Hi-Fi Cosmetics Swatches + Review

The Shop: Hi-Fi Cosmetics

My Order: I ordered a full-size Shimmer Dust in Famous, and Paparazzi Flash Powder in RIOT

Packaging:  I placed my order on August 5th, and received shipping information via PayPal on September 21st, but the package does not show as accepted at the Post Office until the following day.  More on that later.  My order arrived in a bubble mailer, with the two full-size products in a ziploc baggie and a business card and two bagged samples in another ziploc baggie.

Today's Swatches:

Look at the size of some of those particles... Eye-safe?

So the shadows are nice enough (although I did expect more sparkle from Famous.) but the size of the particles in RIOT is dubious...  Some of them are very fine, but the larger particles are about four times the size of the small ones.  It's not the huge chunky glitter you'd find in a grade school craft closet,  but it looks very comparable to the glitter I used to make locker signs for cheerleading in High School.  I don't really want to put that on my eyes...  Swatched on bare skin with a foiled stripe down the center (top row) and skin prepped with My Beauty Addiction's Shadow Poxy (bottom row.)

Overall: I understand (after making my order and doing some research as to what might be taking so long) that Hi-Fi did a Heartsy deal in early July, just two days shy of a month before I placed my order.  Normally, I wouldn't mind a long turnaround time.  I understand that things get crazy sometimes and it's really hard to stay on top of things.  I have no problem with having to wait if I know what's going on.  However, if Veronica was still in the wake of her Heartsy madness, there should have been some sort of announcement in her shop.  I do not recall seeing any such announcement for an extended TAT, because if it had been prominently posted somewhere I probably would have held off on ordering.  So I placed my order and sort of forgot about it until I was looking through my Etsy purchases and noticed that over a month later this one hadn't been marked as "shipped."  I tried to send her a convo through Etsy, but that didn't work and the link to her shop brought up a 404 error.  So then I tried to E-mail her, and received a form letter about her extended TAT, the first I had heard about the Heartsy deal.  In this E-mail, Veronica states that "My 12-15 business day TAT has been extended.  I'm doing everything in my power to get orders out the door and emails answered as quickly as possible" and also that "Hi-Fi Cosmetics will be temporarily closed for ordering starting on Monday, August 1."  These pieces of information would have come in handy when I was perusing her totally-not-closed Etsy shop filled with products on August 5th.  Having gotten no response through E-mail, I looked up Hi-Fi on Facebook and noticed many others were missing orders.  I made a post on the Facebook page on September 12th that went completely ignored.  Six days later, Veronica started posting on the Facebook page again, but had still not acknowledged either of my contact attempts.  She posted that the remaining orders would be going out that week, and listed the order numbers.  My order number was not on the list, so I responded asking why and included my order number.  No response, but I did receive shipping information from PayPal three days later and my package was accepted at the Post Office the next day.  Honestly, I don't know what her usual turnaround time is; I assume based on the information in the automatic reply message that it's 12-15 days, and that's fine.  However, given that I had no idea there was an extension, or how long the extension was (the E-mail did not give an estimate on a timeframe) I would expect some sort of response.  It's also noteworthy that the Facebook post I responded to first, dated August 31st, she said she was waiting on lip gloss tubes to get the remaining orders out.  Several people commented on that post, myself included, who were waiting on orders with only eyeshadows, and our questions elicited no public response from Veronica.  My reply was almost two weeks after the original post.  My second post was six days later, once she reappeared and was actively posting about re-opening, price changes, and selectively answering any questions that didn't have to do with missing or incorrect orders.  It took three more days to receive my shipping information, and another day to actually get my package in the mail.  The original, already-pretty-long TAT of 12-15 days was nearly tripled, and I had no idea there was an extension in the first place.  And not a word from Veronica, even after my package arrived.  No apology or personal note of any kind was included.  Aaaaand as icing on this disaster cake, one of my jars wasn't closed properly and leaked considerably.  I know others have had wonderful experiences with Hi-Fi, and I hope for her other customers that this is an isolated incident, but this is a business I will not support in the future.