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Sephora customers have come up with their own way to get back at the retailer for bungling its popular Epic Rewards Day promotion, according to Consumerist. Instead of waiting for an official solution to the mess, which Sephora has promised to hand down by September 10th, a customer rallied fellow Beauty Insiders with a message on Sephora's forums encouraging everyone to return everything they had purchased in the rush to accumulate thousands of points leading up to the Epic Rewards Day. It reads:
I like to rant & complain as much as anybody after two failed epic rewards events, but as long as we go back to business as usual in a few days, Sephora has no incentive to do anything different. I think we should all come together and take a stand.
After carefully reviewing the return policy, I plan on gathering up everything I purchased from Sephora in the past 60 days and return it to the store. No matter the condition -- new, used, half full, almost empty, EVERYTHING is going back.
Who's with me? I think if enough of us do it, we can make a difference. I also think we should post a picture of everything we're returning along with an estimated retail value.
Let's hit 'em where it hurts ladies!
So far, the grassroots revenge efforts seem to be working. Consumerist listed several photos of returned merchandise that it had received in one day; in total, the returned goods were worth over $3,000.
"There were seven people ahead of us returning stuff," a person who went back to Sephora with his wife to return her purchases told Consumerist. "We asked four of them and they all said they were mad about the epic rewards mess. The very nice woman taking the returns told us she had been processing returns her entire shift and all of them were due to the epic rewards issue. She's pretty sure she'd taken at least $4,500 in returns that day. We returned [about] $150, so her guess is probably accurate."
To Sephora's credit, Consumerist notes that it a) has been accepting all of the returns, b) hasn't removed the original message off the online forums, and c) is doling out free rewards points to try to soothe irate customers.