Shopping for Beauty - Why is the customer service so ugly?

Courtesy of Dibbly Fresh

As much as I adore beauty products, I'll hold my hands up and admit that I hate shopping for them.  I'm quite a shy person and have to say that my experiences of buying beauty products from department stores have been so mediocre I now tend to buy exclusively online.  Thanks to beauty blogs I can get a pretty good idea of what a product looks like on, so colour and texture aren't usually an issue.

For one make up brand in particular (which shall remain nameless) I always buy online because the counter is so yukky.  From the moment you walk near it you are deafened by thumping club music (which, annoyingly, you can hear in the rest of the store).  After that it's pot luck whether you get served by any of the staff as they may be talking about their boyfriends or night out.  Should you be very lucky (perhaps because there's no gossip that day or the staff despise one another), they will either be very cold towards you and not listen to anything you say, or be quite sarcastic and mocking if you happen to know the shades of product you want.  When you happen to make a purchase your items are thrown in a carrier bag (if you ask for one) and you leave the store generally feeling like poo.  Give me extortionate p&p any day!

Sadly I've countless bad shopping experiences across a number of different brands.  In fact, upon talking to friends and family it seems to be the norm.  What annoys me is that there is no other place where I or anyone else would expect or put up with such poor customer service.  Generally if I do experience it I vote with my feet and shop elsewhere.  Where I work my bosses are obsessed about good customer service, as well they should be.  So why is a billion pound/dollar industry not doing more to create a good customer experience?



Celebrity Fragrances - and a funny feeling of deja vu...

Courtesy of E! online

Whilst in Debenhams I also spotted the Kim Kardashian fragrance, which I'd heard so much about through watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians.  I love these ladies, they're beautiful, stylish and a giggle so I was keen to see what Kim had come up with.  To be honest I'd love to look like Kim, but I'll have to settle with smelling like her for now :-(

The Perfume Diaries!

I'm a bit of a perfume addict, and nothing cheers me up more than a wander round a beauty hall sniffing the latest olfactory delights.  I'm quite spoilt locally, as I have a good Debenhams for mid-range, popular scents, Superdrug for bargains and celebrity scents, and the gorgeous Williams & Griffin (Willie Gee's to locals!) department store for high-end labels such as Acqua Di Parma, Creed and Floris.


I popped into Debenhams today after finishing work a bit early, and as I hadn't been there in a while there were quite a few new scents to check out.