Complaints About My Shop
Written by Parsons Green
The complaints keep rolling in for Mary Kay’s “My Shop” online ordering system for customers. Months after rolling out the fancy new system, the company still can’t get it right, and consultants are upset.
Carol Mouradian posted on Facebook that she’s seen a decline in orders from her Mary Kay website. She usually had between 3-6 orders a month. She’s only had 1 order since My Shop started in December. She asked her fellow directors if they were having similar issues.
Tonya Vice chimed in that she believes the decline in orders is that the website used to show star consultants first when a new customer was searching for consultants Star consultants spend at least $1800 in whole sale orders in a quarter. The website now shows a random selection of consultants based on zip code. Cheryl Hirsch has complained about this to corporate. Corporate did not have a good answer for her.
Marilyn Safko Costic says there’s no incentive for the company to promote the star consultants. If a consultant is at the 30% tier, the company is keeping more cash for themselves. Is the company having cash flow issues?
Nancy Lewen has had 3 orders and they all had issues.1 was assigned to another consultant. The other 2 showed up as guest orders even though they are only 5 miles away from her. Nancy’s customers admitted the website was hard to use. Nancy feels she should have more website orders in January because she always sends her customers a gift certificate that month. She’s spent hours contacting the company with examples and nothing is changing. A customer shouldn’t have to follow complex instructions to place an order to make sure it gets routed to her. How can she train a new consultant to navigate the website issues?
Karen Brass irritated a customer by sending her 3 emails, 2 texts, and a postcard to inform her of the new My Shop site. She averaged 6 to 10 reorders per week but she’s only had 3 since December. Karen’s got a fully stocked inventory as well. She’s been in Mary Kay for 35 years and trusts the company with all her heart. However, something is wrong. Her reorders are down and this is affecting her family finances.
This is what I love about the Facebook groups. Real life directors complaining about how hard the business is. I wonder do they talk about any of this when they’re warm chatting a recruit? If you were thinking about joining Mary Kay wouldn’t you want to know this?
Visit the
Tick tock the move to affiliate is almost here. They are almost grasping that MK doesn’t care about them and only want to generate as much profit as possible.
I just saw MK is trying to sell their headquarters in Dallas! 😳 https://www.facebook.com/share/1G5sV6F5AE/?mibextid=wwXIfr
I could read these My Shop updates every day. It is a total train wreck and so obvious that Corporate does not care about the consultants and their piles of dusty inventory.
Guess what! There were several glitches yday that kept in touch down throughout the day….. stay tuned to see if month end is extended.
The lady who let Karen know she was annoyed by six communications about the same thing is just the one who let her know it instead of quietly ignoring her. The fact that she’s had one order this year shows that a lot more are ghosting her.
I’ll bet you a large Starbie’s Pinky-Drinky Frappy-Whappy Mocha-Polka Lattefoofoo that Nancy’s customers who got “mixed up” and checked out as guests knew exactly what they were doing because they didn’t want her chasing them down, and she did anyway.
And how dare those inactive and personal use consultants take money away from the star consultants, who are better than them and deserve the money more. I thought this opportunity was meant to empower women into making big buxx with no work while surrounding them with a loving supportive sisterhood BWAHAHAHA I can’t type that with a straight face.
Gosh, it’s almost as if buying up huge amounts of inventory to achieve star status is pointless and stupid and they should stop doing it.
At least when I shop online and get inundated by newsletters and other spam from a company I bought once from 10 years ago I can just click and ignore. I couldn’t imagine 6 communications in various guises about the same thing! Take a hint. You’re being ghosted because you’re pestering your customers too much. Most people just want to do a quick order, buy their face goo and that’s the end of it. We don’t want follow ups, upsells, all the rest of it. That’s why they went guest checkout.
I thought that PUCs and the latest on boarders were useful team builders, even tiny orders once in a while helps make production. She’s FUMING because she can’t get rid of her dusty inventory that she over-ordered for a Temu trinket or a pencil now that everyone’s buying online and various star consultant levels aren’t relevant to MK anymore. Understandable that she’s angry, I would be too if I was left holding thousands of unsellable stock that I now have no hope of shifting thanks to market saturation and everyone buying online now. Bye bye production now that inventory isn’t needed.
Meanwhile directors like Cleta are still instructing her downline to push new consultants to sign up for the $3600 ultra mega startup kit. So gross.
Horrible. All of that will be unsellable. Not that it exactly flew off the shelves in the first place (unless you had a poltergeist or a cat – same thing really) before the MyShop debacle but now it’s impossible. I suppose she’s got to find a way and make a way to keep up production. And who cares who gets hurt in the process? Muh Pink Caddy(TM) and status that means nothing to anyone outside of MK uber alles…
On the one hand, they are using My Shop as a recruiting tool telling women they can make 30% without inventory. But on the other hand they complain that MK should highlight only the star consultants.
Yeah cognitive dissonance is one hell of a drug.
There is a huge customer upside to all of this. Customers can now tell their consultants something like, “Yes, I have been purchasing stuff regularly from MyShop. There must be something wrong on the MK side if you can’t see my orders. Please take it up with them, not me.”
If the consultant keeps pestering, “Look, I am going to stop ordering from you if you keep pestering me this way. Take it up with Mary Kay please, and keep me out of it.”
Ah…peace at last!
Yes it’s ideal. I buy everything online. Just shove it in my basket, click checkout and it appears by magic a few days later. No follow-ups, no partays (they are the antithesis of parties), no recruitment. Just wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
That reminds me, I’m off to Sephora online to look up zit zapper now that we have Sephora across the pond and I can order online.
It’s insane that you can get MAC and other mid-range luxury brands for the same price as MK. Or just buy Maybelline, Rimmel or Revlon for better quality at less price to MK.
I did a price comparison to other MLMs selling makeup compared to Sephora. For Maskara/Seint I could get an 18 shade Pat McGrath for that price or a Tom Ford or even a Givenchy and still have change left over (albeit Seint went kablooey a long time ago so I’m using old r/AntiMLM posts as my source for price comparison).
Checked out Younique vs Dior and D&G etc. Crusty spider lashes, Oompa Loompa dying of liver failure shade foundation and behind the trend dry lipsticks that highlight every line in your lips and dry them out at Dior, D&G, Huda, Fenty and Haus by Gaga prices. Guess which brands are more popular, well known and have a trending on social sticker…
And no huns, peddling your MLM makeup on Fakebook doesn’t count as trending on social media.
Yes! I can walk to a drug store to get regular products and there’s a Sephora that’s within biking distance. Easy peasy.
If I want to order online the apps are always running deals plus I get birthday freebies, all with free shipping over $35. At Sephora I got a 10 item sampler fragrance set for $95 that came with a voucher for a full size bottle of my choice of the samples. After trying them all I used the voucher and got a bottle that sells for $150 – for free. Sweet deal.
No consultants pestering me and no jumping through hoops to bypass MyShop for their – not my – convenience.
Sorry MK, you can’t compete.
Yes Sephora is impossible to compete against – always have great deals going on. Even basic drugstore makeup is impossible to compete against price and quality wise. I may or may not have found my late mother’s 8 year old Rimmel eyeshadow lurking in the bathroom cupboard. Hasn’t dried out, seems to swatch well. And a pre-pandemic Nivea lipstick. Again texture fine, smells fine, swatches fine. I doubt that MK and especially spider-lash orange Younique could do that.
This is true. When I was a consultant, I had a few people say that they didn’t feel that MK was better than what you could find in stores and they didn’t want to spend that type of money. MKI is an outdated business model and can’t compete in today’s world.
Ulta too, which also has sweet deals and birthday freebies.
Between Ulta and Sephora I get any beauty product I want from upper-drugstore to higher end.
I love niche perfumes and I already have favorite brands of those (Fyrinnae, Etat Libre d’Orange, many of the brands found at the sampler site Surrender to Chance).
Been having a look around Sephora online to see what’s there and to compare to MK. It has proved interesting.
Haus by Gaga has 51 shades of foundation for all skin tones and types. Fenty has 41 again for all tones and types. Looking in the latest MK Look Book 23 for either matte (oily skin) or luminous (dry/normal skin) and there’s not a huge range, all either pink or yellow undertones with the bronzes going only orange-red.
MK lipsticks are mostly the same red or pink colour in various formula with not much variation between colour choices. You can either have it in pink or red basically. The lipglosses have a bit more variation but nothing on Huda or ABH. Eyeliner is either black, brown, blue or green. Not a patch on Haus by Gaga.
MK Chromafusion eye shadows are just boring and uninspiring and nothing on ABH, Urban Decay, Dior, Pat McGrath, Tom Ford, D&G, etc. The limited edition Inner Fire and Outer Glow look okay but you get 6 colours and aren’t as vibrant or variated as the various Urban Decay and ABH palletes. Or even the Sephora own brand pallettes. Yeah it doesn’t really compare.
MK just appears to be “granny makeup” and that’s a reputation that’s going to be impossible to shift regardless of the twee AI chatbot Miss Conceptions (or rather Miss Directions as she should be called – bet the model they used to AI-makeover is fuming at her agent!). It will never be as trendy as Fenty, Haus, Huda, Rhode, Benefit, Kylie, etc. Cosmetic and skincare influencers never mention MK at all except to say how terrible the product is in comparison to their favourites.
Comparing Clearproof acne you can get Garnier (it’s okay but the packaging is hard when it almost runs out it’s too hard to squeeze so you need scissors to get the last 10th of it out) and top that up with The INKY List salicylic acid cleanser. Works out cheaper and has the same ingredient, salicylic acid, but without the benzyl ingredient MK use which makes Clearproof harsh and is likely behind the breakouts. Or get The INKY salicylic acid serum and use that with a regular cleanser. Add to that a generic tea-tree cleanser and a generic clay mask, either to leave on and then wash off (avoid peels they damage your skin even more) or paper masks in a pack of 10 for $10-20 ($20 tops).
Or splurge and go for Drunk Elephant or Korean skincare. But even Korean has now got low price point products and is still popular. I picked up a Korean charcoal mask for about £10 on Amazon a while ago, tube’s almost out and it’s quite good. Next day delivery with Prime shipping.
Interestingly Younique with You-Ology did try to pretend to be Drunk Elephant but it burnt people’s faces off and you can mix and match any serum you want regardless of their compatibility. A retinol overdose day and night ought to have interesting results to say the least. Add all the various products up for a skincare routine and you’re close to Drunk Elephant territory. Guess which I’d trust with my face…
I have never smelt MK perfume or aftershave but I doubt the quality is that great – been described on r/AntiMLM as “fumes” several times so I doubt it’s Chanel No.5 or Opium quality. Looking at Look Book aftershaves the most expensive is £42.50 (don’t know what that is in dollars). I can get Armani Code often for £40 on sale or for £45 I can get a small travel size of Aramis.
Cheapest is £33.50 and for that I can get David Beckham or two to three bottles of Adidas and Boots points. Adidas is okay, used to wear it as a teenager but I’ve well aged out of that now so a better comparison would be a Hugo Boss on discount to avoid the eau de teenage boy smell of Adidas. Or Quorum by Pugio which is quite nice albeit a bit old man smelling.
Most expensive MK perfume is £68.50. For that you can get Anais Anais, Gloria Vanderbildt or Fidji which is what my late mother wore all the time.
It’s going to be impossible for MK to compete with these various products. And you don’t get points, birthday club freebies (you might get a free sample in the mail if you’re lucky or a mini of something but you’ll also get a gift certificate worth $15 and a FREEEEE FACIAL GUYYSSSS! where you get the luxury of washing your face in a meeting room with other equally bewildered and confused women).
Great comparison! I barely wear makeup, only lip gloss or lipstick occasionally when I go out and I already have all that I want. On the very rare occasion when I wear mascara, bring a redhead, I wear Redhead Revolution (both ginger and auburn colors). MK doesn’t have colors for me. Black is too harsh and only for nightclubbing, even brown is too dark for most occasions.
Beyond that, a cleanser, sunscreen, and nighttime retinol and that’s pretty much it other than a bit of silver glitter around the eyes for nightclub events.
I really have all that I want. I’m a scent hound, but again, I already have all of the mainstream scents I need and will likely order more only from my favorite niche houses. MK doesn’t have the deep lightless forest, industrial/electrical, cemetery/graveyard, or frozen wasteland notes that really work great with me.
Dave, you’re a walking encyclopedia of the cosmetics industry 😀 If I ever need advice I’m coming to you.
“Eau de teenage boy” here in the States is usually something along the lines of Axe body spray, so in my opinion Adidas cologne would be an improvement.
Sephora lost my business several years ago when they started jerking people around with their rewards program. I had plenty of rewards points and couldn’t use them, not to mention Sephora conveniently running out of the birthday gifts. (I’d get my coupon, and oops… it’s mid-month when it arrived, and there is nothing left. So sorry, but we don’t have anything to offer you.)
Ulta has a far better rewards system, and there are more Ulta locations closer to me than Sephora.
Having said this, Haus Labs is good stuff. You used to be able to get it on Amazon, but Lady Gaga moved everything to her own site. I’ve bought her liquid lip colors before, and they are really good. Urban Decay is finally climbing out of its hole and making decent products again. One of their last best collabs was the Game of Thrones one in 2019 (I have the entire collection). I love their eyeliners. MAC has also come a long way in the last couple of years. My only wish is that Twig Twist came in a cream and not just a matte. And bring back the original Spice lip pencil!!
“…the star consultants grew this company, not the I’s or the T’s.”
“T people only order for themselves…so that order means nothing to them.”
With bad attitudes like this I wouldn’t want to be their downline or end customer either. Imagine these harpies yelling at you every time you order cleanser or some lipstick. No thanks. Guest checkout it is, or another company altogether.
Yeah I’d be guest checkout or eBay personally. God forbid you only want one lipstick and not the full ultimate miracle set!!!
This is what I love about the Facebook groups. Real life directors complaining about how hard the business is.
When Ms. PTC writes about “how we are complaining about the company”, they don’t understand that the call is coming from their peers, their directors, their “Nashy Nashes”. These are the proof that life in the pink bubble isn’t easy.
I have a theory that the PTCs are lashing out due to panic. They see what we report happening to them and it scares them. They are also scared that it’ll put people off buying MK or joining their team squashing their production and that mythical 50% profit. I would panic too if I was in that situation, as would anyone.
It’s also likely self-soothing. “They are just wrong/liars/didn’t work hard enough it’ll never happen to me I’ll never be tens of thousands in debt and a social pariah with thousands in unsold and unsellable inventory. Everything’s okay in the Pink Bubble, it’s not imploded and about to rain pink goo on me. We’re not going affiliate, Ryan has our best interests at heart, everything’s okay…” I was reading an air accident report into Saudia 163 and the crew were doing something similar as the plane burnt up in the air around them. The parallels are striking.
That and MK being a literal cult. That too. The brainwashing and the them vs us mentality instilled by training.
The psychology behind PTCs would be interesting. I feel bad for them. That’s all I feel is pity and horror that their life is on the road to ruin and they can’t seem to get off it even though there’s roadsigns pointing away to freedom on this very site. A few PTCs are now posters here.
Any PTC reading this, please get out when you can. MK IS going to affiliate, it’s already affiliate adjacent and as close to affiliate as it possibly can be. It’s getting worse. Get out now while you can and get that 90% buyback.
Don’t be like those in Australia and NZ that suddenly and without warning found themselves out of business. The website shut down, just a quick arrivederci email from Corporate saying thanks for the money goodbye. We’ll give you a 100% return. If you can somehow get into a now defunct website mwahaha. They didn’t issue refunds for orders placed but now not shipped.
Although this did work out for a friend of mine in that she got out of MK (she’d just joined a few weeks before MK shut without warning) and now sells her own handmade all natural boutique makeup and soaps/handwashes/ bath and shower lotions and potions and makes more money now than in MK. So lemonade was made from lemons.
With obvious cash issues, I wonder if there will soon be changes to the “Buy Back” program. Ryan and Corporate have shown that they can continue to take away anything they want and the Fog People put up with it.
Very likely. And it’ll come with no warning at all. It’s time to bail out sooner rather than later. The clock is really ticking and is nearly wound down. If I was an IBC I’d be Fedexing that lot back to whence it came toot sweet, but sadly too many are befogged and cannot see the writing clearly on the wall. Their only option then is eBay or GOOBing on Facebook Marketplace when, not if, the buyback is tampered with.
I believe the buyback program is required by Texas state law. I don’t know if that applies to all states or overseas…
Tinfoil hat time: could they be selling HQ in order to move operations to somewhere where they won’t have to pay back the consultants once they ditch them all?
That’s my thought too. Get out from Texas where you need the 90% buyback due to the law and go somewhere that you don’t. Grab as much cash as possible as the pyramid topples and hop on the Gulfstream a la Lyle Lanley from The Simpson’s monorail episode to Tahiti.
Tonya Vice chimed in that she believes the decline in orders is that the website used to show star consultants first when a new customer was searching for consultants Star consultants spend at least $1800 in whole sale orders in a quarter. The website now shows a random selection of consultants based on zip code. Cheryl Hirsch has complained about this to corporate. Corporate did not have a good answer for her.
If I had the choice, I’d rather deal with IBC Mari-Lise in the next town over than FSSEDDiQ Moaning Lisa in Alberta.
If I was in the market for MK products I’d just go on eBay or look for local GOOB sales for a massive discount. Or just sign up for a 30% discount for however much it is now. Which of course makes it even harder for IBCs etc to shift product due to the massive glut of it and the huge market saturation of consultants and products everywhere at rock bottom prices. IBCs are desperate to sell so have to offer discounts, gifts, bribes, vouchers for money off, etc which further eats into that mythical 50% profit.
MKC created the problem of a glut of inventory in an already saturated market that’s being sold at rock bottom prices by frontloading and has crippled their salesforce chances of making a sale. Why spend $300 for skincare when you can get it for $50-90 on eBay or from a local GOOBer?
Absolutely everything is designed to make the IBC’s life hard. Because it’s about recruiting and getting that massive initial order, that’s always the biggest one. MKC have the money, they don’t care what happens next. They’ve made their profit so who cares about the IBCs that are left literally holding the bag trying their hardest to sell it?
Just go to a thrift store. An acquaintance of mine runs an antique shop and a Mary Kay vintage perfume arrived. Just for the sake of novelty and LOLs (and to support my friend who runs her own real small business) I bought it from her. $7.50, mostly full. It’s not a bad scent but definitely from the powder-heavy 80’s. I have to layer it with a modern scent to give it a proper boost, but the powder note anchors the fresh scent nicely. (I also scored a Tom Ford, the only TF that works for me. I don’t respect aspirational designers, but they can produce some great perfumes.)
No need to buy new. Support your local thrift/antique shop.
I’m impressed that a 1980s perfume actually has any scent other than windscreen wash and vodka. Thrift shops are totally full of ex MLM products that nobody could sell – Goodwill filled to the rafters with Lularoe and many places don’t even take them as they can’t sell them for $1. Salvation Army has the same problem too. Thousands and thousands of debt sold for absolutely nothing, if it sells at all and isn’t just scrapped after a few weeks. Or just landfilled because it’s crap quality and nobody is willing to take it.
Oh, I know! I inherited a number of vintage perfumes and colognes and, surprisingly, almost all are still good. I only had to discard one and a second I have questions about.
Yeah, it’s too bad. For the vast majority the MLM perfumes the bottles aren’t even cute so there’s nothing worth keeping.
A few vintage Avon bottles can go for a tonne on eBay so you might get lucky one day.
At this point Amazon is looking easier and easier for MK.
Get ready for more complaints because Mary Kay is changing the matte and luminous foundations starting May 1. The all New Timewise 3-D foundation. Better start dumping your current foundation inventory to make room for the new improved. New consultants who just stocked foundations are gonna be stuck with them or they’ll have to discount them. More changes consultants and directors are not going to like.
The customers are just going to loooove that. Now they have no idea if their current foundation colour is kept, the name stays the same and will have to get testers at a partaay to avoid looking like a ghost or an Oompa Loompa in renal failure. The IBCs will totes luuuurve that too, all that outdated inventory that’s now about to be obsolete and no way to shift it thanks to MyShop.
Corpse paint is a look on the Death Metal community. The Ghost Ritual (concert) I was at in January, several dozen people were painted up like Papa Emeritus in his various incarnations.
Hahahaha I’d LOOOVE to see an MK pitch to death metallers, goths, emos, etc. Not your traditional MK targets.
There was a story, either here or Reddit maybe where someone had a whole troupe of drag queens as her customers. That’s the ultimate end use customer, they go through so much makeup so fast.
I seem to recall it was here. Hilarious. Except I remember the NSD didn’t think so! “Not the MK image” apparently…
That was the excellent poster Heather. One of the troupe wanted to sign up as a consultant but her superior wouldn’t allow it because “image”.
She also sold them a bunch of sequined Seminar gowns to use in their acts.
(I remember it because it reminds me of that episode of Night Court where Quon Lee gets sucked into an MK ripoff and buys a ton of stuff, but Mack manages to unload it all on a drag troupe whose makeup got confiscated as evidence.)
OK so I’m not gonna lie – I felt kind of bad for Karen Brass because this whole thing is affecting her family finances but it also seems kind of crazy that anyone would rely on being a MK consultant or director as a critical part of their income…
Another complaint I have seen is that if an IBC’s customer checks the “do not share my info” box (as any wise consumer does) , that customer vanishes from the IBC’s customer list and becomes a free agent.
A free range customer, a feral customer, hahaha.