Unhappy with Ivsanbernard "prizes" and customer service
 

Sorry this is gonna be kind of long...

After putting much thought about this, I feel I should put a thread out there to share with the YT family. As some of you may know there was a thread about a month ago about a YT member donating a prize ($25 gift certificate) for the Halloween contest, when in fact it was not a GC, but a coupon of $25 towards the purchase of a $75 order. The vendor is ivsanbernard. Now this thread is not speaking about their products, only about the service I got from them.

When I got the PM from admin saying I won a prize, I pm'd Ivs as I was supposed to. I had not heard of this vendor before, and seeing they only had 11 posts, I was not surprised I hadn't heard of them, since they are not on often or posting. I received a pm back very quickly within a few hours telling me to call them. I did and spoke with Linda, and asked about how to redeem the GC. She did explain very thoroughly about their products, and I was thinking to myself, Wow, she sure is taking a lot of time with me for someone who is getting something for free! Then at the end of our conversation, she said that they have a minimum order of $75 bc they are wholesale only, and that since I had the $25 GC, I would really only be spending $50. I did not expect to hear this, and without really knowing what to say, I said, ok let me look over your products and see what i want and I will either email or call you back. I said this bc I was quite disappointed that their prize they donated was in fact not a prize at all, and at that point I was not going to spend $50 on a product line I have never tried.

I saw that LD and Pasquale had also won the same prize as me, so i pm'd her and asked if she had gotten the same response from Ivs that I had, or had I just misheard or misunderstood. LD said she was told the same, "you'd really only be spending $50". We were both upset, and after i pm'd with a few highly respectly YT members, I contacted admin about it. Admin said Ivs did not specifically say the prize was donated as a coupon, but it was assumed it was just a regular GC, and that coupon type prizes are not allowed. After admin was in contact with Ivs, then it was to be cleared up that they will honor it as a regular GC. However, Ivs went on to say how LD and I misunderstood them, that we didn't have to spend $75. If we didn't, why mention it to us at all??? I really felt they were just trying to change their story now that they were called out on the "prize".

This is where I really started getting the runaround, and hardly any replies.

I had the impression that since it was now to be honored as a regular GC, I could just email Linda (who was now responding to all emails as Baxter, could be a different person, but I'm not sure) and say I want this item which is less than $25. I asked how much shipping would be. They said at least $10 (from AZ, I'm in CA). This is for one tiny bottle. They said shipping would be $6-7 and plus the cost of the envelope. So I replied that I ship a lot and you can ship it in a USPS small flat rate box for $4.95 and you get to use their free boxes. For a $20 bottle and $4.95 shipping, that's less than $25, i should be good right? I had already told them the product i wanted for days now, but did not hear any word, so I emailed again and asked should I put the order in through the site and can they give me a code to use the GC. They just said put "halloween contest" in the remarks section. As many of you may know, the remarks section is not the same as the coupon code, and of course did not lower the price by $25. In addition, on their site, if you order less than $75 you are subject to another $15 on top of your order bc you did not meet minimum order requirement. So ordering thru the site also did not make much sense to me. Oh also, since they are wholesale, you would think the prices listed on the site would be wholesale prices then right? For my bottle of $20 to be "wholesale" what would retail be? $35 or 40?!

I emailed one last time and asked please just send me the bottle and use priority shipping, that's how most prize donors send out their prizes. I hear nothing for about 4 days. I pm admin again, and he got a response saying they sent it out and even sent me a free sample conditioner "despite my unpleasant tone". Again, they did not reply or confirm they even got my last email so how was I to know if they had sent it out? I did *finally* get my bottle and conditioner sample, after much headache.

I have also been told by a friend of mine, that she was given a $80 GC to Ivs and put her order thru the site. What she got was not all she had ordered. Many items were missing.

So I just wanted to put this out there. I don't know if anyone else here has won this type of "prize" from them before. But know now that coupon type prizes are not allowed on YT. When they thought I was going to buy something, they responded to my pm's and emails very quickly. But once they were called out on the coupon, they hardly replied, and replies I did get were very short, curt, and cold. So needless to say, I will not be ordering from them in the future.

I am so sorry you had to go through this. I agree, a coupon is not the same as a prize. At least you did get your prize in the end, though.

I'm sorry this happened to you, but so glad you have the courage to write about your experience. I know many people would have just sucked it up, so as to not cause any unpleasantness, but unless we hear about negative experiences from vendors, we can't really be sure how honest the positive reviews are. I fully support you writing about your experience, and I'm sorry this left you with a bad feeling. No one has to donate a prize to the contest, the prizes make the contest a little more exciting, but when something like this happens to you, you feel like you'd rather not have won anything.

I'm so sorry in the way this turned out. I find it very unfortunate that a YT Vendor did not provide a gift in the spirit in which it was intended.

Your experience should have been a happy one.....

In the future we'll know this is not a person to do business with. She is a representative of Ives St. Benard and should have put her best foot forward.....she not only destroyed her reputation but, put a black eye on the corporation.

I feel the same way. The contest was pleasant and fun without all this run around. All we needed was an excuse to dress up the babies anyway. :)

Yea, initially I was just gonna say oh forget it, and let it go, but then I thought about it more, and it's not so much the prize, it's the principle.

Oops meant to quote nancy, ah well.

I applaud you for speaking out. I had figured out this was the vendor discussed in previous threads that was not honoring their GC as a GC. But to hear the additional run around you had to go through, really seals it for me. I will not be using their site. If they had just pleasantly honored the GCs, you two may have tried their products and become continuing customers for them. Not only that, you are the type that also shares the good experiences, so that word of mouth advertising would probably have added many other orders and opportunities for them to develop repeat customers. Their attempt to "cheat" on the GC idea probably cost them a great deal in the long run. They need a lesson in good customer service and the rewards that follow vs what they just did and the missed opportunity to build a customer base.

This is awful!! Did you ever receive a gift? Or did you just miss out?! I am so sorry.

I am sorry this happened to you.

I won a painting in that raffle that was held months and months ago and never received it, so I understand the disappointment.

Admin doesnt force anyone to donate prizes, so if people don't want to, they just shouldn't :mad:

Did you tell admin?

I did- they contacted her, she said she had a bunch of family problems (which by the way I TOTALLY understand but she had not communicated any of that to me, even after I tried to contact her), they said to give her another month to come through and she never did- they said they would look for an alternate gift if she didn't- but I really don't want them to go through the trouble- I donated as part of the raffle to keep YT up and running, that was what was important to me- I was excited to win, the whole drawing was fun- and I thought it would be nice to have a little painting of one of the kiddos but it wasn't meant to be- Just wanted capt-noonie to know they weren't the only one with issues. :)

Sorry you too got a bad deal on a prize! I would definately tell Admin and post the company that was suppose to have donated the painting! They are getting free advertising and good will when they donate prizes. To take that and not follow through with the donation is not holding up their end of the deal. I do business with companies I see do good things -- I would want to know if they are only pretending to do good!

I did eventually "despite my unpleasant tone" :rolleyes:

As Capt Noonie stated i was the other person who won the "prize". I agree the calls and emails were almost immediate when they thought I would be spending 75$ on their website. After YT admin had set things straight with them , i sent them a PM confirming that the prize was now a gift certificate. They emailed me back saying it was always like that and I misunderstood.:rolleyes:FYI i didnt misunderstand..and neither did Capt Noonie.

Anyways, by this time i was in Florida for 2 weeks and didnt have access to a secure network, so i had planned on ordering when i got back. In the meantime i was keeping in touch with Capt Noonie on how her ordering process was going. I found it rude how they were not giving her the same customer service as they did when they thought we would be purchasing 75$ worth of product. I honestly have thought a lot about this and seeing what Capt Noonie went thru finally made me decide to not order anything from them at all...free or not. I was just happy Pasquale was able to participate in such a fun event and I think if i had to go thru the same thing Capt Noonie did with ordering would put a damper on how much fun I had looking at all the little furbabies in costume.

On a good note though, i did get to talk to Capt Noonie a lot :D See , even bad experiences bring YT people together LoL

awww, thanks! :)