After seeing so many fabulous blog posts and swatches of Fyrinnae products over the last year or so I have been deliberating over placing my own order for a long time. Last weekend I finally made up my mind to place an order for about 18 samples. I spent an enjoyable hour filling my basket with samples, got distracted by the children, went back, my basket was empty. Annoying! However, this does happen on sites where you're not logged in so I went through it all again adding my samples to the basket. Only I couldn't check out. I created an account but when I got to the payments page there was no option to pay. There was however a message saying if no payment methods appear please try again tomorrow. Annoying again, but oh well, my order was saved, I'd just try again the next day.
So the next day, I logged in, checked my order was saved (it was) and proceeded to check out. Yep, this time there were payment options. Fantastic! I selected paypal... got logged out. Logged in, selected paypal, got logged out. Repeat a few more times until hooray! I get taken into Paypal. I attempt to pay... logged out! It was completely infuriating.
Against my better judgement I tried again the next day, only this time I was greeted with a message on the home page "10/23: Checkout will be closed for a few days. During this time you may be unable to log in intermittently. " Fine. Highly irritated that the message had gone up after I'd had all these problems, but at least I knew at long last that it wasn't just me and that it was a recognised problem. Well not a problem for them obviously as its intentional I assume.
So that message says checkout would be closed for a few days and is dated the 23rd. (Although I don't think that message was there on the 23rd but hey ho). So it's now the 28th, I thought I'd have another go. Turns out checkout is still closed, which I suppose is ok, annoying, but ok.
While I was logged in this morning however, I decided to check my order was still safe. Guess what? It's now marked as cancelled as I hadn't paid. You have got to be kidding me right? I've been trying to pay since Friday the 22nd. Now my order is cancelled and I can't just pay for it now. I have to refill my shopping basket and start again.
Um no thanks. Having already spent upwards of 3 hours trying to purchase from Fyrinnae I shan't be wasting any more of my time on it.
I was so looking forward to trying Fyrinnae. The colours look beautiful and I hear fab things about the Pixie Epoxy but ordering online shouldn't be such a headache. I'm not interested anymore.
Thanks but no thanks Fyrinnae.
Anyone recommend any similar brands for me?
This is very good moan and I am so glad you brought these issues up. I really hope Fyrinnae can read this and will improve on it. This reminds me (on a smaller scale) of the nightmare of surfing the boohoo site. They listened to the 'complaints' and acted up on it. Let's hope Fyrinnae works on this. xx
ReplyDeleteHow absolutely annoying. I know what it's like trying to do things when you have to keep breaking off to look after children. Baskets emptying is a bug bear for me. Like liloo says, I really hope they take action and can sort it out for future transactions.
ReplyDeleteJane x
That is so irritating - and the company do themselves no favours, because they have lost a sale and a potential longtime future customer. Can't help with any recs I am afraid, but hope someone else can. Good luck with it. Jan x
ReplyDeleteThank you everyone, its just annoying. I've building up to placing that order for so long but its impossible!
ReplyDeleteJust looked at their website, it looks awful!!
ReplyDeleteI've heard so many people singing the praises of Fyrinnae...especially the Pixie Epoxy you mentioned! It sounds like you generally had a really rubbish experience with them...their site sounds about as user friendly as a teapot with no spout!!
ReplyDeleteAli
x
That must have been so frustrating!!! I hope they'll fix all these problems soon! Losing customers is definitely not good for them!
ReplyDeleteI really want some Pixie Epoxy, but just haven't got round to ordering any yet. I have checked in periodically on their site though and they do seem to have regular down times. For batch mixing etc.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you had a bad experience it is so annoying when these things happen. xx
Sparklz, I don't mind the shop having down time... I do mind the message going up AFTER I've already spent hours trying to order and then my order being cancelled due to lack of payment!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I dont use any Fyrinnae goodies so couldnt really recommend an alternative brand and to be honest after your little rant I will probably avoid the company. I had the same problems with the website fragrancedirect and although I finally managed to get my order processed it was seriously irritating!! :)
ReplyDeletehttp://mytopbeautybuys.blogspot.com/
Considering the fact that you didn't even contact customer service it seems wrong to ask if this is acceptable CS. I can, for a fact, tell you that if you DID contact customer service you'd gotten help pretty fast. Also, I think if you click the order status that says "cancelled" you'll get the option to pay anyway.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I understand the frustrations of not getting the order through the first time, which is the reason they usually take the site down entirely when they shut down, with a message that reads "Fyrinnae will be back shortly".
Other indie-brands that are awesome? Hi-fi cosmetics, High Voltage, Evil Shades, SoBe Botanicals, Sugarpill et cetera, et cetera. The indie-market is a wonderful place to venture for awesomeness and sparkles. ;)
I hope you'll give Fyr. another chance, though, because they have superior quality and the guys who run it are both awesome (yes, it's run by TWO people). Good luck.
Hi Eplefe,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I must say then when you try to shop with a website the whole thing emcompasses customer service and if you can't order and messages go up after you've been trying for hours then thats a customer service fail. Not being to order from an online shop is a surely a lack of customer service.
Having said that, I do take your point about not having contacted Customer Services, I probably should have done that but I was so infuriated by the end of it all I just was over the whole thing. I didn't see much point in contacting them asking what was going on once there was a message up on the site saying that it was down as I could read what was going on for myself.
I don't mind the fact that they have down time while they do other stuff, I appreciate there are 500 people in the queue ahead of me and its just a small company (I'm aware two people run it, I follow one of them on Twitter...)
Aaaanyway, thanks so much for the recommendations, I'll check them out, the only one I've heard of is Sugarpill and their colours don't really appeal to me but will be googling the others as soon as I finish typing this.
I'm not sure I'll try them again to be honest, my patience levels are not that great ;)
Oh no don't give up on them Charlie, Fyrinnae are such a gem of a company for beautiful makeup. I'd rather buy from someone human and with a bit of soul than some faceless mega brand that sells average products at inflated prices (looking at you MAC).
ReplyDeleteWell the products do look so lovely, thats why I wanted to order from them so much!
ReplyDeleteDo I know you last commenter? :)
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteI can totally sympathise with you as I was trying to place an order with Fyrinnae at about the same time as you, and it took me about a week to be able to go through checkout.
I am a regular customer of theirs. It didn't really put me off apart from the fact that I was buying a pixie epoxy for a friend and was making her wait. It is the first time that I experience this kind of problems with them. Usually in the past everything was very straightforward.
I think probably one of the things is that because of Halloween/Christmas coming, the amount of orders has probably gone up, and sadly they probably have no other choice than to turn off the site for a while, as they're not a very large company.
Please don't give up on them. Maybe wait until the holidays are over and try again.
x
I know what you mean...I JUST got my order from them yesterday even though I had ordered weeks ago. It seems they were behind on packing stuff and dealing w/ website issues on top of that. Sheesh! But I will say the products are worth the wait. I am only a bit disappointed w/ their lip stuff...it seems kinda dry and cakey..maybe I am just not using it correctly? :S
ReplyDeleteI love Fyrinnae for their products. Lately, I hate their website. I never know from day to day if it will work or not. Who knows how much business they've lost due to site issues. I would want some disclaimer other than a confusing basket/payment issue. Crossing my fingers Fyrinnae figures it out.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Nitin from Toronto. I am interested in your writing. Some of your posting are good, I can say, best. Can you please tell me how to subscribe to your blog post online?
ReplyDeleteI recently contacted Fyrinnae about an order they screwed up.. I was treated very rudely by whomever responded. Their customer service is awful. I was polite and just wanted my order fixed, but they were not helpful, and actually quite unprofessional.
ReplyDeleteSheesh, they're still down! I'm'a go look at Meow Cosmetics and Detrivore, I think.
ReplyDelete