Ulta Rants

I love Ulta.

I, in fact, love it more than Sephora - why?

Because of its membership program where every purchase earns you points that you can redeem for $ off your purchase. The more you accumulate the more the points are worth. I enjoy that they have a mixture of drugstore & high end, they usually have promotions for certain brands where you can get additional gifts with purchase,  they often have lunch break promotions where if you buy online you get even more, and lastly they offer times where you get double/triple points depending on the brand/month.

So why am I ranting about them today?

Customer service

1) I moved nearly 3 months ago, changed my address before I moved, and also received an order to my new address - I still have not received an ad. I reached out to customer service and they said it takes nearly 2 months to receive an ad - that sounds like 2 months of business you're losing out on Ulta.

2) E-mail promotions. I without a fail have been receiving emails from Ulta and when I reached out to customer service about the ads - the e-mails stopped. I told customer service - they said I'm on the system, but still no e-mails. Then I reached out and said I'm not getting any still and its strange because I know during the 21 days of beauty - there's emails everyday! Still seems like a bad business strategy to not have these two ways to reach your customer base have such a long lag...

Here's what Ulta Guest Services said:

We confirmed that our email department has ensured everything within your email account is up to date. We sent roughly a few emails a week, and you should be on that list. If you do not receive 1 email in the next week, please let me know.

Return Policy
Sephora has this unlimited return policy and will refund your original payment method with proof of purchase. If you lost your receipt they can look it up via your account  and give you store credit which you can use in store or online. Even without the box, Sephora will accept it.

Ulta on the other hand, must be returned within 60 days with proof of purchase. But if you lost your receipt or its been longer than 60 days they will give you store credit which you cannot use online - which is annoying. In addition, if you used points or a coupon or bought at a discount...well good luck. 

Cashback
Sephora has to be on every cash back site from fatwallet (3.5%), ebates (8.0%), topcashback (5.0%)
Ulta (comes and goes) right now fatwallet (1.0%), ebates (6.0% Wow - that's a first being so high!), topcashback (2.0%)

Also - if you're looking to redeem cashback from credit cards, ibotta, etc. good luck finding Ulta giftcards. 

My Order Won't Process at ULTA.com

Ulta is currently underways (in the last week) of their 21 days of Beauty Steals. Nothing really jumped out at my when I first saw the line up. Though now I do regret not going for the Stila In the Light Palettes ($20 on sale) and the Clarisonic Brushes for Buy One Get One Free ($27 for two) though I do admit that I think I have enough Clarisonic Brushes to last the year right now.

I received the e-mail today and was tempted to buy the Cargo Shanghai Nights palette for $20 (originally $39) the colors just looked pretty. I quickly went to the web to see what are other's opinions of Cargo eye shadows because I never owned one. Anyway I decided to grab it for an exchange that I am doing and one for a future gift to a friend along with two CK One Classic Lipsticks $9 (originally $16) to make the free shipping at $50. I am not a new customer to Ulta nor Ulta.com, but for some reason, the website would not take my payment no matter what card I used. The pending charges showed up so its not like I typed in my card number incorrectly.

So I took my complaint to Twitter and Facebook, and received a response from Twitter to e-mail Ulta's customer service, which I did and in turn...I got an automated response that they would get back to me within 24 hours. 24 hours, when the beauty steal is gone.

I really do love Ulta. I love having drugstore and prestige brands. I haven't had a bad experience at Ulta either (though it seems as though many have). But I am underwhelmed by their customer service and ability to let customers make purchases on their website.

I will try making the purchase at various points during the day, but overall I expect to lose out on this deal.