Consultants Do Not Trust Mary Kay Inc. (My Shop Problems Again!)
Written by Parsons Green
Mary Kay launched My Shop over four months ago, and consultants are still having issues. Sara Moore has had ENOUGH. She’s been with Mary Kay for over forty years. She normally keeps things positive, but she was helping a customer place an order. When the customer added more items to the cart, the consultant changed from Sara to another consultant. Sara doesn’t know what to do. This is not okay, people.
Wendy Layne has seen this issue too. When she emails her link to a customer, they are given the option to choose other consultants!
And consultants beware…. If an existing customer of yours uses “guest checkout,” the customer is going to be deleted from your customer list!!! Andrea Buehler had to add two customers back to her list.
Ruby Olivares had the same thing happen, and the purchase history of a customer who has been with her for 10 years was just wiped out. Ruby thinks the problem isn’t guest checkout, it’s a customer checking the box that says “do not share my information.”
Nsd Daughter Julie Phalen wonders why the websites had to change. Geri Dennis misses the years of customer history. They only get two years since the upgrade.
Sara is shocked that the company spent so much money. She spent so much time trying to fix this issue she feels her credibility is in question. Wendy says consultants don’t trust Mary Kay.
Tonya Vice wants everyone to stop using the site because if consultants stop using it, the company will be forced to fix the problems. Tonya will continue to fulfill orders from her inventory.
Joslyne Scofield-Hart’s consultant had her first My Shop order. But then the customer contacted the consultant and said that the order was meant to go to someone else.
Eleanor Reigel thinks Craig Carter, the IT Director, should be FIRED. She’s been with Mary Kay for almost 50 years and she is disgusted.
Vickie Willey and Judy Harvey are worried that even with the new link, customers will want to shop with a consultant who is closer to them. Judy’s customers are irritated that she’s asked them to contact her for credit.
Jacki Abraham had this issue signing up a new consultant!! The recruit lives in Wyoming, but she was assigned to a director in New York. Judy, the recruit, the new consultant, and the other director had to all had to sign documents that the recruit belonged to Jacki’s team. The recruit missed out on her great start bundles. Jacki only has had one My Shop order.
Susan Finley is seeing delays on orders placed through My Shop. One order took more than two weeks to arrive. When she calls customer service, she gets an oh well response.
Ava Oja feels that My Shop has destroyed customer relationships.
Robyn Miller is done opening cases with MK about My Shop problems. Corporate does not care. They are still making their profit.
Angie Springer’s top producer has a customer who also had an order assigned to someone else. She wants to return the product. Mary Kay told her that this issue was caused by user error, but it seems this problem is happening over and over. Angie wants to cancel My Shop and might tell her consultants to do it too.
But everyone, help is on the way! Nsd-never-to-be Kali Brigham has stepped in. She is working directly with corporate on the issue. Please send her a DM with all your concerns. She will take time away from her income producing activities to help out.
And don’t worry! Chris Traynor’s friend works in IT at Mary Kay and says they’re working on it. (But also, MK Inc. has NO IDEA why this is happening.)
With Richard and Ryan’s lawsuits against each other, does Ryan even have time to worry about these issues? Is he in over his head? When will these issues be fixed? If they’re not fixed soon, Seminar 2026 should be fun!
Visit the
“I also mention something about a certain product on a certain page number so they will look. And then follow up in a couple of days.”
No wonder they check the “don’t share my info” checkbox! If MK provided a “Make It Stop!” button my guess is most customers would push it just to get these consultants off their backs!
I love that someone near the top of the page said she loves the new Mary Kay jean jacket. It’s so tacky! 😄
I don’t know…I mean it’s almost as if they truly owned their own business this wouldn’t happen…
And MK has been a disgrace, they’re just now figuring that out?
I wondered when InTouch ended up being a total cluster, and I wonder more than ever now: were these sites designed this badly on purpose? How does a team of supposedly professional adults design something this bad? When major software systems have glitches, it’s treated like an emergency and patches/bug fixes get rushed out ASAP.
Companies far bigger than MK process jillions of online orders in a day, mostly without problems, how does a team of supposedly professional adults design something this bad?
If they were REAL small business owners, they could just set up a Shopify account that would work perfectly well. But they’re not. So they’re stuck with the crappy system that no one, from Wendy Layne’s “high executive” (high on what?) to the consultomer service drones are going to do a darn thing about.
Almost every issue I’ve had with an online seller has been resolved quickly, because they care about their reputations. Their bottom line depends on stuff being sold to happy customers. That’s not going to happen here. MK knows that their own bottom line depends on stuff being sold to the consultomers and that the die-hards will swallow a sewage treatment plant worth of BS rather than complain or quit.
It’s not going to get better. Ryan’s only concern is saving his own hide and he won’t hesitate to throw anyone, including his own father, under the bus to do it. Save your loyalty for someone who deserves it.
Well, we could go full-on conspiracy theory with this. Maybe…. the system was purposely set up in a way that customers would become “house accounts” and MK could keep all profits and not have to pay consultants. One quick check of the “don’t share my info” box, and suddenly the company legally can’t let the customer be on the consultant’s list. Must be a house account now!
So maybe they’re incredibly dumb and incompetent, or maybe they’re evil geniuses?
Whichever it is, I expect to see Michael Jackson eating a lot more popcorn in the coming months 😉
Personally the consultants just need to Beat It and claim the 90% buyback. Mary are you oKay will you tell us that you’re okay?
Dave, that was so smooth, it was almost criminal.
I’m a huge MJ fan *hides in shame*
Based on everything else I’ve seen from Ryan & Co, I’m banking on dumb and incompetent.
Nail on the head, Tracy!
I work in finance compliance (auditing) and based on how with various sizes of financial institution try desperately to get around regulations using similar tactics, I’d be willing to bet it is 100% intentional.
It allows MK to stay compliant with privacy regs across various regions that require opt-out for third party sharing, with no recourse for consultants. Under MK structure, consultants arent employees- they’re a third party of some kind or another under regulatory definition and exactly the type of entity opt-out prevents sharing with. Especially if they fall under the marketing affiliates category.
MK has an ironclad legal precedent if that’s the case, all with the benefit of getting a “house customer” out of it.
I’d give my left big toe to be a fly on the wall in their compliance and risk meetings, what a shitshow it must be right now.
Especially for on-line shopping, which has been around since the 1990s. And customer management systems. This is not cutting edge computer use.
It’s almost as though they are deliberately screwing it up to get as many as possible to quit.
When does this become fun or “empowering”? Dusty inventory you can’t sell, a janky online system that doesn’t work, begging on social media, self-funded and useless rah-rah events and ever climbing credit card debt- It is all so awful!
And somehow they still manage to put enough lipstick on this pig to fool recruits into believing the unbelievable. Namely, that you can make an executive living selling grossly overpriced, commodity retail products part-time out of your home, in the face of competition from tens or even hundreds of thousands of others trying to sell the exact same products to the exact same customers, using a door-to-door sales model that was rendered obsolete in the 20th century.
That’s some seriously effective internal marketing right there! Good thing all the corporate incentives are tied to ordering and recruiting, and not to actual sales, or no one would be getting any commissions or bonuses!
The only thing MKC cares about is retail sales to prove their product is actually purchased by consumers and not just the consultants. They could care less what consultant or director is getting credit for the sale. What they are not accounting for is the frustration of the failure of MyShop is causing directors to step down and consultants to quit. Maybe that is what they want. No more commission checks saves the company a lot of money. That will lead to no more conferences or Seminars, saving more money. Mary Kay will then just be a retail online cosmetics company where if you sign up as an affiliate you can earn free product credit and a meager 5-10% kickback. In the future I can see Mary Kay making deals with Ulta and Sephora. This is all hypothetical of course, but it could happen.
The problem with that is that there is no real market demand for MK products. They aren’t young and cool like Urban Decay and they’re not an established luxury brand. They’re just a cheap drugstore brand in a sea of other cheap drugstore brands that are better priced.
I still think they’re trying to keep the FTC at bay while setting up to be sold off to private equity, either for a complete rebranding or for parts, perhaps to stave off a bankruptcy.
Even though the trusts are funded by their own investments and MK hasn’t paid dividends to the family in four years, I wouldn’t put it past Ryan to structure any sale of MK to bypass his father, Fancy Nancy, and their fake adopted daughter.
Whatever is going on, Michael Jackson and that giraffe are going to be in popcorn heaven.
I feel like they are trying to go affiliate, but put out a crap software platform, then realized it may actually speed up the switch to affiliate by having so many consultants drop off or not sign up so they are in no rush to fix it. So a happy accident for them.
Also, I thought directors weren’t allowed to complain or be negative?
The harsh reality is they’ve never had the best interest of consultants in mind. They just aren’t bothering to hide it anymore. The documentary that will be made once it’s all dismantled will be quite the watch lol
I hope more and more consultants realize each day how awful this opportunity is. Send that crap back!!!
At this point I’m convinced that MKC knew this was going to happen. Their goal is to get rid of the sales force or at least greatly reduce it. Their IT people or more likely the subcontractors who built the website KNEW this stuff was gonna happen. I’m convinced of it now.
I remember the day I chucked the last two cardboard boxes of my “inventory” into the dumpster at my apartment complex. It took me years to break the toxic attachment I had with this company. That inventory was my ATM, it was my future, it was my ticket out of school teaching. It was thousands of dollars on credit cards. It was money I could have saved to buy a house. It was A LIE.
Somewhere in my psyche, I needed to be valued by someone or something. I couldn’t yet do it for myself. Mary Kay and her bots are top tier at lovebombing – I didn’t know that word, either – I just knew that they really thought I was amazing and said all the right stuff to me, and I would do anything to continue that fake adoration. I didn’t realize it was fake. Honestly, I think a lot of the directors and consultants also don’t realize (yet) what they are doing is fake because the top folks do such a great job of making it look & feel so real. It trickles down.
What finally pushed me over the edge to chuck it in the dumpster was my irritation of trying to find places in my apartment to store my precious inventory. Under the bed. In the closet. In rubbermaid containers in various places. We have three humans and two cats in a two bedroom apartment. It’s tight.
The new storage place for it? The landfill.
I fully believe this was intentional by MK corporate. Businesses pull these tricks all the time. It’s shady af, but nothing new. Really makes me wonder if some of the NSDs knew more than they were letting on. Take Dacia, for example. Retired early. MK corporate kissed her arse for YEARS (how could they not? She was a major cash cow for them…), she HAD to have some kind of insider info. Side note, I’m surprised Auri didn’t retire with her. I don’t think she even made 10k commissions in February…