My Cheating Heart - www.BobbiBrown.com
Written: Feb 11 '04 (Updated Feb 20 '04)
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When I'm looking here and there
I hate malls. I hate looking for a parking place, fighting the crowds, smelling the mall-air. I also hate walking up to an empty make up counter and having to wait for the heavily-spackled cosmetics lady of the day to come over and try to sell me stuff I do not need along with moisturizer, foundation, or whatever it is I actually do want.
As a consequence, if I can buy it online and avoid the consummate hassle that is The Mall, I will. And I’m thrilled to see so many established merchants venturing into online sales direct to their end users. It’s like a little slice of quasi-reclusive, geeky heaven.
Why www.BobbiBrown.com?
And I'm searchin' everywhere to find your love
It’s complicated. I’m a Lancôme customer, and have been for years. Eight years. I passed the seven-year-itch mark with nary a glance, but this eighth year has me wondering – what else is out there? Could I love another product the way I love Lancôme? Is there anyone who can do more for me? Would anything different really be good?
I shopped around, spot-checking reviews of various products and product lines, and opted to try Bobbi Brown for my eighth anniversary present. Couple my understandable combination of eagerness and hesitation with my absolute loathing of malls, and that led me to www.bobbibrown.com.
Navigability
But you play so hard to get, and I haven't found out yet where you are
Oh, the site is very sleek – chic black and white and big splashes of beautiful color. It loads quickly and contains a wealth of information; that, with the fairly intuitive design with multiple ways to link into the page I’m looking for, quickly seduced me. I thought I might have found a new online love. Major categories like Shop Online, What’s New, Looks & Tips, About Bobbi, and Ask an Artist beckon beguilingly. Subcategories Makeup, Skincare, Tools & Accessories, Fragrance, Baby, and Bestsellers, sung siren songs at me until I succumbed to their schemes in a trance.
I went in search of SPF 15 lip balm in a stick. Oh the horror, the unrelenting pain of new love; I couldn’t find it. It must be hiding from me; I will search you out my darling…
Uh, no. I won’t. There’s no search function. I scour the site, surfing the easily located site map and branching from there through the incredibly informative Customer Service pages (which covers everything from a very detailed FAQ to payment and shipping options to returns & exchanges), through Corporate Information and “Bobbi on Bobbi” (Bobbi Brown speaks about herself, her product and her vision), through individual product pages. I find mascara and hand lotion and eyebrow shapers and perfume. I find books and palettes and baby-scents, but no SPF 15 Lip Balm in stick form.
I am disappointed; I am dashed. I checkout easily with my mascara and my hand lotion, but the lip balm seems lost to me. For all the site is easy in every other way, and for all its seductive wealth of information, I am left bereft and alone: searchless in a non-searchable world.
Shipping and Payment Options
You'll never find just what you got
With three shipping options, Standard (5-7 business for regular addresses, 6-14 business days for PO Boxes), 2nd Day, and Overnight, www.bobbiborwn.com should be able to meet your every shipping need. One caveat, unlike many other sites with flat-fee shipping, or shipping based on weight, shipping and handling charges are based, with a sliding scale for urgency, on the total value of your order. The more you buy, the more you pay. Keep that in mind when ordering - though shipping does top out at $10 standard for $100 or more in product.
Bobbi Brown accepts American Express, Visa, Mastercard and Discover cards. You will not be charged for your purchase(s) until the order ships. Sales tax is required for all orders shipping to either New York or Kentucky – all other states are currently exempt.
Oddly enough, Bobbi Brown has a “Maximum Purchase Policy: We regret that we must limit orders to no more than four (4) units of any item with a maximum purchase of $500 (not including shipping fees and sales tax) per customer." I have not explored this with them, as I am terribly unlikely to spend $500 at one sitting on cosmetics. I assume it is meant to stop unauthorized distribution of their products.
Product and Service
Here I come, ready or not
Our love affair has been hit or miss. The website doesn’t appear to offer every product available in the catalog or through their retail outlets. They will send a free catalog with your order if you request one, and of course you can call to order anything out of that – but the whole point of ordering online is avoiding human interaction. I don’t want to have to call them. I want my nice little mouse to take care of everything for me.
I’ve tried a couple of products. I’m very pleased with the Hand & Cuticle Balm, not so pleased with their Lash Lustre Waterproof Mascara, and very displeased with the Hydrating Face Cream. Quality or specific product-related issues aside, however, shipments have been extremely reliable, both shipping and arriving on time to earlier than expected.
Online tracking is available and fully functional within about 24 hours of shipment. Order and shipping confirmations both arrive via email in a timely manner.
Service is where Brown stands out. During my fruitless search for SPF 15 lip balm in stick form, I emailed Bobbi Brown customer service regarding my quest and my disappointment at the lack of a site search engine. I received an actual response from a real person within about 15 minutes of sending my mail, very politely directing me to the URL of what she thought I was looking for, and letting me know that a site search engine was under consideration.
Well, her URL was for the pot of lip balm, not the stick, and I emailed back to thank them and let them know that this was not, indeed, what I desired. I received another response – from another person – again very friendly, apologizing that I couldn’t find it, but that the product had been discontinued. She informed me that if I was seeing it available elsewhere that the product was outdated and not authorized for sale. Well, that’s certainly handy to know.
My Bobbi Brown
Hide and seek, it's just a game we play. Hide and seek.
Unlike the “My Account” section of www.lancome.com, joining Bobbi doesn’t really have all that many benefits:
Free samples with purchase when available
News on Bobbi Brown product launches
Online order status and tracking
Address book and credit card retention
Your order history stored for future reference
Upon signing up, I did receive an email offer for free shipping on my next purchase of $50 or more, but that’s a one-time only offer. Lancôme gives me free shipping on every order of $50 or more provided I am signed in to my account.
The order history is nice, but not necessary. Sign up if you like, but you won’t really be missing much if you pass.
Overall Recommendation
Swear I gotta find you. Sneakin' up behind you. Hide and seek.
Friendly, responsive staff is a big plus in my book, and will probably keep me coming back to www.bobbibrown.com (if only to purchase more Hand & Cuticle Balm), but lack of a search engine, limited product availability, and shipping charges will definitely curtail my habits. Overall, www.bobbibrown.com is a nice diversion from my regular cosmetics dealer, but I’m certainly not about to make a long-term commitment.
Looking for more Bobbi Brown?
♦ Hand & Cuticle Balm
♦ Hydrating Face Cream
♦ Lash Lustre Waterproof Mascara
Want to compare sites?
♦ WWW.Lancome.com
♦ WWW.LushCanada.com
Note: Headers taken from the song “Hide and Seek,” originally performed by New Edition on the 1984 release “New Edition.”
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Mascara, Lotion, Lip Balm
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jaxmom28
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Location: Somewhere in the south
Reviews written: 78
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Whatever you are, be a good one.
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