pretty: and we have a winner...

I don't know about you but I'm the type of person who enters select contests never thinking I'd win. I've never been lucky...or maybe not as lucky as some other people I know. When it comes to online contests, I enter and forget about them, figuring I'd receive an email if I won or some kind of social media alert. I entered an Instagram contest by Cult Nails (@cultnails) and guess what? I WON! All I had to do was repost their image, tagging them and entering their specific hashtag. I never thought I would win but I thought something was weird when I woke up one Saturday morning with all  kinds of Instagram notifications. Here's their winner announcement:

After some short communication with John (@jmorockstar), I received an email notification that my package was on its way--wahoo! Here's my winning box:

Hand hiding my address

And Mischief checking out the goodies inside:

Mischief decided that he liked the red tote the most. He used it to step on, stretch on and sit on before I could unwrap all the polishes and take a proper photo.

Here's everything unwrapped minus Mischief:

One half of the polishes and tote bag. The polishes are (left to right): Wicked Fast (speed dry top coat), Charlatan, Just Because, I Got Distracted, Masquerade, Ms. Conduct, Nevermore, Tempest (this one doesn't have a label on the bottom so I did a comparison on the Cult Nails website) and Doppelganger,

 

Second half of the polishes plus nail file and t-shirt. Polishes are: Feel Me Up, All Out, Be Loco, Captivated, Evil Queen (a gorgeous red I can't wait to try), Riot, Hypnotize Me, Party Time and Get It On (base coat).

 

I had a hard time deciding between which polish to use first...yellow or red for the end of summer or brown for the beginning of autumn? In the end I decided that I was done with summer and ready for autumn! I painted one coat of Ms. Conduct followed by one coat of Masquerade and top coat.

The Cult Nails polishes are free of DBP, formaldehyde, toluene and camphor. I found the two polishes I tried to be one coaters, though you could do two thin coats if you really want to. The polishes dried fast but not too fast that I didn't have time to smooth things out. One thing that I found truly remarkable is that I am SO used to the Pro Wide Brush with OPI polishes that I find myself having a hard time applying polish with other brand names (Essie, I'm looking at you). I'm happy to say that I didn't have the same problem with the Cult Nails polishes even though their brush isn't wide like OPI's. The bristles on the CN brush fan out rather nicely and considering I have wide nail plates, I found applying the polish a breeze. A non-wide brush is a huge pet peeve of mine since I can't seem to apply other polishes properly without one. Regular polish brushes never really even out on my nail plates and just leave my nails looking like a streaky mess. As you can see above (aside from some clean up that needs to be done but I was too excited to do it), applying the Cult Nails polish was rather easy.

I am so happy that I can now add these 18 polishes to my collection of Cult Nails polishes, which previously consisted of one, lonely polish, Feedback. Thank you so much Cult Nails for giving us the opportunity to win and fall in love with your products! I see a lot more manis with Cult Nails in my future :)

life review: customer service

I've been having some great luck with customer service lately and just wanted to share my experiences. It seems like we never forget to post about our negative customer service experiences and share them with friends and family, but rarely do we rave about the great experiences so here I am sharing mine.

Company: Metro (in-store)
Product: Selection White Cake Box Mix
Issue: did not perform as expected even though directions were perfectly followed. I emailed Metro about the issue and didn't really expect anything in return but I received an email from their customer service with a specification that someone would follow up with me via mail. A few days later I received a letter in the mail from Metro stating that they were sorry I had a negative experience with their store-brand product, told that all their Selection and Irresistibles items come with a full money back guarantee and given a $5 gift card for my trouble and as a sign of good faith.
Resolution: I was extremely pleased. I didn't expect to get a $5 gift card in return for telling them about a poorly performing product and the gift card always didn't sway me to shop at Metro more in the future (I already do most of my grocery shopping at Metro or Loblaws) but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless.


Company: Topbox (online)
Product: Topbox July box
Issue: I received a Neostrata package, which would've been awesome, except that I have no use for anti-aging products (yet). I ended up posting my Neostrata package to Instagram and someone alerted me to the fact that there was a shipping error with July's boxes. Topbox confirmed the error on IG and told me to email them with the correct package that I had selected.

Resolution: Topbox sent me a brand new package, the one that I had selected, and the entire issue was dealt with in a weeks' time (including a weekend for postage). The best part is that Topbox didn't request that I send the Neostrata package back so I gifted it to a friend's mother who loves Neostrata anti-aging products!

Company: Julep (online)
Product: Nail Polish in Misti
Issue: Nail polish arrived dry and half full. It was completely unusable.
Resolution: I emailed customer service and notified them about the issue, asking for a replacement or credit to my account. I received an automatic reply saying that their CS was busy and that a reply would arrive in 4-5 days, longer than the usual (which I think it 1-2). I received a reply six days later saying that they would send me a new polish and asked if I could send them photos of the polish in question. Don't be worried about the photo request as I was the one who offered to take and send them. I received an email notification that a replacement polish was sent and an estimated arrival date. Since Julep's shipping takes a long time (about two weeks), it took almost a month to resolve my issue. Personally I feel like that's a bit of a long time, especially the extra day or two delay for someone from customer service to get back to me. I've heard a lot of negative things about Julep's CS but this experience resulting in a positive for me, albeit a little bit slow.

So there you have it...all within a month, I had three company issues but all were very friendly and helpful in their responses.