Best and Worst Products of 2011

Today, my lovelies, I'm going to write a post about a few of my favorite (and least favorite) products.  Some of them I've already mentioned here, some of them I haven't really touched on before.  And no, they aren't in any particular order.  It would be kind of unfair to compare and rank  products that serve completely different purposes.  So let's get this show on the road, shall we?

Brands I Do Not Support

This is a list of brands I do not support.  The reasons vary from one brand to the next, ranging from nondisclosure regarding repackaging to poor customer service to unsafe products to legal threats, harassment, and charity fraud.

Bitchslap and/or Ruthless Cosmetics - Marketing private label products as their own formulations, selling paint wheels as eye-safe that contain colors that are not eye-approved, extremely unprofessional behavior (including profanity and legal threats) in response to videos or blog posts calling them out and asking them to be honest about what they sell, stealing photos from honest indie companies.  See more here.
Crush Cosmetics -  Not the Australian wholesaler, the Etsy shop.  I had a not-so-stellar experience with Crush Cosmetics and found TKB micas that strongly resemble the shadows I received from CC.  Read about my first impression here, then see my followup with the TKB micas here.

Fantastic Faces Cosmetics - Nondisclosure regarding repackaging, marketing UV pigments as eye-approved when they are not, potentially using other unsafe colorants in lip products (although this is not proven, only speculation)  See more here and here.

Glittersniffer Cosmetics - Nondisclosure regarding repackaging, marketing UV pigments as eye-approved when they are not, extreme packaging and shipping inconsistencies, cursing at customers and threatening legal action, editing negative customer reviews on the GS webpage, deleting negative comments from the GS Facebook page, posting GS Complaints blog author's personal information in an effort to remove the blog, lying about charitable contributions, lying about refunds, lying about ingredients and whether or not they are safe and/or vegan-friendly, and the list goes on and on...  Basically the customer service, business practices, and products are sub-par to say the least.  Glittersniffer has repeatedly closed and come back with grand re-openings, probably in the hopes that she'll be able to escape the criticism and that the "rumors" will go away if she lays low for awhile.  Although the GS Complaints blog has not been active in a great while, there are still many accounts of Lela's behavior.  See more here.

Hi-Fi Cosmetics - I had a very negative experience with this company; I somehow was able to make a purchase from a shop that was supposed to be closed, waited almost triple the stated turnaround time, and when I received my order one of my items had leaked (I also questioned whether that product could be used for its intended purpose due to the size of the particles,) and despite three separate contact attempts I got no reply of any kind from the owner.  See my review here.

Kupcake Kutie Cosmetics - Defunct as of 1/26/15 update.  The owner of Kupcake Kutie is related to the owners of Bitchslap/Ruthless Cosmetics.  More repackaged Lady Burd, claiming products are eye-safe when they aren't, in addition to bullying and harassment on behalf of Ruthless.  See more here.

Lime Crime - Almost all of their pigments at one point turned out to be repackaged micas from TKB.  When asked for a response, owner Doe Deere then accused TKB of copying her even though TKB had been established selling the same products long before Lime Crime came into existence.  Doe also sold a dress hemmed with duct tape and responded very inappropriately when it was brought to light later.  See more here.  More recently, there was a huge security breach on the Lime Crime website due to a lapse in the SSL that put all of their customers at risk over the course of several months.
MYO Makeup - Another seller using what appears to be soap dyes and selling them as eyeshadows.  A reviewer on that Amazon listing says the product burned their eyes, while another on this listing reflects poor customer service including name-calling.  You can see in this listing that the ingredients listed on each color are exactly the same, so clearly the ingredients do not reflect what is actually in the products.  Sketchy, sketchy, sketchy! 

Orglamix - Owner Cheri Tracy was selling repackaged private label mineral makeup on Etsy, branding it as her own handcrafted, vegan-friendly, all-natural, no-nonsense-or-yucky-stuff product.  It came to light, however, that there were second and even third labels on many of her products, some of which listing parabens and animal byproducts in the ingredients (which Cheri claimed not to use in "her" formulations.)  She also purchased stock photography which she claimed was her makeup being modeled, took to deleting comments from the Facebook page before eventually disabling fan posting, stopped sending products (leaving many customers without their money and without their purchases,) and wrote an official response to the allegations that cleverly skirted around the issues at hand.  Oh, and she lied about Etsy shutting down her shop for non-delivery and disappeared on "vacation," surfacing again several months later with a new brick-and-mortar store called Three Twelve Tudor.  Orglamix is now back up and running, and as far as I can tell, still lying about ingredients, repackaging, and stock photography.  See more here.

Pure Luxe Cosmetics - Repackaging, unprofessional behavior in response to a blog post featuring a photo from the shop (which did not disclose where the photo came from, therefore not pointing fingers in any way,) violations of Etsy TOS (listing the same item in more than one shop, listing private label items as handmade.) See more here. 

Edited 3/20/15

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.