, a month, or 6 months down the road when testing shows they can handle the kind of traffic that comes with such a sale.
i have worked in retail for years and i can confirm to you that the customer is not always right. theres always two sides to a coin. i think like aristotle would justify what is right, in business you have to look at right versus wrong rather than customer or employee…it doesnt matter ‘who’, its all about ‘what’. i have seen customers steal, trash merchandise, have their kids steal or trash merchandise, blame false accusations on the cashier so they can get a free discount, racist comments made to employees when customers dont get what they want, then they threaten to get you fired…its really wrong and its such a horrible position to be in when your own boss/management wont believe you. ive had bad customers blame things on me, and sometimes i was lucky enough to get other customers to support me and they stood up for me to tell my manager i was doing the right thing.
I think it’s only fair if they extend the $1.20 sale. The 50% off coupon code is a half-assed joke, I think. (Not to mention they want you to e-mail them and give them your info to get the coupon) It’s so bad it’s almost a scam. >:
This I take personally.
My husband is the Director of IT at a multi-million dollar company. They know in advance when their sites will be tested by a large influx of traffic. They will prepare, but no matter how much they might, they just never know for sure just how much traffic they really will get hit with.
My husband is on call 24/7. He has to work through holidays, vacations, major sickness, birthdays, births, funerals, weddings, etc. no matter what. And he works! He’s working hours and days on end with little food and no sleep. He’s not the only one either. The server workers and programmers are scrambling as well.
The majority of customers don’t care. They complain on forums saying they can fix the problem in an hour, the IT guy must be incompetent, just do this and that, the company sucks, I’m never giving them my money again. All the while, my husband’s nephew is crying because he can’t understand why his uncle can’t make it to his third birthday party.
All the workers at NYX are doing what they can right now. The decision to keep the sale going was wrong, I agree, but that decision wasn’t made by the typical worker. The sale should have been rescheduled, and who knows, they just might do that at a later date once this mess is sorted out. Even the bosses must be scrambling. Should the site be taken down until all is well? Yes, but NYX is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Nothing will completely satisfy everyone. At this time, the 50% sounds very reasonable to me.
I’ve been through this problem several times before. I’m a survivor of the BlizzCon 2008 “Oops! Murloc” debacle and consequent years’ ticket sales. I was up over 24 hours for the 2008 sale when millions of fans worldwide crashed the Blizzard store. It took days, but the site was finally fixed. Sure, Blizzard might have lost customers, but every year millions still try to get tickets, even with ticket prices being raised each con. All for a two-day event held once a year or so (a year was skipped).
But to be as angry as most people seem to be? To be jerks to customer service? To vow never to buy from them again? What does that accomplish? Maybe I’d be a bit ticked if it were an expensive make-up brand, but crying over saving a couple of bucks to a few isn’t worth it in my opinion. It’s make-up after all. A luxury product. But maybe it’s not so important to me because I think of my aunt who’s cancer came back along with a brain tumor and her insurance is no longer covering her chemo and radiation.
Hate NYX all you want. Hate my husband all you want.
I’m so sorry people were trying for hours all night. I’m sorry that lipstick is not $1.20 anymore. I’m sorry.
And I will continue to calmly say sorry as I make a sandwich for my husband because we had to leave another failed dinner date to rush home and get on his laptop to spend the next few hours typing away furiously.
This is vey well-written and insightful, but – why are YOU sorry? And how do you know what exactly is going on at NYX and how they are handling this? As someone who is unemployed and has been for most of the recession and is so until now (so of course, no health insurance), I say – you and your family should enjoy your husband’s prominent position at a “multi-million dollar company” and the responsibilities that come with it without false apologies like this. And by the way, everyone has a sob story – that’s life.
I can totally relate to your situation blkrox. I don’t know why she is sorry but I guess her point was that NYX customers should feel sorry that they ruined her posh dinner date with her husband. :p
50% off sounds reasonable to her, give me a break. $1.20 is a great price for anything and anyone who has ever been broke would understand what a let down that would be to not be able to purchase the products at the promised sale price. It’s even more of a drag that they raised the prices of the products recently to make up the loss for the “reasonable” 50% off coupon.
Posh dinner date? I think she’s trying to say that there’s more to a company than the product that they sell, and oftentimes it’s the customer service staff, IT specialists, etc. that receive the brunt of the criticism instead of the people making the poor business decisions.
That’s exactly what she’s saying.
@Wendell I totally understand where you’re coming from. I have several close friends in the IT field, and this happens unbelievably often. Many times we’ve just gotten to a club when we need to turn around and go back home because they’re on call constantly.
Thank you. I’ve been watching this the whole time – I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the train wreck – and the insults being hurled at people the customers didn’t even know shocked me. There are a lot of assumptions being made about exactly what happened – a lot COULD have happened. But I believe the NYX representatives when they say it was an unexpected issue, that they’d been preparing for months, and that they continually were working to fix it.
Also, the CS reps wouldn’t necessarily know how to communicate the issue even if they knew what the issue was. So there’s no point leaving hateful comments (some of them were REALLY harsh) about the people on the CS side of things when they are only getting fed tidbits of information.
I didn’t have the same reaction as others to the NYX comments – there was one that was snarky, but that was after hundreds of comments that were already veering towards “I’ll never buy from you again” and some severe overreactions. They are human too and they probably let it get to them. Not good, no, but I’m guilty of that too so I’m not judging.
This is not the first sale that has been bungled, nor will it be the last. I hope they can learn from this moving forward – on all fronts.
Thank you, Wendell, for expressing a different side of the story. That’s a perspective that not everyone probably considers.
Honestly, this comes off as very self-righteous. Your husband is the director of IT at a multimillion dollar company…well, that sounds really fantastic. I’m willing to bet the pay is great. With any job where the stakes (and pay) are that high, there are going to be concessions…perhaps he should’ve been director of the neighborhood sandwich shop instead? Look, nobody “hates” you or your husband. What people hate is having their time wasted and being kept in the dark, regardless if this is a Wet ‘N Wild $1 sale or a Chanel $1 sale. It’s not your place to judge whether or not NYX is worthy of making a stink over, nor is it your place to make others feel guilty about being angry over this by comparing it to something FAR more consequential. We get it. You have problems, I have problems too. Today, my problem was that I wanted to pay $1.20 for blush and was unable to. Should I be allowed to complain about it? Most definitely. I understand you wanting to give everyone a healthy dose of *perspective* on the situation, but maybe next time you can leave the part about your poor husband and his multimillion dollar position out of it. Many of us aren’t nearly as lucky.
THANK YOU! flawless reply.
No offense, but I’m appalled by the attack that Wendell is getting. Yes, you have the right to complain but if you are low income and are unemployed but maybe you shouldn’t be buying “luxury” goods such as makeup or even wasting time towards trying to obtain it. Maybe it’s time to spend that intense dedication and energy towards either a) getting a job b) acquiring skills to obtain a job.
Just because her husband’s job might pay well doesn’t mean the green monster of jealousy needs to come out and bite her head off when your anger is really towards NYX.
Disclaimer: I also came from a family who worked in IT and my parents spent many nights trying to resolve problems. Wanna know what else? They also spent many years barely making ends meet while also working for multibillion companies. At point point during those years, one of my parents was also a director.
EVERY job has its demands. Heck when I was in college studying for finals, I worked with little food and no sleep too. Your husband is not the exception. I’ve missed birthday parties too.
Beside, I don’t think anyone is (or should be) hating the IT people. Technical problems happen but the point is that NYX has screwed up their PR and they don’t seem to care.
NYX extended the sale into the afternoon today. Things were still very slow, but I was able to out together a cart. The comments on Facebook were horrifying. Some people get sooooo entitled and bratty when they feel they’ve been slighted it’s insane. It’s just makeup!!!! NYX didn’t have to have this sale. I understand it’s frustrating to have a slow shopping experience, but with all the press around this sale is it any surprise?
I feel for both sides, as I know how frustrating it is to expect to get some great deal and have things happen beyond your control; and I feel for NYX who *should* have known this was going to blow up in their faces and planned accordingly, but still….they don’t deserve the vitriol being spewed on their Facebook page. That doesn’t make anyone look good.
A brief gamer-geek interlude.. 🙂
… because if there’s any industry which deals with server interrupts as a basic facet of business, it’s the people running MMOs like World of Warcraft. After all, World of Warcraft suffered catastrophic server problems on their very first day of business, having underestimated the sheer demand for a space in their game! Even days later, would-be players were waiting for hours at a time simply to enter the game – a game for which they were paying a monthly access fee.
We can also consider the more recent example of the Playstation Network. A breach of their security knocked the entire network down for twenty-two days – and while gamers don’t pay to access the network, they do pay monthly fees for games played through the network… which amounts to largely the same thing. Again, this was a problem which they’d anticipated .. and which overwhelmed them all the same.
I mention these things simply because they’re examples that web-based companies can learn from.
These days, for instance, MMO’s open for business with plenty of excess servers on hand – just in case. It’s simply better to swallow that cost than to endure the ill-will of thousands of frustrated gamers. And just recently, companies associated with the Playstation Network have announced a series of ‘reward packages’ that they’ll be delivering to all of their subscribers, to make up for the lost time that they’ve endured. Free. Gratis. No effort required of the customer, no process by which a customer is required to repeatedly confirm that they’ve actually endured some difficulties.
Those companies are taking these steps because they exist in a very competitive field, and because in this Twitter era, a 140-character grudge travels the world at lightspeed. A moment’s generosity costs them far, far less than a week’s concentrated resentment. And that’s precisely what Nyx has created for itself with this debacle. Was there ever any good reason to not shut the website down with a large placard declaring the sale postponed? At best they painted themselves as incompetent; at worst, they defined themselves as uncaring and greedy. Is there really any reason to make a customer justify his dismay, under circumstances like these? At best, demanding emails and surnames looks like nitpicking scroogery –
But at worst, it looks like they’re trolling for spam material.
Editing to add:
Is it possible that running a 50%-off sale – for everyone – for three days would cost NYX more than they’d anticipated the $1.20 sale would? I highly doubt it, and strongly suspect that the appearance of generosity it’d generate would be worth considerably more than what little they might otherwise save.
But more importantly:
I don’t for one, brief moment condone the aggression people have been venting on customer service reps., on NYX’s IT crew, or anyone else involved who’s not directly a decision maker. Spewing ugly vitriol over a company’s Facebook page is unacceptable.. regardless of the reason, and those doing so truly deserve to be ashamed of their behaviour.
Christine, I think you are letting the company off way too easily. I actually never use Nyx but I was thinking of picking up an eyeshadow or pencil to try them out. I was suprised by what I think was a shocking lack of leadership, honesty, and disaster management. Most of all much like Toyota last year, it really seemed like nobody was steering the ship, so to speak. You don’t need leadership when things are going good, you need leadership when things are going bad. I think I saw a good example of this last year when AT&T was having problems with the Iphone 4. Their staff was on their facebook, personally responding to wall posts. I was shocked at how good their customer service was. I gave up trying to purchase like ten minutes into it when my sister walked into the room and was like “Why would you ever buy NYX? That stuff is cheapie cheap and bad.” And just like the Nyx brand was dead to me all over again. It made me realize that in the same way those screaming angry customers, however unjustified, could also kill the brand for people who weren’t as angry so the company really should have been talking to them one on one Apple/ATT style. Perhaps as a makeup guru who has a good relationship with Nyx promotions department, you might have a ton more experience and forgiveness for them than someone who spent 8 hours. They needed to shut it down and try again another day, instead of even more embarrassingly, extending it. My goodness it would be obvious to a first year business school student.
I stated that I understood where both sides were coming from, but I said it was NYX’s burden, responsibility, and in their interest to do what customers feel is right. I was, actually, right there along many other customers, refreshing and plugging away, trying to get in, from noon on Saturday until noon today.
I believe people are over reacting to this situation. We all agree that it was not a well organized event, or maybe they didn’t expect a lot of traffic; but people are threatening to sue or report to the BBB. C’mon! I’m pretty sure time can be better spent. Like someone said above, taking a day off of work for makeup???? Where are your priorities? I LOVE makeup, and I actually did manage to get stuff from NYX with a ton of refreshing. I only own 2 NYX blushes, so I saw the sale as a way to try their jumbo pencils and grinding blushes. I actually spent more time reading (in complete awe) the tweets and facebook comments online. I did notice that their prices are higher than what they were last night, and I do believe that is something that needs to be addressed. I’ll see if the stuff I ordered is good and then decide if I’ll continue shopping from them.
The customer is never wrong….but they are not always right. There is a difference. As to the $1.20 sale. I dont care if it is was for free. I will not use any makeup-made in China…or from PROC as it is stated on NYX products and I am Asian. Will not put poison onto my skin.
I didn’t realize they made their products in China! I’ll pass on lead poisoning. Thanks!
NYX’s cosmetics do not contain lead. Nor do, for what it’s worth, the 28/66/88/120/other palettes you can buy online in a variety of places. Please educate yourself.
NYX is a popular inexpensive brand. As far as I know, no one has died or anything from using it. Case in point: Christine herself has reviewed NYX products on this very blog in the past, and you know her job involves swatching products on her skin, trying out looks with the products, and that sort of thing. Obviously, she has bot stopped doing what she does.
NYX cosmetics are safe, and your ignorance is showing. And your xenophobia.
I hope you’re not using Urban decay palettes which are also made in China. NYX knows that their products have to meet certain regulations and they obviously do because if they didn’t, people would be having problems with their products causing reactions. They’re as safe as the brands made in the US, Europe, Japan, etc.
Dont buy ANY brands from China…clothes, purse, not even shoes. Not all Urban Decay products are made in China. To each is own. Just am not supporting China in any shape or form especially when all the US jobs are outsourced. And this discussion about NYX is hilarious.
Okay I see… so because US jobs are outsourced to China, Made in China products are automatically “poison”.
Please argue for your views with FACTS rather than scare tactics.
You do know outsourcing also occurs in other countries such as Vietnam, Brazil,India, Morocco, Korea, etc…if you didn’t purchase anything that jobs were being outsourced to I doubt you’d be able to buy much in terms of clothing and makeup. You probably even shouldn’t use your cell phone or choose not to use any customer support because it’s all outsourced to India…
Facts, people. Let’s be a little reasonable.
While there have been toxicity issues arising in edible foods, makeup, and children’s toys from all over Asia (problem foods = China and Canada and USA, makeup = Korea, and children’s toys = China again), I believe that there are still reputable Asian factories that adhere to regulations set out by each manufacturing industry and the related governments. I do know for a fact that lead is EVERYWHERE. It’s just that each dose of a certain edible or potentially ingestible product (like makeup) has a certain set level of allowable lead content. So… lead is everywhere and in everything made by every country.
To the “Asian” who posted the ignorant message (Stacey), please educate yourself (agreeing with Shelley and others who feel this way, too).
Oh, by the way, I’m from the “PROC” and am a North American chemistry major who has been working in the pharmaceutical industry.
This sale was an absolute waste of my time. If they weren’t prepared to do a sale of this magnitude, just don’t bother, or don’t make it so cheap because you know how many people will buy from it and how little servers you have. I think its a cheap stunt to get people on the web talking about the brand w/o having to actually honor their sale. I honestly will never buy from them again.
I think NYX should extend the $1.20 sale. I can understand technical difficulties with the site, but they did promise a 75-90% discount. At least give people a chance to get the discount they were hoping for.
As a former SA and cashier, I know from experience that it is not the customer service reps who handle problems such as the one that happened with NYX. There are people higher up who have more control over this. I can understand that people are frustrated, but yelling at a CS rep will only worsen the situation.
The problem that I have with the NYX fiasco is that it feels waaaay too much like bait and switch. Whip customers up into a frenzy and then offer them still a discount, but not the sale that had been promised. In my opinion, that sale wasn’t a sale at all. I haven’t seen one comment from anyone, anywhere, that said they were able to complete a purchase. I myself gave up after a day of waiting for my order screen to be completed. If they were not able to complete the sale as advertised, and then offer something else instead, that is bait and switch.
And it’s the responsibility of the employees at the company who work there to prepare for this sort of thing. So I accept the snarky apology from the wife who is makin’ the sammich for her husband who is working late–guess what, I work for a hospital, 24/7, and when we make mistakes, or get caught flat footed on the job (life threatening or not) people get fired. This goes for operators, nurses, maintenance workers, and public relations!
That’s my issue, the bait and switch. I do think people have the right to be upset, just as I acknowledge it was the right for NYX to offer only 50 percent off instead of the original sale that no one got to take advantage of. By all means, report them to the BBB. I have the right to not patronize this company and take my money someplace else, like Sephora. I would rather pay full price MAC and get awesome CS than the clusterf*** that I saw this weekend.
I so agree, Melissa! I think you hit the nail on the head. Looking at the totality of the event, it looks like a bait and switch to get attention. Their number of likes on FB sure went up a lot (over 10K increase from an hour or so before the “sale” was to have started). Nyx has apparently had 1.00 sales of some sort before, and had problems with them over shipping issues, shipping times, etc., but, my mentioning that is to say that they well knew the kind of volume to expect. They (Nyx) promoted this event. And sure the idea of that kind of savings was very attractive. I am kind of new to Nyx and yeah, it is only makeup, I don’t need any of it, but saw this as a chance to build a collection of a line I had decided I liked. The way the site was working just before “sale” time vs. just after was astonishing. After all the problems (and in the evening after the new start time) I got some items in the cart, but, then with continued problems decided I did trust putting credit card information in for some reason. Later, there were comments on FB of people getting double or triple charged, having items in cart they didn’t add, seeing others payment information, etc. which made me glad I stepped out.
But all in all this has left a very bad taste for Nyx for me. I ordered some things from another seller of Nyx online, yes, at a higher price, but, I wanted to get the things my teen most wanted. Now, I don’t really want the few things I added for me from Nyx, not sure I want to use their stuff at all. At least not for awhile. I think the comments on Twitter (from Nyx) about how excited they were at the fans swarming their site really struck me.
Yeah, it is just make up. Much more important things in life to be sure, but, I think the way this was handled (by Nyx) is wrong. It is interesting to read the comments here and elsewhere, it is interesting how people act, something that always fascinates me. But, the Nyx blaming the customers for the problems is overall the worst. The customer isn’t always right, but, in this case, the customers (or would be customers) are not wrong. This may not make sense, but, I guess it does to me. I have read a ton on this fiasco today and am really tired.
Actually, if you read back through the comments here there are a couple people that mentioned they did manage to get through and place an order.
I never bought from NYX, and I thought this would be a good chance to try come of their stuff. Their website wouldn’t even load, not at all, for hours. I really don’t think I’ll be trying any of their items any time soon!
Don’t promise if you can’t deliver.
When I saw their sale posted on Facebook I knew their site would go down. I doubted they could handle the server load, and boy was I right! I was disappointed but I’m more of the “get over it” mentality. They didn’t offer it to any stores so it was online only. If you forgot or weren’t able to log on, c’est la vie. I couldn’t even get their site to load and was looking forward to buying a few products dirt cheap. I feel like some people are really throwing a temper tantrum and even 50% off is being generous. If they extended the sale, at this point, they’d be losing money on their products as well as site maintenance. Losing 1000 people crying over spilt milk VS 100,000 buying products at a huge discount – the discount hurts them more. That’s my 2 cents.
This to infinity. *nods* And besides, NYX is an inexpensive brand even without the discounts!
My email last night to NYX that was just generically (meaning computer generated auto-response email) responded to 5 hours ago:
First and foremost, thank you for offering a sale that was intended to be monumental for your consumers. I’ve never heard of a company offering as steep of a discount as your 12th anniversary sale, and once again, for allowing me to in some way partake in this sale and introduce me to new products from NYX I have yet to try, I thank you.
However–and this is a big however–I am sad to say that I am extremely disappointed at best with the way the sale was handled, both from a technical and customer service standpoint. I sat patiently through updates for more than 5 hours–updates that never gave an ETA even at a ballpark level (to have said at least 1 hour would have sufficed). After those 5 hours, we were told that the site was up but traffic would be high. I’ve sat here for 3 1/2 hours now, as patiently as possible, trying to get my selected items to appear in my cart. Even though I continued to get “Service Unavailable” screens throughout, I managed to get all the items I wanted into my cart BUT at DOUBLE the quantity I was anticipating. The only option inside the cart I had was to remove (via a checkbox) an item altogether. That is when I tried reaching out to receive customer support to no avail.
I first asked on Twitter. It took 3 times asking before I received replies. The replies were as follows:
Yes, you would just have to remove 1 qty from your cart.
Yes, update to 1. Thanks!
There was no option to remove a quantity, just to remove the item. If I am mistaken (and I was thinking that considering they run this website on a daily basis and would know more than I would), I asked for a clarification as follows:
No, there is only a remove checkbox, not remove a quantity. This will remove BOTH and I’d be starting all over again, right?
I asked this twice and have yet (1 hour later) to receive a response.
I then sought out Facebook as a means to retain customer support. I posted a picture on the wall of what I was viewing on my cart. This was 51 minutes ago (time now: 10:35 PM CST). I have yet to receive a response.
I then emailed the email address given out on Twitter in response to a customer having trouble ordering. I sent the email at 9:56 PM CST. It is now 10:37 PM CST. No response.
I just decided to check out and give the 2nd of each of my items as gifts. Upon refreshing my cart, my cart was full of someone else’s items. It was now been over 45 minutes, and I have been unable to load ANY cart.
In the promotion of the sale, consumers were promised that through maintenance, the website would not only be able to handle the extra traffic expected, but also a little more for “above and beyond”-type traffic. This claim was not met. From Twitter:
We’re still here our team still has been responding to every comment on Facebook and email on Feedback regarding our sale. We’re still here!
1 hour ago. 1 hour ago when I was desperately seeking help to fix and complete an order. I reiterate that through the 3 methods of contacting NYX, I have received NO response. Therefore, this claim was not met.
I am mad, I am frustrated, but most of all I am hurt by the loss of trust in NYX I now have as well as how stupid NYX made me feel for patiently waiting over 8 hours only to be abandoned and lied to. There is nothing that NYX can attempt to do to mitigate these feelings. I have chosen to no longer purchase merchandise from NYX and to discard all of my current NYX products. You will not lose so much revenue from me that it bankrupts your company, but you have lost my faith as well as the faith of many of your other consumers.
UPDATE: I went to sleep for an hour to try and wait until the website had less traffic (hopefully) only to wake up to the website not working at ALL, and the promise of a 50% coupon. NYX should have anticipated the response to the sale, and I–as someone who has hung in there for now going on 11 hours–should not have to accept defeat and a 50% off coupon when the items I was planning on purchasing cost more than $2.40 regularly (My cart contained HD Blushes, Tango with Bronzing Powders, and numerous NYX Brushes). ALSO, no response STILL, on either FB, Twitter, or my email. Regrettably, this is my last experience with NYX. Good riddance.
I was trying to get on their site all night starting before Midnight and was unable to due to all the traffic. The site wouldn’t load at all. The upside I suppose for me is I wasn’t going to buy anything anyway since I don’t have a credit card anymore lol. But, I do think that extending the sale would be the best thing to do. I don’t believe its fair at all. I am sure NYX is trying to deal with the situation as best as possible, but in another sense this is their way of trying to help the community but also make more money by not doing what the original sale was imo when THEIR site wasn’t working.
My thought is this:
On the one hand, the customer is not always right, and too often people not in the right are given in to, further continuing the cycle of entitlement.
On the other hand, Nyx should have never had this sale. Ever. I don’t know that they could have -ever- suitably prepared the site to handle the kind of traffic that the sale was bound to generate. I can see it working if you limit the number of items to say 2 or 3 – but everything at that price? No wonder it crashed and crashed hard!
I think the 50% off and free shipping is a step in the right direction (though I agree with the others that having to e-mail them to get the code is ridiculous) but it’s too little, too late. Without a question, this was a disaster and it’s going to take a long time for them to get over. Sure, the Nyx devotees will come back, but the casual purchaser? The ones who were excited to finally find out what the big deal was? They won’t try again, and you can bet that the ones who got burned will tell their friends to not bother. They need a customer service miracle to be pulled out of the hat and they need it ASAP.
Shows how late and clueless I am, I didn’t even know about the sale! I sympathize with the consumers but allowing the $1.20 sale to continue for several days will cost the company a lot of money and they probably cannot afford to let it continue for 7 days, whereas a 50% off code is more feasible.
Poor NYX!
I’m annoyed that people feel the need to be angered over missing a sale, there is so many things worth being angry at but missing a sale or unable to buy stuff during a sale?! some may say that they missed school/work for the sale but I personally think those people need to get their priorities straight, they have only themselves to blame when they skip something more important just so they can go shopping.
Not to mention the amount of people feeling entitled to the products just cause it was in their shopping carts, unless its been paid for/credit card has been charged and nyx can’t deliver on the products THEN it would be NYX’s fault.
I don’t blame nyx at all, internet shopping is suppose to be stress free, if I can’t purchase something then I’ll wait, instead of sitting in front of my computer refreshing non-stop while missing work/school/funerals/weddings etc. Shopping is not worth getting grey hair over =)
and I think the 50%+free shipping is good enough for the unforeseen accident regarding the servers
Tough question. I am not sure anything can make it right now, aside from allowing people a chance to check out at the advertised sale prices. I think it was pretty clear early on what was going to happen and I wish they had simply pulled the site and rescheduled. This was a prime example f social media being a double edged sword. It drove a lot of traffic t this sale and it back fired when the tone of updates took on a negative tone. Is the customer always right? Not always, I think this is one instance where yes, I think almost everyone is justified in being very upset and I think justified in demanding the sale be honored. What happened yesterday was just a fail right on down the line and I think given the heavy negative PR this brought them, they really seems to be missing the point, at least publicly. This was a catastrophic failure on NYX’s part. If it was their intended goal to allow thousands of people to have access to their products at reduced prices then why not honor it? Honor the sales you intended to make. At this point they would gain HUGE positive PR by showing they are a stand up company. I don’t think what happened was planned or shady, but they seem to be going out of their way to handle it in a shady manner.
Frustrated! I tried all day yesterday with no luck. I last tried this morning at 4pst and got stuck at the checkout, bummer. I don’t think I’ll partake in the 50% off sale.
Comments like, “Well, they didn’t have to do this so you should be grateful they tried and c’est la vie if you weren’t one of the lucky ones” are just way off base here. Fact is, there are federal laws regarding how companies are obliged to advertise and conduct sales. The laws are pretty complicated, but one thing is fairly clear: they are *not* allowed to advertise a sale and then fail to act in a way that lets customers take advantage of it. And they are most certainly not allowed to let customers place things in their carts but not allow them to check out so that when the site is finally working, the price for those items is triple or more. For example, one Facebook customer reported that the items in her cart had totaled approximately $137 while the sale was purportedly in effect, but after the sale had ended, totaled $728. No. Wrong. Not permitted. Bad.
Even putting that aside NYX seems like it could use a refresher in Customer Relations 101; the representatives’ attitude was so bad at times that they might as well have waved a red flag in everyone’s face. For example, implying on Twitter that it was the customers’ fault for “swarming the site” — well, I can just shake my head at that. I mean, they advertised a sale for 90% discounts — the entire *point* was to have customers “swarm the site.” Statements like, “We are saddened that many of you have been disappointed” are also pretty astonishing; in the annals of non-apology apologies, that one ranks pretty high. And pointing out that “several hundred” people were able to take advantage of the sale, as though that’s something to be proud of? I mean, where to begin with that one? Are customers supposed to be grateful they were even allowed to enter the lottery?
And please, spare us the comments about how we should be happy for the sale because they’re “giving away” their product; the stuff probably costs them $0.65 to make, so even at $1.20 they’re making a very large profit.
Are there things more important than makeup? Yes, of course, and it’s sort of patronizing to point that out as though no one here knows it. But that’s not the point. The point is that NYX is a corporation dealing with customers in a commercial transaction, not our friend trying to do us a favor so that we’re not entitled to be annoyed when they don’t deliver. Sure, some of the Facebook comments were a little over the top, but that doesn’t make NYX’s conduct any better.
If people want to shrug it off, that’s fine — that’s as valid a response as any. But NYX is they’re obliged to deliver what they advertised, and customers have every right to be frustrated and angry when they don’t.
Very well said. I agree.
ok i so so so so so so feel for nyx but i was on my computer from 230 pm est till 700 am trying to get on that site went to sleep woke up at 1 pm and from 1pm till 8pm i still couldnt get on ..and all i get 50% off?!?! i cant get behind that. that means im not getting the sale i took my time away from my life nyx should had there stuff together b4 the sale had to start.i you had the time to premote it on large scale sites such as facebook the you should have prepared for the worst.i doesnt seem like they were and now i get a sale that is less value of the previous sale .it saddens me but it just makes me belive the you get what you pay for while i love many of thier products i will think twice b4 buying there products i rather pay more for products that work and websites work than a promise that cant be kept .
while i appreciate NYX’s continuous communication with its fans throughout the whole ordeal, the bottom line is this: NYX was SEVERELY unprepared for the event both in terms of their IT department and in terms of their stock (apparently alot of their popular products were not re-stocked in time for the big sale). It is NYX’s faul and they must now carry that burden, stop with all the half-assed apologies on facebook, fix the issues, and most importantly, issue a hell of a good deal for the fans who were unable to get through to their website.
And another stellar example of NYX’s attitude toward its customers is now on Twitter. I quote, “Congratulations to all those that shopped with us during our #12yrbash! We are working on those 50% off coupon codes for those that emailed feedback! If you haven’t please do so to get yours. We’ll be emailing you right when our site is ready for you to shop. Thanks for your love!”
“CONGRATULATIONS”? Srsly? Are they being obnoxious, or just stupid?
Honestly I feel like this whole thing is blown way out of proportion.. yes, what NYX should’ve done was to postpone the sale until they resolve the problem, but what’s done is done. I just don’t understand why all the customers (not all, but a lot of angry people) are going insane and saying that they would never buy another NYX product again. A sale is still just a sale, NYX didn’t have to hold the sale to begin with. I mean if they never had the sale, people would still buy their products because theyre good products.. tech problems happen all the time, and I completely agree that they didn’t handle it well.. but what I don’t agree is how a lot of people are making it sound like the end of the world that they didn’t get to buy products cheaper instead of full price. It’s a shame but next year they’ll probably have a better sale? There will always be better sales..
This has happened with other sales. It seems to be a constant problem. Even though it was not the first time, I do understand that things happen. I was open to letting them make things right. They were very rude to girls calling and they were hanging up on people. They were deleting posts on Facebook and spent the majority of the day not updating people. They made the mistake and unfortunately, mistakes will cost you. The 50% does not come close to making up for what happened and how they handled the situation. They should do more to show their customers that they actually care. I will never buy from them again. I have never been treated this poorly by a company.
Haha I can pseudo blame NYX for distracting me all day Sunday from studying for my final! But seriously, I think $1.20 was a too good to be true deal anyways so I’m not too distraught, the only complain I have is the time lost, but then that is my own fault for being persistent? I’m still going to take advantage of the 50% off deal, NYX will not lose me as a customer just because of this fiasco.
First, I disagree with the statement that the customer is always right – sometimes what the customer wants is unethical, immoral or illegal. Not necessarily in this situation, but the sense of entitlement that some people have is outrageous. I actually witnessed a customer take a swing at a sales associate because the customer missed the cutoff for a discount. In front of her kids!
While I understand the frustration that people have had over the NYX sale (or lack of one), the behavior that some of the customers have displayed is ugly. Really. Earlier this year we saw a country struggle through earthquakes and a tsunami that killed thousands – many of those poor people lost everything, and yet they still handled themselves with more composure and self respect than some NYX sales customers.
I understand they were having technical issues, and I can’t really fault them for that. However, I have emailed them twice now and I haven’t gotten any response. At all. That really disappoints me. I do love products but I am rethinking ordering from them.
I’m sorry, but people need to realize that as much as they may want their 1.20$ lipstick/eyeshadow whathaveyou, there are human beings on the other end of it all, trying their best go get servers up, fix modems, etc. My brother works for an IT company, as well for my parents business on and off, and he spends hours upon hours working in these issues that people often have no control over. I have never owned a NYX product as it is not available in my area, but I wouldn’t let a problem like this deter me from ever purchasing from them again! Sure, they could have done some more preparation for such a huge event, and yes, many people waited a very long time to try and checkout and were not able to, but at least they tried to compensate and gave everyone who was unable to purchase anything 50% off. I am utterly disgusted with how some people are reacting over this whole thing.
It’s not even about the IT workers and the servers. It’s about the people in charge who didn’t have sense enough to say, you guys due to technical difficulties beyond our control our site is down and we have to postpone the sale.
See…easy. Are people mad? Yes. Did people wait 24 hours to still be mad? No.
Thanks girl! Express faced a similar issue online this past holiday season, especially a huge online Black Friday sale. They pulled the site entirely down and although I was totally miffed they extended the sale and customer service was courteous. At least Nyx is making an effort…
This whole situation has been ridiculous, however I would say NYX is definitely the one to blame and not the customer. While people are certainly overreacting, it’s because they feel majorly betrayed. I have spent quite a few hours in total trying to get the website to work with me but to no end. I was not able to order, and I was really looking forward to trying out their HD line of blushes and foundation, as well as some of their brushes and face cleansers. However, I will use my 50% off code when I get it, since it’s with free shipping, it still gives me a fairly good deal if I buy the cheaper items. In fact, I heard shipping was around $8, and when I added up my new basket of purchases (mostly round lipsticks in all of their awesome new coral, peachy, and orange colors) it would have come to around $19 with shipping, and now with free shipping and the 50% off discount I’ll be getting it at around $21. So, while it is still no where near the discount I would have gotten on the HD items in my previous basket, I will be satisfied enough with this sale.
I haven’t seen swatches of their new round lipsticks anywhere, so I hope they’re pretty! I will be grabbing Peach Bellini, fortune cookie, pink lyric, Haute coutour, Haute Melon, and Chic, along with non-new Femme. I’ll also grab Addis Ababa in their new creme lipstick range, Emerald City liner, and silver lake body glitter. Now I just hope they send me the code and that the free shipping is on any order and not just those over a certain amount (that would make me REALLY ticked off).
I realized that buying the products and waiting a month to get them would just be plain silly, so I bought a choose your own 6 pack from ebay of the round lipsticks. It actually came out to less than it would have during the anniversary sale with shipping included, so I think I got a good deal, and I’ll probably get it this week 🙂 So, if I got the coupon from them okay, but if I don’t, which seems more likely, than it’s not a big deal.
I love that you can spot the retail workers RIGHT away on the comments: “NO the customer isn’t always right!!!” Ha 😉 Personally, I’ve always felt that the customer is actually more often wrong.
“The customer is always right” isn’t stating a fact though! That’s where people get lost. It’s taken literally when it’s not really supposed to be. No one has to take abuse, but if you want someone’s business you sometimes have to smile and nod and try your best to smooth things over and NOT say the things that you might REALLY WANT to say 😉
Definitely agree, Dusty! It’s more of an attitude than anything else, because if you want to keep a customer happy, even when they’re wrong, you certainly can’t tell them they’re wrong!
The customer is most definitely not always right. However, it is much easier to appease the masses instead of fighting with them. That must be how the statement started, some customer, somewhere was unhappy for whatever reason and so the employees thought it easier to do what the customer wanted rather than fight with them.
In this case, it appears that most customers are not happy with the 50% off code that is being used to appease them and so I think NYX will be losing some customers. They didn’t handle the situation very well and really should not have tried to have a sale of this magnitude in the first place.
people are throwing a tantrum over something that isnt even important. i didnt even know about the sale and yes, i’d be dissapointed, but people, there are MORE IMPORTANT THINGS OUT THERE. give your money to starving children or abused animals instead of cheap cosmetics, there will be millions upon MILLIONS of other sales in the future!! acting like a child and throwing a tantrum, spewing hate on facebook and twitter is not going to solve a problem that NYX employees are giving 200% to fix.
My biggest issue with this is the rudeness from the customer service representatives. People reported being hung up on and shouted at–before they even had a chance to speak!
Definitely not the way to do things if true!
I’m a hermit when it comes to social networking, so I didn’t find out about the sale until yesterday. I checked the site after the sale started twice, with a few hours in between. Both times I got a “servers are down” notice, so I gave up. Truth be told – I thought it was just a big sale, I didn’t know everything was $1.20 until today when I read this post. At first I figured I would buy some stuff with the code that they’re giving out, but then I stumbled across some CS horror stories. Customers not getting their orders until a month later, orders not arriving at all, etc. The way NYX handled the whole code thing is kind of shady, too, and now I’m kind of wary and thinking of not buying anything at all. Sucks, because I’ve never tried any of their products before. Makes me wonder if the way they handled this will alienate other new customers.
This reminds me of the infamous Sleek fail-sale incident. The exact same problems plagued them, and Sleek handled it all wrong — people never got to place orders, or never got their orders, or got the wrong things. And it seems to have hurt Sleek in the long run. The online makeup community does a lot to hype products to each other, and they/we don’t seem to forget when someone’s been slighted.
I think NYX’s solution is all wrong. It’s like their way of saying, “Aww, you missed it? Too bad.” I guess they’re trying to protect themselves from people ordering too much stuff, but if people were going to abuse the sale for their own purposes, they would have done so already. I assume there isn’t a limited on how much stuff you can place an order for? It’s like NYX is saying they don’t trust their customers, and punishing them because of their own bandwidth problems.
The customer may not always be right, but it used to be that companies would stand by the products they sold, and if someone was unhappy with said products, the company would listen to their complaints and honour them with their money back. These days, it feels like if you buy a product that is faulty or poorly-made, most companies are like, “What do you expect us to do about it? You were the one stupid enough to buy it.” I’ve had personal experiences with both makeup and electronics where the product I received was appallingly bad, and when I contacted the manufacturers, they’re attitude was that I could ship the product back to them at my own cost, and they MIGHT do something about it. What they should have been doing was offering me a full refund. I appreciate that people take advantage of companies, but I don’t think that as a regular customer, I deserve to be treated with mistrust when all I’ve done is given a company my money and hoped they would be giving me a good product in return. Companies used to be grateful that customers chose to take their money to them. Now it seems that they assume they deserve it.
This wasn’t an IT problem, this was a PR problem. So, your server is down during a big sale? OK- Trivia time with prizes.
I think NYX should repair their servers, bolster their site to handle the magnitude of traffic that a really amazing sale will generate, and offer the original $1.20 sale. It is a nice conciliation to offer a 50% coupon (given that they could have given us all the bird) but a grinding blush @ $8.25 is no $1.20. Especially when I can pick up a MAC or Nars blush for comparable cost. I am disappointed in NYX, but as many on here have said, it is not the end of the world and I will indeed go on living.
However, it is NOT necessary for people on here to post comments such as “it is just make up” or “it is not that serious.” Makeup is very serious for some of us because it is our business and livelihood. For freelance MUAs who provide their own kits and equipment, sales like this give us incentive to try new brands. Yes, NYX is a company that offers MUAs a professional discount, but what about those newbie artists without print credits? OR, not every professional MUA desires print, film/tv work. What of all the wedding and theatre artists? They, like the rest of us who spent hours trying to catch a break, got bilked.
Christine, I would like to thank you and the rest of the Temptalia team for all of your hard work. I read a lot of beauty blogs and I find myself coming back to you because of your in depth knowledge and research of a product. You provide such a service to all of us…thank you!
My pleasure! 🙂
“However, it is NOT necessary for people on here to post comments such as “it is just make up” or “it is not that serious.” Makeup is very serious for some of us because it is our business and livelihood.”
THIS. Yes, there is always going to be something more “important” to spend your time on or put money towards. Always. But it’s unfair to make demeaning comments about someone’s personal interests or profession. Unless you spend every waking minute of your day volunteering or fundraising to save human lives, then you’re in no position to judge other people for their pastimes. And just because there is always going to be something horrible going on in the world that’s “more important” is no reason to give companies a free pass, allowing them to act dishonourably and disrespect their customers.
It’s bad, bad, bad customer service all the way around. If you look at the ‘thumbs up’ NYX got on facebook you’ll see the number of customers that were with them in the beginning vs. the end was drastically different. The perceived bs was hard to take. And no, 50% isn’t the same as the 17% I was paying for the products that are still conveniently in my cart. A $300 bill vs. $103.20 is a big difference and in an industry where there are lots of great make-up companies vying for our dollars, NYX screwed up big time. BIG TIME.
I expect them to honor the original sale not 50% off I was really looking forward to this sale so no I won’t be buying anything I’ll wait for another great deal like $1.20 before I’ll buy from them again
The issue is not that its an already cheap product and why get all upset about the situation, Its a sale that they advertised and I expect for them to honor it even if its a week or a month from now that’s just good business and fair
I was one of the very lucky few to make it through the checkout. I didn’t get everything I wanted, and I ended up with 2 of the same product because I couldn’t remove it from my cart…
I was upset that I couldn’t get everything I wanted in my cart, but I figured it was best to just get what I could and get out of there. I am disappointed that they didn’t just postpone the sale until their servers were able to handle all of the traffic. I wasn’t a NYX customer previously, and I probably won’t be one in the future.
And about customers always being right… hah. I used to work in a fitting room of a Nordstrom Rack. We had HUGE sales on the weekends usually, which of course meant a lot of people trying clothing on and a limited number of rooms. Women used to cut the entire line, walk right up to me, and berate me for not getting things moving faster. Actually, that job reminds me a lot of this whole server issue. I did not build the fitting rooms, and I have no control over how much time each person spends inside each room, nor can I decide how many rooms exist. The response I often got from women was totally uncalled for, and I think many of the responses on the NYX Facebook page were ridiculous. I always wanted to tell people “you’re talking to the wrong person, I did not design this room, nor did I build it, and I cannot make people get out of here any faster, so please just get back in line.” but, of course, I was given the “customer is always right” speech, and just tried to appease them as best I could. Did NYX handle it to the best of their ability? Absolutely not, but there’s only so much that can be done.
I think I am most disappointed that in the time of social media NYX decided to delete the comments made by users on the NYX facebook page. If they decide to use social media they should embrace it as it only makes for more furious customers when they feel like they aren’t being heard. It was their customer base really reaching out to them and telling them how disappointed they were and it was a slap in the face to see my comment deleted. I stated that although I understood the problem they were having it really shouldn’t be an excuse. As a growing company you should be loading testing your website and servers to withstand this type of volume. It was ill planning on NYX’s part and they should have postponed the sale.
As a customer service representative for nearly 10 years, we’ve got “the customer is always right” drilled into our brains, but it simply isn’t so. sometimes customers do make mistakes. Sometimes they get the item they thought was on sale, only to return it. Some berate the CSR for simply doing their job. However, NYX advertised a sale and did not follow through with that sale and the customer deserves some compensation for that. I’m sorry but waiting for a 50% off code to be emailed to you is not it. It’s not what was advertised and the company should be held accountable for that. You couldn’t pull off that type of behavior in a retail store and I think everyone knows it. On that same token, if any customer talked to a CSR in a store like that, they would be removed from the store immediately. So in all, I think both ends should have handled themselves in a more appropriate manner. NYX should have been held accountable and acted in a professional fashion. customers should not have gotten so belligerent with the cussing at the reps who were posting on facebook in twitter. It was a bad situation. I’m not steering clear of the brand from here on out, just sales much like this one.
i understand why everyone is upset. i am very upset too. That just shows how their company takes care of their business. Because of the site no one got to make their sales as it was planned and now they expect just only to get 50 percent of that. No way!! i am extremely upset with nyx for that. By the way what are we gonna have to do to get 50 percent? what is the code if someone can tell me? i would really appreciate that.
You have to email them your full name and email address. feedback@nyxcostmetics.com I believe is the address. They are individualizing the codes, so it won’t be one code that everyone can use.
I sent an email for the 50% off coupon about 24 hrs now to them and I still haven’t gotten any email back from them, has anyone gotten any response back from them?
Hey Christine! I just wanted to congratulate you on writing such a balanced, yet informative post. I love the way you didn’t just rant on and on about something, but instead informed the readers about a particular topic.
Anyways, to get to the point, I was one of the many loyal customers who logged onto the site the second the sale started and found that their servers were completely down. I was also one of the many who kept refreshing the page every 2-3 minutes for 24 hours! (Now, yes, this may seem like I have no life, but NYX promised a sale, and I wasn’t going to stop until I got my goodies!)
I was never able to get my products because the server never really worked. It was too backed up. Last night (or should I say at 2 a.m. this morning), I was finally able to put products into my cart and I had high hopes, however I was not able to check out.
Now I understand that NYX wasn’t expecting such a high volume of customers to be logging on all at once, but I do think that they should have been more prepared for it. However, this isn’t what really irked me.
The problem for me is more the fact that they are “rewarding” us with a 50% off coupon code for those that weren’t able to get their orders in on time. Rewarding? Was that really necessary, NYX?
I mean, I had been on the site for practically 24 hours with absolutely no luck. And then, magically, when the sale was over and they set things back to the original price, the site worked perfectly! Now I realize that this could just be because of the large amount of people who logged off of the site due to the price change, but I also feel that it was somewhat of a scam.
NYX promised their customers an anniversary sale. Many people, including myself, prepared hours beforehand making lists in order to be able to snag our goodies before the next person. Yet NYX isn’t willing to extend the anniversary sale for a longer period of time in order to let everyone grab at least something!
This is a major turn-off for me. I will not be buying any more NYX products until they rectify this situation and until they follow through on their promise to their customers. If this never happens, then I will never again buy NYX products. It’s just that simple.
I mean, PLENTY of other websites have sales all the time without a situation like this. Also, I think it’s very shady how the website magically works when there is no more sale.
Oh, and I also think it’s very scary how people were saying that other people’s carts were being pulled up on their account. Some people even said that other people’s CREDIT CARD INFORMATION was coming up on their screen. That is beyond scary and makes me distrust the company that much more.
Well, that was my rant for anyone who wanted to read it! 😉
I keep seeing people saying that the website worked perfectly at the end of the sale. I’m *STILL* having issues accessing things on the website, so it isn’t working perfectly for everyone =\
I know I kept trying (for the sake of just seeing what would happen) throughout the day, and I never was able to get through – then maybe 4-5pm, NYX fully shut down the site. They put it back online an hour or so later, and it seemed to be working better for me.
It worked ok for me yesterday morning; I was actually able to fill my cart at the sale price with all the pictures loaded and everything! I wasn’t able to complete the order, though, because the site timed out when I hit the checkout button.
Even today, though, I went on the site to register so I could put together a wish list and the wish list functionality didn’t work. Then I tried to add something to a cart, which didn’t work either. I went to a different section of the website (where all their HD things are) and that whole sectioned was crashed.
A lot of people are pointing at it being a scam because the website was magically working “perfectly” after the sale ended(quoting because its the same word used every time I see these comments) but that’s not true. Even 24 hours after the sale has ended there are still website difficulties for some of us. I just wanted to point that out. /shrug
Gotcha! 🙂 Was actually trying to say I didn’t get immediate functionality back either when I was last on yesterday!
As someone who works in Customer Service, I *strongly* believe that the customer is NOT always right and that bending over backwards to fill the needs of the customers is damaging to the morale of your company. You can’t always give the customer what they want. They go irate, they make demands that you can’t meet. Should you try to resolve the issue? Yes, but to what end? The behavior of the people in response to this has been horribly ridiculous. People have lost all self control and have been complete MONSTERS. Could they have done better? Yes. Was it a scam? No.
Thanks for reiterating the sale was not a scam. 🙂 That’s another thing I’ve read online throughout the day, and that seriously pisses me off. Just because NYX wasn’t well-prepared for the traffic doesn’t mean the sale was a scam.
ok from 3 PM EST to 3PM EST the next day i was constantly reloading the site. I tried until about 5 PM. Around then (I’m not exactly sure) when i reloaded the page a standard NYX screen came on that said something like “thank you for participating in our sale” (you couldnt click on anything, it was just a image) Then i pressed refresh a few more times and 10 minutes later everything was working PERFECTLY, my checkout page that took eons to load loaded in about 10 seconds and surprise surprise everything was at original price. it is impossible that so many people logged off the site that it got back so much functionality.
it was definitely a scam and everyone knows it. if it wasn’t a scam NYX would be willing to extend the sale or change the date when they were fully prepared.
@Melissa, @shelly, Do the two of you have actual proof that this wasn’t a bait and switch scam? Or is it just your opinion that it wasn’t?
But no one has come forward with evidence that it IS. Innocent until proven guilty, I say.
Melissa, I agree totally. If NYX gave everything away that they made for 1.20, there would be no company left.
I was ready to go at 3pm (EST) and the website was down, I headed towards the Facebook page where many other customers were having similar problems. This is why this entire fiasco has made me so upset:
1. They promised a great sale and marketed it as such, they even blatantly said that they were ramping up their servers for the event. This traffic is expected and they should have anticipated it. Even when they knew the servers were down, they should have postponed the sale so that everyone had an equal chance of buying. They did not even restock items, showing that this was all just a bunch of hype.
2. Their attitude towards customers on Facebook and Twitter wewa downright rude. I didn’t comment but they did not take responsibility for their actions or give their customers any effective updates. They blamed the customers for causing traffic and told customers to keep on trying.
3. Their reaction to the entire ordeal is the most upsetting. A 50% off coupon to buy off customers is nothing compared to the sale. The worst part is going onto their Facebook page today and seeing that they disabled comments on the wall.
In the end, I could not checkout and won’t be taking advantage of the 50% coupon.
I completely agree with everything said here.
I did not take part in the sale and I was not even aware of it. However, just hearing about the nightmare experience and the bad customer service had made me question whether I would want to support a brand that treats their customers this way. A sale is nice and shows good intentions on the part of the brand, however a poorly executed sale is inexcusable in my opinion. Personally, I’d rather not take part in a sale at all if it means I will receive poor customer service or I will be frustrated by the process. There are enough stresses in life. Why would I spend my hard earned money where it’s not appreciated or valued. I definitely would rather spend my money on one item where I receive superb customer service than on many items where I am left feeling frustrated, unappreciated and upset. Just my two cents.
This whole thing was a fiasco. It reminds me a lot of the day after Christmas sales at the malls last year. My area was completely snowed in. Most people weren’t able to get out until New Years Eve, some took even longer. A lot of people were upset to have missed the great sales, but we still all trudged to the malls anyway since we all had shiny new gift cards and wanted to spend them. So what did we see when we got there? Every store, EVERY SINGLE ONE kept their sales going in the areas that were snowed in. Most stores with one day sales in the rest of the country had theirs going until Jan. 3 here.
NYX could have done the same thing here. The bulk of their customers had no way to get to their store to shop their sale. They very well could have kept it going until their servers were working properly, or re-started at a later date. They chose instead to let a few have the fun and give the rest a lesser deal. I emailed them a complaint email, but the odds are I won’t be using the 50% off code.
All in all, my biggest issue with all of this, is that even NYX kept us in the dark about what was going on. Their updates all said “be patient, we’re working on it”. Then they just stopped updating completely. I would rather have them come out and say “We screwed up. This is where things went wrong, and this is what we will do differently the next time we have a sale. We’re sorry this happened.” than have a discount code. After all, it’s just makeup, just a sale, and there will always be others.
Sorry I wrote a book, guys.
That totally sucks. When I plugged in and got a “server unavailable” I was disappointed but as someone who works in tech web app, I totally sympathize with NYX. I think the 50% deal is fair and the company remains in good standing for me.
props to you for even speaking on this mess! you are seriously the first BIG beauty related internet voice i’ve seen mention this. but i am so dissapointed! that 50% off is a slap in the face! hours and hours of waiting, for NOTHING! i am so upset!
I work as a server in a chain restaurant and the customer is not always right. Although where I work we are fairly lenient about honoring offer codes and keeping the guests happy because after all we want them to comeback and spread a good word. I feel for the employees of NYX because they will take the brunt of complaints when there is nothing they can do about it. Decisions come from high up, don’t shoot the messenger. I deal with this a lot when complain about stuff that I can’t change (at least not without compromising my job). Please don’t take out your frustration on those answering phones and the like, they’re just trying to make a living.
Saying that, I was one of the people trying to get on the site for almost 24 hours. I was able to login and load up my cart and spent hours trying to checkout without success. I would like to point out that according to the facebook drama throughout this whole thing, the site did not appear to be secure. There were reports of people seeing other’s carts and credit card info. I don’t know if this is true, but if so it is very unfair for NYX to only allow those willing to compromise their personal and financial information to purchase. As far as honoring the price. I feel that they should honor it or at least honor it on a limited number of items per person. Their stuff may be inexpensive compared to others but this sale was saving people quite a bit. For example my cart went from around $22 to $100 at full price and I didn’t even have any of the more expensive items in there. I feel this is like getting to a store early for a sale, spending hours putting stuff in your shopping cart, waiting hours in line, then when you get to the register you are told the sale is over and if you want you can come back in a few days and we will give you a lesser discount for your items. I am not really that upset, just tired and disappointed with how this was handled.
PS If you want a laugh look up an episode of Rocko’s Modern Life on Youtube entitled Rocko’s Happy Sack. The ending of this episode really made me think of this sale. 🙂
The Customer should always be right. Boycott til they understand that. I would never buy that brand anyway. It is crap.
With all due respect, the customer is not always right. I am a critical care nurse ( a person in customer service that takes care of really sick/dying people.) The patients are 9 out of 10 times are always delightful to work with. It’s the families that feel that I should make them coffee, get them juice, water , a bed, pillows and blankets. My job is to take care to the patient. But I inherent the family. So who is right me ( who is taking care of the one in bed sick ) or the family that wants to be catered to like they are staying at the Ritz Carlton? I am interested in hearing your reply. Thank you for taking the time to read my reply.
Anyone watch The Office? Product Recall episode comes to mind. Company made a mistake, poor & good customer service, ridiculous customer demands, etc. Heh xP
Maybe it’s too much to boycott NYX but NYX really brought that on themselves. I don’t really care about NYX the company but they have independent representatives (like Avon) who may lose business because of their errors.
I do think their tweets and such make it sound like they think the entire ordeal is over and handled. People are still upset.
It’s hard though for me to really think the distraught consumers are right when I’m not one of them. It would have been nice to get some makeup for dirt cheap but other sales will come 🙂
I, along with everyone else, spent a good deal of time with my F5 button. Many of the comments were rude and uncalled for, and at one point I was even joking on Twitter asking Nyx if they needed a drink or 3 by then. I did feel it was poorly planned. Yes, there can be server problems. But this traffic wasn’t unanticipated, and they weren’t part of a DDOS attack. Heck, they even posted in big, bold type that shipping times were going to be up to 30 days due to demand – they KNEW what type of traffic to expect.
I have/had a couple of issues with the way it was handled; no matter how grumpy and obnoxious the customers may have gotten.
1) Don’t keep tweeting “any minute now”, and “we’re working on it, stand by” leading customers to think that the problem would be imminently resolved. Say “OMG, we were totally unprepared for this – we’re doing our best, but we can’t tell you when it will be fixed. Stay tuned, and stay off the site until we say we’ve straightened out this mess.”
2) Don’t wait for double digit hours before proposing a band-aid fix to the situation with 50% off – they should have done that as soon as they knew things were going to hell in a handbasket. They’d have mollified a fare amount of the people trying to buy, and hopefully stopping the bloodbath before it started. Admit there’s a problem, try to move on. Don’t let it fester with customers.
3) I finally got to the point where I could actually order. Got all the way through all the payment screens, reviewed my order, entered my credit card information, and hit submit (I was as excited as I was winning a “bag of crap” from Woot). The second I did that, I got a black screen of “sorry, we’re overloaded, thank you for participating in our sale”. I didn’t know if my order had gone through or not. After checking my email continually hoping for a confirmation email, I emailed the “feedback” email. Another 30 min later, I decided I was sufficiently worried about my credit card information in Cyberspace that it warranted a call to what I assumed was a pretty busy phone line. Surprisingly, the phone was answered pretty quickly – though she did put me on hold. After stating my plight, the very friendly customer service gal transferred me to someone else. Again, I told the story of my credit card information in neverneverland, wanting to know if I had an order, or more importantly, what happened to my credit card info. Apparently, the 2nd person was in accounting, who said he’d transfer me to customer service. I told him that’s who transferred me to him. I ultimately ended up with the guy who’s in charge of web sales. Or at least his voicemail. He’s the one I’m sure is drinking himself silly tonight.
Now here it is 11 hours post sale closing, I have no email with this 50% code (haven’t read anywhere of anyone getting theirs), but more importantly, I have no response to my phone messages or email about my credit card.
I’m an e-tailer who should be so lucky that my server crashed from so much business (though Nyx had posted that only 200 people successfully ordered). I pride myself on my customer service. I bite my tongue until it bleeds sometimes when dealing with customers. But if I screw up, I readily admit it right off the bat. Not just keep posting “fluff”.
Novella done.
I honestly was super excited about this until I went to purchase and found out that on top of the site not working for hours, when it finally did work, the super sale was over and they don’t ship to Hawaii. FAIL. Too bad because I used to be a very loyal customer. Oh well.
Instead of the 50% discount for customers, they could give a single-use discount, 70% on all items except train cases et al. Customers would have to register for an account with NYX, and NYX would only grant one coupon per address/household. Something like this would take longer to put into place – but it would cut down on people buying huge hoards of product and reselling them (which seems to be one thing that any company is concerned about, esp. giving this much of a discount). They could also introduce a min/max condition (minumim $10 after the discount, maximum $100 after the discount or something like that) to further cut down on reselling and keep them from having to ship out too many $3 and $4 orders, BUT give the loyal fans the gift they intended to give.
And they need to communicate better internally. Hanging up on customers? Telling people one thing and then another? Not good, folks, not good – especially when the preceeding week hadn’t gone smoothly, AND they had to postpone the sale once already. They should have had a backup plan prepared and ready to go before they started the sale.
What would NYX have to go to get my business back?
* admit that they were wrong in how they prepared for the sale
* offer a better discount for customers than 50% off. I realize that they can’t break the bank – but they screwed up here, catastrophically, and in a very public fashion. It feels like they’re trying to pull a fast one: oh, wait, here’s this big discount we’re all going to tell you about – NO WAIT, you can’t have this one, but here’s this one that’s not nearly as good.
I work in the tech industry – I’ve managed several different types of web servers, and I’ve worked tech support, and I’ve purchased web hosting (long before I got my own servers and started my own company.) So I know both sides of the customer/business issue, and I know what kind of intelligent planning can go into preparing to handle a web rush like the one they experienced (and to some extent, expected.) NYX doesn’t manage their own servers, they’re managed by Rackspace – this is not an itty bitty data center in someone’s basement, nor is this a new player in the game. Someone at NYX didn’t call the data center techs at Rackspace as soon as the first snafu hit, armed with the authority to say “get us bigger servers for the duration, here’s the PO, this is how long we’ll need them, let’s get this pushed through.”
And then their “oh, any minute now”, “we’re working on it”, “coming soon” puffery. They not only dropped the ball, they dropped it and then just stared at it dully (instead of picking it back up again.)
ALL OF THAT SAID – some of the vitriol posted on the FB page was beyond the pale. At one point, I think that for every one person who was just posting “when are you going to make this right” or “I tried for six hours, forget it”, there were two people posting in all caps, posting wish-scenarios of tying down the CEO of the company and throwing pennies at his head, swearing, verbally eviscerating anyone who didn’t have the same viewpoint as them (whether pro-NYX or anti-NYX), and so on.
At this point, I want to get some of the half-price items for a friend who lives abroad. Other than that, I think I’ve got just about all the NYX I’ll ever need.
it was an awesome sale, so obviously people would flock to the website to purchase something. NYX should have known that they needed to beef up their servers to accommodate the extra traffic.
😀 😀 😀 in Italy the customer is NEVER right. I wish I live in USA! Really! The worst example is for telephonic companies. They change your contract unilaterally and if you try to say you’re angry, they simply ignore you, making you speak with tons of people in useless call center not owned by the telephonic company. And it’s like this for all types of shops/services.
I really envy you!
V
The only thing that could make up for it for me, and restore my confidence in the NYX company (read, ever purchase their cosmetics again) is to have the sale again, or give a code for 50 items at the originally offered price of $ 1.20. Its a good number between the people who were only ordering a few, and the people ordering hundreds of items.
50% doesn’t even begin to match the sale price. I feel betrayed and ripped off at the switch between their promised sale price and the new offering. The cheapest item that was on sale will be more then $1.20 at 50% off.
I was fine with the website crashing, it was bound to happen with a sale that big. I tried to get on the entire time, could never check out. So i gave up, called customer service and was brutally attacked for asking if the sale would be extended. I’m sorry that that rep had a crappy day, but I was being kind knowing the day that they must have had. After dealing with someone like that, personally I will never purchase from NYX.
This whole thing was very interesting to follow, and Im so happy to find a place where people can talk about this rationally. My opinion is that people overreacted big time. If I read one more comment about someone spending hours infront of the computer trying to buy things ill scream. You chose to spend hours trying to get your purchase through, and theres nothing wrong with that but no one forced you. All these people saying they’ll never buy nyx again over this seem like children throwing a tantrum. People have every right to be mad, no one can tell you how to feel but you know mistakes happen right? If something like this makes you mad enough to behave so poorly Im afraid for those who anger you in real life.
well… its more like considering the fact that it was a sale… and it sounded real nice to get cosmetics at 1.20 the site had been crashing before the sale even started… so that means no one probably was even able to purchase anything from the sale in the first place… basically people who are throwing a tantrum are just saying the wrong words because they are upset… the major frustration everyone basically probably has is that there technically wasn’t even a sale.. because no one was able to purchase anything and by nyx knowing that and losing that much sales in one day everyone would wish that they would reconsider and reestablish the sale with their newly updated site and give it a second shot…
ps.. the site crashed before the sale even started.
I’ve never really been into NYX, I’ve only tried one round lipstick (I didn’t really like it) a jumbo pencil – it was eh ok, I didn’t finish it and threw it away, and their Hi Def Eyeshadow Primer which I do like. Now I did want to try out a few other things (their face primer, black label lipstick, eyeshadow, blush & bronzer) and thought what the hey – so I tried in the middle of the night and was going through, but then checkout just wouldn’t happen.. & I said y’know what screw it. I ordered from MAC later on as they had free overnight shipping & I wanted more Amplified lipsticks anyways & from Sephora as I wanted an Illamasqua blush as well.. I don’t think I will order from NYX ever & their customer service seems to really suck (sorry to be so blunt) their answer is a 50% discount for something that was pretty much their fault – it’s a bit of a faux pas.. I spend a lot on things if I like them & don’t mind paying full retail, I just can’t get over how they are dealing with this at all.. Ridiculous! The people though over-reacting and threatening to sue, that’s crazy too.. ugh.. nuts. :-/
I was one of the apologists early on in the sale when people were complaining on the NYX facebook page, explaining how servers work and asking people to stop using several browsers and continuous refreshing and to give NYX a chance, and explaining that in my experience, everyone was behind the scenes scrambling to fix the site.
I was never ever able to even get on the website during the entire 18 hours (the 12 initial hours and the extended 6 hours) of the sale and frankly, it was the snarky facebook and Twitter posts from NYX that angered me.
The 50% off coupon code that is only valid from May 16th (yesterday) until the 22nd has not been received by anyone, including myself who emailed them yesterday morning. The website is now up, fully functional and all previously sold out items are back in stock and at full price.
It is NYX’s “oh well” attitude that has customers angry now, and why there are so many ragey comments directed towards NYX. Nothing that they have promoted or promised has been fulfilled.
I didn’t know about the sale and wouldn’t have purchased from it if I did, but I just have to say this whole thing reminds me of some of the cases we discussed when I was getting my M.B.A. Talk about textbook stupidity on the part of the company!
As for the title of this article, “Is the customer always right?”, of course not. But that really has nothing to do with this issue, IMO. People may have reacted badly and mistreated CS reps, and that is regrettable and reprehensible, but that does not mitigate NYX’s responsibility and poor response to this fiasco in any way.
FYI this is NOT the first time NYX has come under customer fire for shady dealings and B-A-D customer service! There’s been numerous complaints about their “distributor” here in the states and abroad. NYX is one of the FEW cosmetic companies who has never used their social media outlets correctly. Whoever handles their Facebook page can often be snarky and plays the “blame game.” I wonder how far back you can view the wall on a company site in Facebook. You’d find some interesting posts if they are STILL there.
I didn’t know about the NYX sale util I read Christine’s post and I wouldn’t have bought anything from them because I think 98% of what they produce is over hyped crap. BUT that is my opinion based on personal experiences. I’m a gal who expects alot of staying power and for me NYX doesn’t cut it. There are some gems BUT my $1.20 would have been better spent elsewhere. BTW not everything on their site is “cheap” either. Their HD line is rather pricey for a line marketed as “affordable”.
NYX is completely in the wrong for how they handled this entire mess. From the way they used their social media (Congratulating the lucky few who were able to purchase – Really?)to their 50% off coupon with a hook! They want some information from you. Your full name and your e-mail address. Which will probably be sold to spam marketers to offset their 50% off discount.
Either way it is what it is. Try to remain calm. Take it as a lesson learned. If you really feel wronged about what happened to you take the time to let the appropriate authorities know. In the end being calm and rational is the way to go. No point in stressing about something that at the end of the day you really have no control over. Destress ladies (and gents!). =)