Is Sephora Really Banning Customers Who Spend Thousands Every Year?

It was news to us that beauty superstore Sephora recently debuted a new tier to its customer loyalty program. VIB Rouge is for customers who spend at least $1,000 per year at Sephora stores, because some people manage to do that. A thing that Sephora apparently does is ban customers from making online purchases if they place too many orders.

VIB Rouge offers perks like free shipping on all orders, piles of samples, fancy gifts for your birthday and whenever Sephora feels like it, and exclusive events. Sounds very nice…until some of these big-spending customers reported that Sephora cut them off.

Over on BeautyForums.com, one poster explained what happened to her:

Long story short, I just found out last week that I can NOT place any orders online at Sephora.com. I kept getting the message that my payment could not be confirmed and my order has been cancelled.

I called and talked with THREE CS reps in two days and they were NO HELP at all. They kept telling me to read the terms of use.

Those terms of use are pretty clear: membership in the program and your right to place online Sephora orders are pretty much at the whim of Sephora. As a private business with many competitors in the marketplace, that’s their right. Here’s what the loyalty program’s terms of use say:

Sephora may, in its sole discretion, alter, limit, or modify the VIB Rouge program rules, regulations, benefits, eligibility for membership, or any other feature of the VIB Rouge program or may terminate the VIB Rouge program at any time in its sole discretion, without prior notice.

What kinds of things will get you kicked out of the program? Buying “too many” of a single item, though what constitutes “too many” is rather fuzzy. Is it ten? Three? We wrote about this problem in the past when discussing Macy’s and a reader accused of buying too many lip glosses for any one woman.

How do you place four orders in one day, anyway? One Sephora fan explained that she placed an order for herself, a gift order for her sister, and then another order when a sale item restocked. “Finally, after lying in bed for a few minutes, I suddenly thought of my friend’s daughter who’s a nail polish fanatic and would certainly LOVE some polish for xmas,” she explained. “Hence, the fourth order.”

We contacted Sephora to ask that their policies are and what’s going on here, and haven’t received a response yet. We’ll post an update if they get back to us.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist