Disgusting Customer Service Experience
I recently placed an order for four products through Sephora’s website. Since one of the items wasn’t available for delivery, I opted for the store pickup option and chose the Yas Mall branch. I went there last Tuesday to collect my order. After a short wait in line, an employee asked what I needed and sought help from a colleague, who told her to figure it out herself because she was with another customer. Eventually, I received my items and left.
When I got home, I discovered that one of the products (the Supergoop Glow product) had leaked all over the inside of its box. The packaging was chipped and damaged, despite the product seal being intact. I immediately sent an email to Sephora with detailed photos and a full description of the issue, requesting either a refund or a replacement.
I received no response.
By Friday, I called their customer service line. The agent who answered sounded pretty disengaged. I explained the situation, and she said she’d check the email I sent. After a short pause, she asked me to send an email with the photos , which I told her I already had. I repeated that I'd sent everything on Tuesday. She then put me on hold to “check with the department.” When she came back, she said that because I picked up the product in-store, I had to return it to that same exact store (no other location) to get a replacement. This completely goes against Sephora’s own statement online, which says defective items are eligible for a prompt refund or replacement.
With a packed schedule, I had to drop everything and go back to Yas Mall because I didn’t trust that I’d receive any further help from customer care.
When I returned to Yas Mall, a staff member led me to a woman at the register. After taking my number, she looked at my order and insisted I had picked it up at The Galleria and not Yas Mall. I was shocked. I told her clearly that I hadn’t been to The Galleria in a long time and had only been to Yas Mall earlier that week. She kept repeating that I must be “confused,” even after I described the other employees I had dealt with. The situation felt borderline gaslighty! I was being told I was wrong about something I knew for certain.
Eventually, I pulled up the confirmation email, which stated that the pickup was indeed from Yas Mall. Only then did she stop questioning me and ask her colleague to give me a replacement, saying she’d send an internal “email about it.”
The entire experience felt surreal. From being ignored over email to being dismissed and borderline gaslit in-store. I’ve shopped at Sephora Middle East many times, but I’ve never faced such poor service. I had hoped for better, but this was frustrating, time-wasting, and completely avoidable had customer care done their job.
April 29, 2025
Unprompted review