As most of you may know, I spent last weekend in NYC. I had to take this opportunity to visit the only Inglot store in the US, there is one an hours train ride away from me in the Westfields Center in London, but I'm sure it would be twice as expensive...
I chose to have one of the makeup artists introduce me to the brand, their products and have my makeup applied and then spend the required $60 on products, similar to the way we spend £25 in MAC for a makeover and then it's redeemable against products you buy.
I made my appointment the night before on my way to seeing Avenue Q, I couldn't get in at 11am when they opened because there would only be one artist in the store, I was told. I thought fair enough and made a 12pm appointment. I woke up the next morning feeling horribly ill as we had had to change rooms in our hotel at 3am because a air conditioner upstairs had burst and our floor and walls were soaked.. another story entirely. I decided to ring up Inglot and change my appointment to later in the afternoon. The phone just rang and rang and rang.. then the answering machine told me it's memory was full. Great. I gave up and decided to just go in later and buy a few things and just ask if someone would mind showing me the products and what works well together.
I got there to find a woman having a heated discussion with the MUA at the counter asking to see the manager over a return that was being denied to her. The MUA told her the manager wasn't taking any calls just then. I got a bit nervous.. what kind of manager doesn't come out from the upstairs office to deal with a complaint? The woman proceeded to turn to me to tell me that "the customer service in here is ******* ****!". Ugh..
So finally the manager comes down.. I don't know what happened but I just got the feeling that the manager and the MUA were really inconvenienced by this woman. To me that's disappointing, whether the customer is actually right or actually wrong is irrelavant, you deal with it and explain to them why you can't do the return or whatever.
I asked if there was any possibility of having the appointment I missed as I had tried to call and no one answered. I think this MUA was having a bad day because she started giving me lip about how she had been there since 10am. She later admitted that the ringer on the phone was off, but she never apologised for her rudeness. I was told I could wait 10 minutes for the current appointment to finish, I actually waited 30 minutes becuase this chick didn't bother to tell the other MUA who was doing the makeup sessions that I was waiting. Is it really that hard a job?! Then the manager started telling me it was $65 plus tax and I was like.. hang on 5 seconds.. I've been told $40, $60 and now $65.. WHICH ONE IS IT?! She finally said it was actually $60 but I had to purchase the makeup before I sat down to have my makeup done.. she's the manager and she can't remember what the price is? Huh?! And I refused to buy the makeup first, I just said "I've never used Inglot and I'd like to figure out the products that suit me first thanks". So far I'm not impressed by the customer service at all.
The actual application was lovely, Sharice was really sweet and kept apologising for everyone else's behaviour. I loved the colours she chose and was really helpful when I went to choose my own colours to buy. Being an idiot I forgot to take a picture of what she did :( it was fairly similar to the FOTN I did for when I went to see Wicked. About half way through my doing my makeup the MUA that had originally served me came over and pulled Sharice aside whispering. Talk about rude. I just about heard something about that my 30 minutes was up. My makeup wasn't even finished. I was about to walk out and just say screw it, I don't want to try your makeup if you're going to treat me like I'm a pain in your ass! But Sharice turned to me and said, "They're saying I have to finish but I'm not done with your makeup so I'm not going to finish". I was pretty impressed by her, she seemed to genuinely care and want me to not get pushed around by her collegues.
So after all that, I purchased a 10 palette and a cream eyeliner.
It sucks that you can't see the numbers of the shadows.. I also got the cream eyeliner in 89. I've got to go online or take it to a store to figure out the numbers though..
The colours have amazing payoff, they're pretty much almost on par with MAC. Not quite, but almost. They blend beautifully and aren't chalky. Swatches to come soon!
Sorry for the rant. Their treatment of their customers had really been bothering me.
Do you have a favourite Inglot product?
xoxo
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