My husband bought this for me at Dollar Tree - Original Instagram of the purchase here - and generally we have pretty good luck at the Dollar Tree we visit that stuff is new and unopened. Sure there is the occasional, someone stole the item from the packaging problem, which if you have to steal $1 makeup you have bigger problems that need to be dealt with, but it is pretty obvious when that happens. On rare occasion though, we find something that has either clearly been used, or is already broken. If it is broken that could have happened at anytime and maybe some customer did it, or it happened during shipping, powder products break, and easily it seems so I try not to hold that against them. But very rarely, at least at our Dollar Tree, something was clearly used, before it was repackaged for sale at Dollar Tree, and my husband is generally pretty good at weeding those out. Unfortunately in this case it was an instant of it was already unsealed and clearly used, before being repacked for sale at the Dollar Tree, and because the packaging itself was dusty as well, my husband didn't catch it. He said this batch was particularly bad and he had put back several other eye shadows because they had been obviously tampered with.
We actually have a harder time finding unused makeup at the drugstore and the Nordstrom Rack than we do at Dollar Tree. This is why I appreciate brands that seal their makeup so it is easy to tell if someone has already tampered with it. I have found lip sticks at the drugstore that look like they have already been applied at least once, and even worse, I have found some that appear to have been chewed on. Occasionally we find one that the whole tube of lip stick has been scooped out or at least half of it has been sliced off. We generally don't have as hard of a time finding unused eye shadows, but any time we are looking at one that is from a brand that does not seal their products, I always spend an extra long time looking it over before a purchase is considered. During my last visit to the Nordstrom Rack I found a Stila Bronzer that had been completely depotted and the container left behind with the price tag still on it. Seriously, be careful what you buy at the Nordstrom Rack, when I picked a Smashbox kit for my mom last year for Christmas it took around 20 boxes to find one that a, had all of the pieces it was supposed, and b, all of the pieces were still unused. We do tell the employees when we find makeup that has been obviously tampered with, some care and remove the offending products, some don't seem to really care but will at least go to look, on a couple of occasions they would have had to remove every lip stick and lip gloss in a display to get rid of all of the used makeup, it gets really bad sometimes.
I have even found this problem at Target which does generally have testers for some of the more expensive makeup which always confuses me. I do not understand the need to open a brand new tube/eye shadow, when there is obviously one that has already been opened. One time I had a specific lip stick I was looking for and it took three stores (drugstores and Targets) before we could find one that hadn't been used. It wasn't that each store only had one lip stick in that shade, most had at least three because it was a core line lip stick, but for whatever reason customers felt the need to unseal the lip sticks (this was from a brand that uses a seal) and do varying levels of usages all the way to teeth marks in the lip sticks until we found one that was sealed.
I know there is a lot of money in makeup and even the cheap brands are still marking up quite a bit, but it is rude to open a tube, swatch it, then buy an unopened tube, leaving the one behind that you swatched. And yes, I have watched people do this, they don't seem to care who knows or act like they don't know you are watching them. I know makeup can generally be disinfected, but when I buy a makeup product I want it to be new and untouched, just for me. I don't want to know that at least one person has put the tube of lip stick to their lips. I don't want to think someone has swatched this eye shadow or even put it on their eyes with the sponge applicator that it comes with.
I don't expect this will actually change anyone's behavior, but I do want to remind people to carefully check any and all makeup before it is purchased to make sure that it is really sealed and if it is a brand that doesn't seal makeup, that is doesn't show any appearance of being used.
No comments:
Post a Comment