Losing Faith in Mary Kay Inc.
Written by Parsons Green
Alicia Davis is a sales director who has been with Mary Kay for five years. She poured her thoughts into a letter she sent to Mary Kay Inc. She then shared for other directors on Facebook.
She’s concerned with:
- Lack of customer interaction with the new My Shop. Her customers are using the website but not registering an account for her to see their information
- Loss of My Customers App affects her ability to order and get documentation needed for a tax audit
- The hold music when calling corporate is no longer recordings from Mary Kay herself
- New ordering system takes approximately 24 hours to make it to her which then delays her ability to place an order
Notice that Alicia says her trust in Mary Kay has been damaged. I think this is a common feeling across the sales force, as compensation and benefits get reduced or eliminated.
Alicia admits that she’s also struggling to meet her production requirements of $4500 wholesale every other month. She would like others to write to corporate as well.
Other sales directors shared their thoughts. Roxanne Dube also has lost trust in the company, even after being with MK for 44 years. Chelsea Adkins took a break from finishing her first ever million dollar year to help out. Have the customer pay you through Venmo, and you can use the Venmo card to pay for your inventory order. She also shares that some of Mary Kay’s recordings needed to be removed because they went against the current policies of the DSA and the FTC. If Alicia wants all of her website orders to show a customer name, she can turn off the guest checkout option.
Eleanor Reigel’s consultant of 48 years emailed Ryan directly and she received a call from Allison Sellers and the IT director!
Lynette Brazda Bickley broke out the emojis and posted a word salad. Seems like she’s trying to tread water and not having much luck.
Pat Ringnalda is no longer team building but she sees consultants leaving in droves. Corporate seems to listen, but nothing happens. Things are tough in the field. Jo Anne Aikens has carried inventory in her 46 year career. With the company shipping product, she does not see a need for directors or nsds to teach consultants customer service skills. Mary Kay doesn’t even care about the dress code anymore.
There were many more comments on Alicia’s post but they all echoed the same sentiments. Mary Kay is changing, and the directors are worried for their futures. Imagine being a business owner and feeling this powerless.
Despite the rah rah we will see on public social media about how “strong” the company is and how Ryan Rogers is “carrying on Mary Kay Ash’s legacy”…. when they get behind closed doors, like in the Director Tips Group, the truth comes out. This company is on a very dangerous path, and there may be no turning back.
Meanwhile, Alicia spent the last day of January trying to find someone – anyone – to help her meet her goal.
Visit the
Alicia, if it’s all about customer service, that means it can’t be about you.
There are reasons why they’re selecting guest checkout. They don’t WANT to be upsold or followed up with. They want to buy their stuff and be done with it because that’s the whole point of online shopping.
Never rely on one storage method for important information. For my job, I record everything in an online system and paper records. This is to comply with state law and banking regulations. If one or the other is lost, there’s backup.
I’d imagine the IRS just luuuuuuurves to audit MLMers because there’s so many opportunities for tomfoolery. It’s up to you, not MK, to keep your records in order.
I really don’t get what difference it makes taking Mary Kay’s voice off the hold music. She’s been dead for 25 years so it’s not like she’s speaking to you personally. Although it goes against the conspicuous veneration thing, I guess.
As far as Venmo etc go, it’s either an issue to address with them, or the way they operate so you’ll have to adapt.
Or, you could just quit and not have to worry about any of it.
About the changes to the “My Customers” feature. I don’t get why she’s so “shocked Pikachu face” about it. Not to sound like I’m coming to the company’s defense but MKC WARNED the sales force that this was going to happen. That they were going to delete certain fields/information. IIRC they gave the sales force a month’s warning, which should have been enough time to move the info over to an Excel spreadsheet or whatever they opted to use for that purpose.
Probably should have had that to start with. I mean really how many customers did she have? Thousands? Probably maybe at most a few hundred. Of course I don’t know what the format was but I would be willing to bet that she could’ve copypasta-d the info onto a doc or spreadsheet fairly easily.
And the voice of MKA while on hold. Jeez. I can’t even remember the last time I called a company. And I’m sure (without looking) that they can go to YT to watch and listen to old vids of MKA or probably some CDs or training tools so they can get those pearls of wisdom from decades ago that may or may not be relevant today.
All these 30 and 40 year directors and yet none of them have a “Deserve Level” high enough to be an NSD. Or didn’t they “Bee-LIE-Ve” in themselves enough? Or is it the fact that a dwindling number of potential consultomers are ever going to reach that lofty height any more before its switches to an affiliate model and all the NSDs are left high and dry.
Does Eleanor truly “bee-LIE-ve” that Ryan reads each letter sent to him and responds? Most of them land on his secretary’s desk and she/he deals with them. Even letters marked “Private and Confidential” from consultomers are going to end up there .
I doubt Ryan knows about their concerns, never mind gives them much thought.
Even if Ryan did reply (big if) and sounded sympathetic there’s no guarantee he’d mean it. I guarantee he doesn’t care about anything but saving his own hiney and bank account. This is a man who’s suing his father for spending his own money (Richard 1000% does have a right to his own money, and how it’s spent is his business alone) and who’s going to have to answer some very expensive questions of his own soon.
I mean, Ryan doesn’t even wear a skirt or dress. How can any MKBot worth her salt take him seriously??
*sniff* He probably doesn’t have any Bees either!
According to his own dad, his work ethic sucks.
Isn’t that great?
I’m so curious about those recordings and what they said!!
This post in combination of the previous post about Mary Kay losing money and family lawsuits just proves the great ship of Mary Kay Cosmetics is taking on water fast and crew and passengers are heading for life rafts, or just simply jumping off. If the directors are complaining that the changes are affecting their businesses, how do they train new consultants to buy inventory and give good customer service? They can teach them how to do skincare classes and service the customer at the shows, but the problem will be in servicing reorders if a customer wants to order through their MyShop. So if her new customer wants to reorder using her website, the consultant just becomes (guess what?) an affiliate who gets a commission on orders to her website filled by the company. No direct access to who is ordering. I think a recruiter may end up with new consultants who don’t want to do classes and facials, only website sales. So, no need to buy inventory, therefore no more “ star” initial orders to boost production. I can see this totally blowing up the current model of front loading. And maybe that is the whole reason for the changes. MKC needs to prove their sales come from actual consumers. It’s not going to work and MKC will continue to lose money. Selling the company is already in the conversation, I think the ship is definitely sinking.
If I want a particular item of ANY type of merchandise, in 2026 in particular, why would I want to actually have to take the time to call or email a consultant and wait for a response and so on when I can order in a couple minutes without the hassle?
Additionally, speaking as a person with 25+ years working in the payment technology space, the initial post from Alicia doesn’t really sit well with me at all:
“Operationally, the new payment flow has also created major delays. I recently made four sales but had to wait over 24 hours to place the orders due to processing delays with Venmo, Apple Pay, or ProPay. ***Previously, I could simply enter customer card information and complete the transaction efficiently.*** ”
I’m going to guess that one of the reasons that MKC is migrating towards electronic payments initiated by the cardholder where the consultant/director does not obtain the confidential info in the payment credential (such as account number, CVV, expiration date etc) is because the card networks specifically discourage that practice for a number of reasons.
I don’t care how nice and trustworthy a merchant or consultant or whoever seems to be, I won’t be handing over my card to them or providing them with my account details. At restaurants that are still doing the old way of giving the wait person your card to take in the back and run, I always request that I pay up front, never had any restaurant say no, and I get to leave quicker too!
Alicia or any other consultant should not need or have access to the payment info that isn’t their own. Most likely, that’s a primary reason that MKC changed their customer ordering feature where the consultant could use the customer’s card to pay to where the consultant must now use their own card to pay, PCI DSS as well as reducing the chance of disputes for fraud and so on.
Edit – just re-read this and by “pay up front” at a restaurant I meant that when the check comes, I walk up to the front desk or wherever the register is to pay in person (although there are some regular sit down restaurants that use the Toast app where you place your order and pay up front using your phone) 99% of the card-present merchants around here have Apple Pay/contactless including restaurants at their register. A lot of restaurants have yet to migrate to the handheld terminals but I’m seeing it more and more. At Cheesecake Factory here, you have two options – the receipt has a QR code and you can scan and pay on your phone, or alternatively they use the handheld devices.
I guess you CAN sell from an empty wagon…or not, as the consultants are finding out.
Mary Kay Ash had no ethics. She started a scam knowing it was a scam and didn’t really cover up much that it was a scam. It was just one of the first widespread scams for women which made it a lot harder to discern as a scam INITIALLY but the people who have been in it for 40 years surely have had ample opportunity to see the truth.
She said herself, recruiting is like a running faucet over an open drain. It took me a long time to absorb that because it was so blatantly an abusive statement that I thought surely I must be misunderstanding it. A running faucet over an open drain is a wasteful and pointless action. It wastes natural resources and costs people money. WHERE IS THERE INSPIRATION IN THAT? How is a person who makes such a statement perceived as GOOD? All to sell MAKEUP?
mkash had no ethics. She had no loyalty to eight vows of marriage. She directed her offspring to go forth in her footsteps, continue the legacy of raping vulnerable people of the chance to have GENUINE careers by spinning their wheels in her scam and pouring every possible cent into her pockets while offering nothing but rose tinted glasses and tons of pink FLAVORADE. She wouldn’t even put out for KOOL AID. And even worse, she trained her revoltingly large downline to emotionally exploit their victims into becoming predators as well. ALL IN THE NAME OF MKASH.
The fruit doesn’t fall far from the true. Her offspring plainly show her bitter core.
O.M.G. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the TREE. Her offspring plainly show her bitter core.
Yes, I actually proofread MOST of it!! Proofreading when I am mad clearly is NOT one of my skills!