Alex P.

Thumbtack is an utterly irresponsible and reprehensible company that provides no information and takes zero responsibility for their contractors. It should be illegal for them to connect customers to short and long distance movers. Recently, the FBI charged 12 people for moving scams where these criminals will either a). Take your stuff hostage and demand more and more money to return your stuff or b). Steal your stuff and then auction them off. There are in between outcomes where your stuff will likely be broken by illegitimate movers who will also severely overcharge you. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration keeps a database of movers who are registered and insured with the Federal government. In addition, a U.S. DOT number is required by FMCSA for interstate moves. This is the BASIC minimum step to check for the legitimacy of a purported mover. Otherwise movers who don't meet this basic minimum requirement: a) may not be insured and therefore you may be mislead into believing the insurability of your goods b) may actually NOT be legal to carry out interstate moves and c) are NOT subject to any regulation because you can't file a complaint against them with the FMCSA.
Think about online websites that connect customers to service providers. When you sign up on eBay, you are given hints to how to purchase safely and how to sell safely. Thumbtack provides NO guidance on identifying legitimate moving companies. This is because their business model SUPPORTS predators who prey on unsuspecting or ill advised consumers. Businesses have to pay a fee to see your request and that's how Thumbtack gets paid. They're largely accepting of scammers and shady contractors because they get money, take no responsibility for your pain and loss when in fact, they should be legally liable for not doing background checks on contractors.
I was contacted by a shady person, likely a moving "broker" who gave me a quote for moving interstate. I was asked to pay an upfront 20% deposit (a sign of shady business practices) which I did through PayPal. The moving company name this broker masquerades under is the same name as a legitimate company in another state, which is not unusual as moving companies often do long distance interstate moves. Their phone # also matched the area code of the legitimate moving company (Flag 1 for misdirection).
I then googled the name of the actual moving company, who has a similar name to yet another legitimate transport company (Flag 2 for misdirection). It wasn't until I felt a sense of uncertainty that I looked further and realized that this was one of those shady illegal moving companies that hire a local penske/generic truck, bang up your stuff and possibly hold your items hostage and/or force you to pay "storage fees". They CLAIMED to accept credit card payment, but switched to PayPal or Venmo (Flag 3). I was able to resolve the issue through several calls to PayPal but I had to escalate the issue as they did not believe me and thought I was backing out of a moving contract. I later did some research and it turns out the invoice was illegal because they charged by volume instead of weight (google binding vs. non binding contracts and the legality of quoting by volume vs. weight) so had PayPal not stopped the transaction I could have sought back my deposit by other means.
I contacted Thumbtack and sent them PROOF with screenshots. The moving company has ALSO been reviewed under Yelp with complaints that Thumbtack referred them. This is 99% Thumbtack's responsibility and yet they don't care. This individual is still on Thumbtack with fake 100% positive reviews. There have been other reviewers stating that these scammers just change to another name on Thumbtack even if action forces them to close down one account. In the end Thumbtack proposed a solution to connect me to this shady individual summarizing that I was "not comfortable pursuing services." This is highly misleading and has NOTHING TO DO with personal feelings or being comfortable. There were CLEAR signs and proof their contractor was shady and illegal. Not only that, it is dangerous to clearly disclose to a shady individual, "your customer is uncomfortable doing business with you." Who knows if these individuals will retaliate or get revenge, GIVEN that my original and new moving addresses were given to them. I advise anyone considering moving to NOT use Thumbtack and instead use OFFICIAL and FEDERAL government licensed companies and most of all, do research. Thumbtack doesn't care if you lose your valuable belongings, get terrorized by scammers or lose money. They will keep a band of thieves if it serves them their dinner on a silver platter at the expense of your WHOLE LIFE.

Judging by other reviews, I think the freshness of food probably depends on where you live and how close you are to their distribution centers. For me, everything has been good to great in terms of freshness. I've tried almost all of the same type of service (Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Sun Basket, Marley Spoon, Home Chef) and Plated is still the one that I think has the best recipes. When I say best recipes, it's in terms of a) how good the final result tastes, b) whether the ingredients/process is easily reproducible and c) how well the recipe is actually written in terms of time management/clarity. One giant caveat: Plated doesn't publish their recipes/you can't retrieve archived meals or the other meals in your delivery you didn't purchase.
I'd say 90% of the time, the meals turn out great. There was one or two that I questioned their choice (large pieces of eggplant in lo mein, not what I'd choose but hey) but overall, just fantastic. The instructions are also always very easy to follow, and any highlights are printed separately for you to keep note of. I've also cooked a dish or two I've loved again and they were also great. It's slightly pricier than some of the other choices, but I think it's worth it.

Note: this is a subscription service like any other type (handbags, shoes, etc). You will be charged recurring weeks unless you deactivate your account or skip a meal. It's sometimes difficult to remember, but I always skip all the meals for the upcoming month or so to be safe and then go back to unskip once I'm not as busy. I'm pretty sure this is outlined in the sign-up somewhere, so it's not a surprise.

Update: Since contacting them almost two weeks ago, I haven't received a refund and will have to contact them again after "10 business days." Don't order from them directly, their parent company IconFitness (or whatever it's called) has terrible customer service. Order from another retailer to avoid this refund nightmare.

Since I've had consistent difficulty in finding shoes that fit me (size us 4.5-5 depending), I heard Altra was a candidate and decided to try them. I tried ordering off Zappos at first but my purchase was declined due to an overzealous credit card monitoring. So I ordered from them directly and the products were shipped quickly, but oddly three shoes in three separate boxes (seems to not be cost effective, but what do I know about merchandising, warehousing and shipping, right?). Unfortunately, they were still too big so I requested a return and was given three separate return shipping labels. I shipped them back and they arrived, but did not hear from them about the refund for a month. I got no confirmation that they received the return or that my refund is forthcoming. I emailed them after the month wait and they responded, but offered no apology. What if I had forgotten? It seemed like I would never have received a refund. I just find it shady when you, the customer have to remind businesses to refund you. It's like they're counting on people who forgot. If they were annoyed about the shipping costs, they can maybe consolidate having to ship shoes separate and/or charge a flat fee for returns like some retailers.

You will get calls at least once a week, around 10am for me (work time). I pick up calls I don't recognize because sometimes they are pertinent calls. It's just very pushy and annoying - it makes me suspicious they're so aggressive about it. Their boxes are fine, nothing special and comparable to all the other meal delivery services. I tried two boxes before I cancelled because I found their website glitchy and difficult to navigate (esp. When skipping certain weeks). I also could not view the meals easily or view meals that weren't in my box. It was just a very clunky website. If you've cancelled and are being harassed by them, put a fake phone # on your profile!

As a Canadian, I'm pretty familiar with David's Tea. I've gotten tea both in store and online. They have a pretty good rewards ($100 gets you free 2Oz of tea - yes it's kind of a lot to spend, but it's over a year I think). They also run promos quite often, and rotate seasonal teas. The teas themselves are kind of similar in flavour to each other with similar ingredients but I love their Chocolate Pu-Erh tea which is only around for the winter season. They've always delivered packages to me quickly and they give you a free tin if you order over a certain amount. You can also pick free samples online. I've never had a bad experience and they also have some cute teaware (travel mugs, tea sets, etc).

I don't even actually really like going to the store. For some reason, their store associates are always standoffish and/or try to oversell and then act disinterested when you refuse.
Online, Teavana has better deals compared to the stores so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone. Get cheaper tea and avoid store associates. They had a promo for free 2 Oz of caramel truffle if you order a certain amount. When my tea came, I got a random English Breakfast tea instead. I called them and they said they ran out of the caramel truffle so they replaced it with the English Breakfast. First of all, the English Breakfast is around $5/2oz, and the caramel truffle is $10/2oz.
It's mighty cheap of them to substitute something of less value, instead of another one of equal value. PLUS, you can still order caramel truffle online so obviously it's either a bait or switch or they decided to limit free caramel truffle teas to what, like 50, and then stick other customers with some lower value tea.
Second, I can't drink black tea because it's bad for my stomach. I'll have to now give it to someone else. My call with them didn't resolve the issue. I emailed them and they told me they couldn't address my issue over email and told me to call their customer service. Basically, they don't care about you and don't want to resolve your issue. It's YOUR fault for buying from them and if they screw up, it's YOUR fault and they don't care.

I'm actually kind of surprised the suite of Williams-Sonoma/PB/etc aren't out of business. For one, near where I live, the brick and mortar barely has anyone in them. Secondly, all of these websites have terrible shipping policies. It's the old school "if you spend more, you pay more! Regardless of weight." They're basically pooling the people who order heavy furniture, with people who order lighter things like bedding, etc. I find that quite ridiculous as almost every online retailer has free shipping over a certain price point, not PAY MORE over a certain price point. For example, over $3000 it's 5%. That's $150. Sure they have random free shipping promos but I paid $14 for a duvet cover and pillow cases to be shipped. I find that distasteful but really liked the pattern and it was on great discount. The kicker is, if you pay for standard shipping, your item won't ship for a few days. The label gets generated, but it waits for pickup by the courier service. Also, unacceptable for $14 when many retailers use 2day ground or for smaller items like duvet covers... USPS priority. I really cannot recommend supporting retailers who are so calculating towards their customers that their profit margins matter so much where they split hairs on making you, the customer, take the burden on shipping costs when this is no longer the practice.

I was tired of paying a lot at my optometrist offices and lenscrafters. I've had varying types of vision insurance - even with ones that pay a lot for frames/lenses, each pair has come out to around $300. I was kind of skeptical since not all glasses are made equal and neither are faces but in order to save money I decided to try them. True to advertisement, you can try 5 at a time for free. It's easy to mail them back - the labels are included and I found their virtual try-on better than other sites. However, none of their glasses fit my face. They definitely do not suit people with lower or no nose bridges. So for me, their glasses would slide down and since the glasses do not have spring hinges - the fit is also precarious at best. Also, the lenses do get dirty easily and very smudged - so I think that the quality isn't too good. In the end, I had to break down and buy a pair at Lenscrafters because their frames fit my face better even without nosepads. I'm not sure if the Warby Parker designers really considered facial variation. I did end up exchanging a pair with prescription within 30 days for another pair, so the customer service was great overall. However, if your face deviates from caucasian features the glasses may not fit that well.

I'm not ashamed to admit it but I am a relatively experienced seller on ebay - not for profit, but as a garage sale type of deal. I don't have any volume seller discounts or any of that, but roughly depending on the price range - I always estimate about 15% fees for ebay including seller fees and paypal fees. I have done comparisons by listing items on both Poshmark and ebay and by far, ebay sells faster and yields more profit. Then again, a lot of Poshmark is social based - it encourages you to share other people's items on social media so that they share yours, etc. Poshmark's fee is 20% no matter what, and their shipping is 4.99 (I recall there being a weight limit). It actually whittles down what you make and in many cases, if you are selling light items that fit in first class mail - shipping can be a paltry $2.00 or so if you use ebay's labels. That being said, ebay requires a bit more "effort" - better photos, more listing options and though they have an app now, listings may take more time to set up. I think Poshmark is for people who don't want to spend that much effort to get rid of their stuff, don't really mind how much they get back and want the process to be relatively simple. Having not actually sold any items (mostly due to the very low ball offers I received on top of the fees), I cannot comment on any other aspects.

I've been recently getting into drinking loose leaf teas and came across Adagio Teas, naturally. They're sort of like Teavana/David's Tea/etc with a similar type of assortment and appeal but what really got me interested was their custom fan blended teas you can order by pretty much any interest you can think of. The BBC Sherlock series interested me, as did Batman... and probably other ones. But you can also order simple blends like Pink Lemonade, or Strawberry Cupcake. I even tested their custom blend DIY feature and it's nifty, though you can only blend 3 types of teas + a scoop of something else which may or may not be limiting. For beginners, I suppose more than 3 might make the tea too disharmonious but I can see for example how chocolate, almond, cherry and a base black would be a good blend. At the time I ordered, I got a $5 off coupon for my first order. The items were shipped promptly and everything was correct. As for the teas themselves, I think that they're decent but I have had better (not a snob thing just honesty). However, I would definitely try some of their fan blends again and flavored blends.

I was really hankering for a tea fragrance one summer, and after a few misses from Anthropologie I found a minor brand (Jacomo) that was only available from a US store located in NYC or online and since I didn't want to spend I decided to wait until I had exhausted other tea options. I randomly googled the name of the frag and strawberryNET had a huge discount, about 40%. Fragantica members list them as a trusted source so I went ahead and ordered - accepting that at most I would be out about $35ish. They offered a free gift that I had to pick out of a lot of options (I'm a fan of choose between 3, not more items) so I picked a lipstick. The package arrived in about a week or so, the item was definitely authentic. The free gift was probably expired or old - lipstick was DRIED and had no pigment but free gifts for me are almost always crap. It was a great price and I had no issues with delivery, nor the need for their CS so I recommend it for fragrances.

Aritzia is a Canadian clothing company that sells its own brands as well as other ones. They recently opened physical locations in the US. I was on the hunt for non synthetic scarves that weren't too stuffy (and though Nordstrom is a good resource, they have a certain style that I wanted to deviate from). I liked that Aritzia's wilfred brand has a lot of thick, sturdy wool scarves that I was used to (as a true Canadian). So I ordered three scarves that were on sale and waited excitedly for my items to arrive - until I noticed in their confusing shipping/returns policy that ON SALE ITEMS are final! This was after the time within which their customer service operates to cancel the order. I frantically email them and get an auto reply that due to a high volume of sales replies may take longer than their usual time period. So I call them up the next day and to my relief, the SA sympathizes with me and tells me to call back once the items arrive and quote her name saying that I am allowed a one time courtesy return. When my stuff arrives, I decide to return part of the order and I call back asking for the same SA. Someone else answers and tells me she's away but processes my return to my relief though s/he sounded slightly reluctant. I pack my return but forget to put the invoice in, because I wanted to remind myself that I had to keep track of whether or not funds were returned so I called again and they assured me it was fine. Everything turned out fine, but please read their shipping and returns policy! Currently, returns are only allowed as STORE CREDIT and within 14 days. They offer a free shipping above $50, but otherwise it's $8 and returns will cost you an $8 deduction with possibly a deduction on initial shipment costs (aka $16 if I read that right). I find all of this too annoying to deal with since I don't live near a location (though I don't recall if you can return online orders in store) so unless you're exactly sure what you want or you love something they carry, read everything carefully!

I'm surprised I haven't reviewed them yet because I had a super long saga with them which involved in total 4 colors of the same model of shoe due their incompetence, poor policy and well... prepare to read my saga if you dare! This happened a while ago so I may not remember exactly but because I was incorrectly under the impression that I have flat feet, I ordered Nike models that were for flat feet but they ended up hurting my feet so I then realized I have some arches so I needed neutral support. I wasn't sure what size would fit me in Nike (I avoided them for most of my life) so I ordered a 5.5 based on reviews that the one I wanted ran small. The order arrived fine (I used PayPal to pay, this will be relevant later), but the shoe was too big! I go about putting down a size 5 on the exchange form and mail it back myself. Previously I had returned shoes to the store (NOTE: certain stores will allow returns and mail back your order from the store if you use PayPal or they may tell you to return it yourself, they can only credit orders using credit card payments) and someone mailed them for me but I've found increasingly dodgy and terrible customer service in store (another issue, but I avoid going to their stores). I'm not a pansy but their SAs in store are another matter.

In retrospect I should have just ordered a 5 separately with a credit card and took a return fee deduction for the return shipping. In the two weeks or so it takes the shoes to their warehouse, I notice that the original color I wanted went out of stock on their website but I receive an email finally that the return is being shipped. When it arrives, it's in the WRONG COLOR and the shoes show signs of bits of dirt like someone ran in the woods. It grosses me out so I contact their customer service and they confirm that there are no Size 5's left in that colorway. I concluded that whomever processed the return put the shoes accidentally in the wrong box. It's 100% THEIR mistake, but if I want to get a refund I'd have to go through the original two methods: 1) Try to get a store to mail it back or 2) Mail it back myself, take the hit and/or try to argue with their CS about waiving the return shipping since it's their mistake. I contacted SEVERAL customer reps, until one offered me a charge free order, aka I order the new pair without them charging me but in good faith I mail back the wrong pair. That seemed fair to me, so I take their offer and select a new colorway. Literally, the next day that colorway GOES ON SALE... for about $20 less so I contact them and ask if they can offer me a price adjustment when I receive the shoes since it's within their policy. I don't know if their warehouse inventory or if their software is messed up or if their customer service reps were lying but they claimed the shoes weren't showing up in the on sale colorway (even though I checked on several other browsers and another desktop computer). They basically refused to do a price adjustment even though I could see the colorway on my end. When the shoes arrived, I promptly chose to exchange yet again for another colorway that wasn't on sale basically to stick it to them. This whole saga took place over almost 3 months. I was in fear that I would be exchanging that one shoe for the rest of my life. Oh and I HAD to tell them that one of the orders was charge free so as to not refund me. I would have gotten the shoes for free (which I think I deserved after all that) but I believe in bad karma and so should you, since the customer rep who made that order for me would have gotten into trouble.

All in all, I DO NOT recommend ordering from them if you're not sure of fit - if you can, try and buy in store. They don't carry my size in a lot of styles near me, let alone colorways so I had no choice. IF you must make returns, return by mail and take a hit OR deal with their $#*!y, uninterested and dodgy in store workers if you must.

Since Sephora is a conglomerate of various beauty brands ranging from their own brand, Urban Decay to Dior the value and quality range depending. In general their website is easy to use and keeps track of inventory very well! Literally things have gone out of stock 5 mins after I placed them in chart and go to checkout. I find they have random sudden discounts on things that may or may not be advertised to Rouge members but if you have time to troll their website daily you may stumble on some good discounts. They ship via ground UPS which I like better than Surepost, which is free over $50 or only about $5-ish under that - so very reasonable. Things are packaged well, I've never received anything broken or leaky (though others have mentioned that but have gotten replacements). Sephora has a rather generous return policy that I've used sparingly, but you can return in store or by mail. They only accept credit cards however, not PayPal. As a bit of a fragrance snob, I find their product listing lacking compared to some other sites but for mainstream and select niche ones it's good enough and if you wait for their 15% or 20% sale, you can get authentic fragrances at a slight discount (along with any other product - that $40 lipstick you've been eyeing, for example).

*Recently before the time of my review, their website had down time at the time of their 20% coupon sale and black friday due to excessive access - which means if you go to their page, you'll see a "we're down..." blurb and then the instructions tell you not to refresh because they will check every 60 seconds. In essence it's a queue and you'll be let in if you leave the site up. Understandably, retail sites have down time and unexpected traffic - however I've seen reports of customers having their accounts locked for refreshing too much which I find shady. Also, it's frustrating for some who look up products a while in advance in order to make their 20% off sale once a year only to be unable to access, be locked out and later find out everything is sold out they've wanted. Yes, it's not a big deal - it's "only" make-up but there is time invested and it's the responsibility of companies to keep track of this and add more resources at holiday times. I'm sure other online retailers face this, and have found ways to mitigate down time.

Honestly, everyone who complains about the repeated charges on every month haven't read. Hell, I'm blind and miss things but even I saw that customers get charged on the 5th of every month and must cancel before the 4th (something like that). It's not GLARING but it's there and it's half most people will forget and probably incur charges and half clear.

I ordered a pair of shoes in size 5, they were on sale and I had a credit from JewelMint (I'll get to that too). They also threw in some free rollerball fragrances that I didn't want but was a promo during the time I ordered. I received the shoes and they were way too big - about 1 size. This happens to me once in a while where size 5's are more like size 6's. So knowing this, ShoeMint is basically excluded from my possible options. They have free returns (unlike some other places) but you have to contact customer service to request a label. They replied in about two days, not the worst of service and I shipped my package including the rollerballs back to them. About six days later AFTER the package arrived at their warehouse, JewelMint was having a promo and I noticed they hadn't issued a credit so I called them. They promptly offered me a credit and everything was fine but I'm curious if I hadn't called them, whether a refund in credit would have been been issued or if it would have taken much longer.

In any event, understand the terms of this kind of site. Their customer service is fine, they're courteous and get back to you if you have issues but since their shoes are too big and I'm wary about returns I personally won't shop but the pair I received were actually decent quality for the price.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/apps

Please use this to post for help.

Update: After about two weeks of posting on Google's forum for their products (I forget which one but if you need help, feel free to message me) and requesting domain privacy one of their advisers kindly helped me. Be aware you have to know how to confirm that you own the domain through advanced settings (it's not hard but for people not familiar with that, it might be confusing). I had to nag them a few times but I think that being they don't officially offer customer service, I appreciate the adviser who did help me. I noticed that some of the people who request help on the forum do not receive replies from official google advisers - I'm not sure if it's because of time constraints or something else but I would advise this is the only way to get help and that the advisers really do try, despite google's own shoddy lack of customer service.

This is a review for one of google's side services: DOMAIN registration/hosting. It is absolutely horrible and I recommend you stay far away unless you want to SIGN UP for a free trial JUST to get customer service. It just shows that no matter how much money a company has, they go far above and beyond and EVEN FURTHER in this case than my worst expectations to screw you over.
I think google services hands down have the worst, most clunky user interfaces ever.
I registered two domains with google in 2011ish. I paid using google wallet and everything seemed easy. The domains were managed via google wallet. They had google apps for free to manage your domain and domain related services. Fast forward to now when I realized I needed to alter something - I cannot for the life of me login to Google Admin for domain services.
Every email account I have with google does not work, when signing for google apps business because here's the catch... IF YOU'RE HAVING ISSUES migrating from the old system to the new one, THEY OFFER ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE to free google apps users. That's right, there's a pin you need to call them only offered to business, non profit and other clients. You cannot email them about your issue. Well when I go on google apps business for the free 30 day trial just so I can get customer support ON HOW TO LOGIN to GOOGLE ADMIN I get re-directed in these horrible loops to the same screen where my account cannot login to google admin and thereby I cannot upgrade to google apps business.
I almost went crazy trying this for two hours I posted in their support forums (no longer manned by google reps mind you, but kind people) and with a sinking heart I realized that THEY WILL NOT HELP YOU. I rarely get worked up and I rarely give such negative reviews, but this is the first time I've come across this. The thing is, they've renewed my domains for $50 up until now. It's not like I'm a FREELOADER. I think regardless of whether a user is a google apps business user or not, as long as they've PAID MONEY registering a domain with google they deserve a basic level of customer service.
Eventually I figured out that I had to set up an admin account from the original email with the domain registration. But another disparaging remark about google admin - it's as poorly organized as google sites (another horrible feature of google services). Not only is the non renewal feature NOT WHAT THE EMAIL instructions are - it's through clicking this weird greyed out sign (since when is clicking random symbols an adequate method for important stuff like not getting charged?). At least I have the safeguard that my credit card info has expired with google so that even if they tried to they can't renew my domain. I was almost wanting to cancel my credit card because for a few hours there, I had no way to access control of basic things.

Bottom line: if you blindly think that registering a domain through google is hassle free, think again. They update their interfaces, where things are located (domain renewal is no longer under domain settings, but under billing) all the time with NO SUPPORT and inadequate documentation, use hieroglyphic symbols to what it seems like me to try to throw you off on purpose and generally take no responsibility for their paying customers, past or present. STAY AWAY --- I'm now thinking twice about using google wallet. Who knows when they'll switch something up two months later and I'll be screwed with no access to customer support.

This is a situation where I give 2 stars for their online shopping experience, not because they're shady or anything but because of their outdated policies. First of all, they offer free shipping after a pretty high amount (when I checked it was $200). The ONLY situation this is reasonable is if you live close to a Naturalizer store, where you can make returns without having to ship things back to them because YOU are responsible for shipping things back to them. They do not offer a flat rate label like many stores at a reasonable price of $6.95 for the whole package. I'm assuming they're too cheap to negotiate a contract with a courier. If you order under $200, you pay shipping starting at $6.50 for the first item and $2.00 more each item. To me this is crazy shipping! If you order 5 things, your shipping is $14.50... seriously? And imagine having to ship things back... no thanks.
Their sizing is also kind of questionable which makes their policies the harder to swallow. I'm a 5 in most brands, but with them 5 is too large, 4.5 is still too large and 4 is too small. There's no way I'm going to order 3 sizes for each shoe model (because each model is inconsistent) - pay shipping and possible return shipping. Sure there are coupons once in a while, that may help to offset shipping but if your size is available elsewhere - shop there instead or if you live close to one, by all means. Aside, my order was shipped promptly and if you review something, you get a $10 coupon off the next order so that might be great if you have the right conditions but for me, the shipping policies are horrible and I don't want to lose out on more money than the shoes would be worth just to find a pair that fits.

I've read too, too many conflicting reviews about fragrancenet, but based on fragantica threads I decided that it's mostly OK but I had my reservations. I ordered two mainstream fragrances (pretty common, on good discount) knowing that they could be older stock or store returns. I think that issues come with ordering niche or rare fragrances where people seem to think those are fakes or really old. It took them about a week to ship to me, granted I live closer to their warehouse than other parts of the countries. International orders seem to have the worst reviews but the fragrances I received were full, one was completely new - the other one may have been opened (aka a very new store return) but both smelled fine. I would say, it's a great site for mainstream fragrances (esp. If your guilty pleasure is hasbeen celeb fragrance) but its split reputation has its reasons, so if you want that Marc Jacobs or Britney fragrance it's probably OK. One of my peeves is when companies say (we ship using FedEx, UPS, USPS, OR DHL but we can't specify which unless you order) so I'll mention that for me it was FedEx Smartpost which is notoriously slow but for a cheaper price, I don't mind the wait.

This is another case where reviewing the site/services vs. products being sold has some discrepancy. Ispy is one of those monthly subscription services (now they have them for dogs, niche perfumes, natural eating, whatever!) for beauty products. It's $10/month including shipping although you can purchase the whole 12 months at a slightly reduced rate (note that I read they do not refund yearly subscriptions so be careful!). When you sign up, there is a wait list and you give them your CC info so that when a spot opens up they charge it and ship your ipsy bag right away. I waited about 1 1/2 months - so that wait list is legit. Based on a quiz you take, they pick 4-5 items to put in a plastic small cosmetic bag (ranging from make up, hair and face products). You can review a product that was picked for you if you really don't like it - I'm not sure if that influences future picks because I've gotten bags where I didn't want half of the products. Note too that some of the products may contain parabens, BHA, or other questionable ingredients (depending on the brand). All in all, it's really not bad for $10 - just beware the useless face wipes!

To be honest, nothing negative happened for my order. I ordered from them because they had a great gift set for a beauty product at a great price. It took a while to ship (despite them charging standard shipping) and that's where I see a lot of the complaints about that HSN charges shipping per item or per set of items your order, not the whole order. So let's say you order a pair of socks, and then a camisole you'd get charged for the full price of shipping for one item and then half price for another item - that can add up if you're ordering a few items! That's silly and outdated shipping practice - it's shady at the worst because big companies have contracts with shipping companies. That being said, they do have free shipping deals for certain things and drastically reduced shipping depending on the promotion (but I don't pay attention). I was very hesitant after placing the order because of the enormous complaints out there and although my order was processed and delivered OK I would not recommend ordering things you intend on returning (a lot of clothes) and electronics.