Birchbox

I love samplers, wine flights, assorted chocolate boxes, trial sizes, and discovering new things. And I love getting fun packages in the mail.
Basically, Birchbox feels like it was made for me and my need to always have something new and shiny to try.
My favorite things that I’ve received has been hair products (who knew that clarifying shampoo would make my hair feel so GOOD?!) but I always love getting a new skin crème or exfoliant to try.
My least favorite is always the perfume samples because I have never loved, or even liked, anything that came my way.
The non-​beauty items (tea, gum, chocolate) are always fun too.
I can’t wait until my next hot pink box shows up in my mail box so that I can tear into it and discover some new pretties.

I origianally posted this on a different birchbox listing on Unilocal and i will post again here. *i have been a birchbox member since october of 2011*
I absolutely adore Birchbox! For 10.00 a month, you receive a cute box with deluxe and full size samples of awesome beauty products and sometimes other goodies, and they are wrapped in pretty colored tissue and tied with ribbons!!! It’s like getting a surprise present in the mail each month! It is a great way to test out products and then purchase a full size version from Birchbox, you also receive points that are redeemable towards Birchbox products. The customer service is out of this world as well. They recently started a monthly box for men, and the products are equally awesome. Please check out Birchbox!!!

For over a year I have been on the wait list.
I remember when Birchbox was first announced and coming soon. I was so excited I signed up right away as did a friend. Over a year later I’m still on the wait list and even tried signing up again, but yet still I wait.
My friend has been getting hers for quite a while but is very unhappy with her experience. It doesn’t seem that she is the only one. I see plenty of complaints on Facebook and Twitter and they seem to go unanswered. Some complain on Facebook that calling has no positive outcome either.
It looks like I might have dodged a bullet as now Glossybox has debuted here in the States. Yes, it is more expensive but you get quality products that are fairly distributed and they seem to honor their wait list and not give preferential treatment to the Vbloggers. I work in influencer marketing, I understand 100% reaching out and leveraging them for your product, but if it means shunning other customers at the same time you’re doing it wrong. But as they seem to have poor customer support on social outlets anyways, this comes as no surprise.
If this startup wants to survive they better take a look at some of their practices and change course.

I’m surprised that with all the fashionable Unilocal ladies I know, that only one other person has reviewed Birchbox. Unfortunately, my experience hasn’t been as glowing as the first reviewer, and after three months, I’ll be canceling my subscription.
The service they provide is simple: $ 10 a month, and they send you a small box filled with 3 – 4 beauty product samples, supposedly of luxe products. You fill out a short 4 – 6 question questionnaire that helps define your style and skin type, and supposedly they they slightly customize your box to fit that type. However, I did not find this to be the case. I specified my style as «classic,» yet I frequently got purple and neon pink nail polish. I specified my skin type as oily, yet got all sorts of moisturizers. One of the 3 – 4 samples each month was always a perfume (*yawn*). Additionally, this service could really be improved if they included directions about how to use each product and information about how much a full size item would cost in the actual box. Instead, you have to log into your account and search through all the items that were sent out to all subscribers before you can find the information about how to use your item.
I subscribed to Birchbox because just about every beauty/​style/​fashion blog I read gushed about all the great things they got each month, including full size products. Unfortunately, I think the commenters on the blogosphere are right: the boxes professional bloggers receive are significantly nicer than those the average subscriber receives. Overall, if you routinely throw money away on beauty products, like getting packages in the mail, and have a more adventurous/​experimental style, Birchbox is probably a worthwhile investment for you. Otherwise, it’s not worth even the $ 10 investment.