Arline G.
Many problems, good intentions but the company closed down in September.
I signed up with Melanine at the beginning of May because a friend on Facebook had posted a referral link for a "free first box just pay shipping". It sounded nice and at the time they were advertising Bellapierre makeup products in their boxes. I even purchased an add-on because the Bellapierre eye shadows looked very nice on the site. I generally do give subscription boxes a fair chance without just cancelling after the free or promo box but had a lot of health problems going on so when they charged me for June I had completely forgotten about this subscription and noticed that I had not received the first box yet. I contacted customer support and was told they had run out of Bellapierre which was causing the delay. The June box never came but I received a partial May box on June 29th. The Bellapierre never did come back in stock and they substituted random things (I had told them I would be ok with blue or silver eye products and pink lip products). They sent bright red lip products that were damaged in transit and some very strange lotion along with some cancer support Asian jewelry. I liked the Ubub eye shadow that they sent but the rest of the box was a big let down. I received an E-mail asking my opinion of the box so I responded that I was not happy with it and June had not been received. I received a heartfelt apology from a man named McGee who introduced himself as the co-owner of Melanine. He promised that things would improve and offered me July and August free of charge (I was going to be billed in September). Unfortunately things did not improve. I was told because of all of the problems they had "scrapped" June and to just pick twice from July and August to make up for it. I was charged again in July and had to write customer service to get this refunded (They did refund it fairly quickly which is why they get a second star for effort). I received half of a July box and nothing for August. I was then charged again in August which I wrote them about and sadly there was no response from customer service so after a week (now September). I wrote to Mr. McGee as I still had his e-mail from previous problems. Sadly he responded that things had not gone as planned and that he was shutting down the company as of 5 pm that day but that they would still ship out boxes that had been paid for. This again was a let down as I was short a total of well 3.5 boxes and the $5 add-on that I had purchased. I made selections for two boxes since I had been refunded for July although it had been offered to me free. I felt bad for them and told them to just not worry about the add-on and just send out the two boxes I had paid for. I received those boxes yesterday and liked one eye shadow and the lip balm. My other choices I imagine had been switched out as they probably ran out of products (somehow another red lipstick was sent instead of the pink shimmer ones I had selected and brown eye shadow instead of purple - a completely different brand than what I had selected too). So knowing that they are no longer in business I feel stuck with what I got and I hope that everyone else that paid for products did receive theirs before the shut down. I feel that the company owners had good intentions but sometimes things just go wrong. I still wish them well.