I know it’s right after the holidays and it’s the beginning of the year and I wondered if I should make a posting that is somewhat negative, but what the heck, it’s an interesting story…well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

We have our yearly appraisals at work in December.  I found myself surprised that I was to receive a small bonus (yes, federal workers can get bonuses, but not large ones mind you) and decided that as a special treat to myself I would go ahead and purchase a small EdP version of 24 Faubourg by Hermes.  Years ago, my hub bought this as a present for a friend and I have loved it from the first day I smelled it.  Yes, it’s very feminine, but damn it… I like it too!

As it is more of a mainstream perfume, I trolled the web perfume site to find the best price.  Now, most of the sites only had the EdT versions for sale, but I found a couple that had the 50ml EdP versions as well.  I won’t name the site, but in addition to the good price, they had an additional 10% off coupon code and free shipping.  Great…I’m in!

Three days later I receive my little treasure.  When I open the box, the box the perfume in was a bit worn, but I thought, so what, maybe it just got damaged en route.  I then open the box only to find that it was missing almost 1/4 of the juice.  I could tell immediately that it had not leaked, because the package nor the bottle were wet.  It was just used.

I receive the bottle on Christmas Eve, so I called the company on the day after Christmas and told them of the situation and sent the picture to the right.  They nicely apologized and said that I could return the perfume but that they wouldn’t be able to replace it as they didn’t have any more in stock.  I asked about possibly getting the bottle for a reduced price thinking that they might give it to me for 50% off which would have been fine.

The customer service representative came back and said they could give me an additional 5% off.  I told her that at least 25% of the fragrance is missing, why would they only give me 5% off?  She said that I had already received 10% off of the purchase when I ordered it.  I explained that 10% off was for the full bottle purchase, so in essence you would only be giving me 5% off a bottle that was 25% missing or 15% off a non-discounted full bottle for 25% missing!  I asked to speak to her supervisor.  She went away and came back (sans supervisor) and said that all they could offer me was either an additional 5% off or I could return the perfume for a refund.  I was flabbergasted.  Here they would want me to ship something back (at their cost) that they could not sell instead of giving me a decent price for a used bottle and still make some money!

Really??!!!

I shipped the bottle back and was credited the full amount.  I still don’t own 24 Faubourg.  Maybe I wasn’t meant to own a bottle?

Oh, what the heck, the company in question is perfumeworldwide.com.