MBeautylounge aka my worst online shopping experience ever.
I apologize in advance, this will take a while, but I have a lot of very bad things to say about this company.
So here is my story: I was desperately looking for ZOYA nail polishes which are hard to come by in Europe. On some nail artist website (I can’t remember which nail artist), I saw that she recommended MBeautylounge and that they sold ZOYA polishes (and quite cheap). The website seemed legit, it said that they accepted PayPal transactions so on 16 March 2014, over five months ago, I placed an order of 97$ (around 70€) worth of nail polishes.
Right after the transaction though, I realised that I had not been paying with PayPal, that this option was not actually available (I was tired that day, never buy stuff when you are tired :D). I started to question the legitimacy of the website and searched for reviews. And then, I flipped. All the reviews were absolutely terrible. I sent a message to the helpdesk of MBeautylounge to cancel the order right away (also on 16 March), then I contacted my bank to cancel the transaction but they said they could not do such a thing.
I was getting desperate, but on 25 March 2014 I received the following message from the helpdesk: “Thank you for contacting Mbeauty Lounge. I have messaged my supervisor, once your order is canceled it takes 7-14 business days for payment to reflect on your card mam” (yes, they did call me “mam” and misspelled “cancelled”). However unprofessionally written, I thought that they would stick to their word and so I waited for two weeks. But still nothing. Worse, my order was suddenly marked as shipped even though I had not received any shipping notification!
And it only got worse. I wrote to them again asking for my refund (or at least for a confirmation that the products had indeed been shipped, which I don’t believe they were) but did not receive any satisfactory answer. I tried being nice, being angry, I tried launching a complaint on the Better Business Bureau, I tried begging them for an answer and nothing worked. It seems like they really believe I must be quite stupid since on 25 June they sent me the following message: “ Thank you for contacting Mbeauty Lounge. sorry for the delay, I will notify the shipping dept of this issue. IF your order was lost we will get another right out to you” to which I replied the following: “Hi, Thank you but this is not what I am asking for. I asked for the cancellation of my order on the very same day that I placed it and on 25 March (3 months ago!) you said that you would cancel my order and that the payment would take 7-14 business day to reflect on my card. What I am asking is that you honour what you said and refund me.” They of course did not answer and closed the topic. But on 27 August when I tried to contact them again, they sent me the very same message. Word for word.
So here you have it. This company is a scam, they don’t accept PayPal even though their website says so, they are not authorised retailer for ZOYA and OPI does not authorise them to use their name either. They don’t have a phone number or address anywhere (lesson learned: if you can’t find any phone number or address on a company’s website: don’t buy from them, they are not legit!). They have about a hundred complaints registered on the Better Business Bureau. I lost my money as I don’t think I will ever get a refund nor my nail polishes, but if I can save you from going through the same trouble, I guess this story will have at least one positive outcome.
If you managed to read the whole thing, have a good day and and don’t get scammed ;)
Cheers,
Sarah
August 27, 2014
Unprompted review