French Box Update – They Will Send 2 New Products
Below is the email I just received as a French Box subscriber about the February Box issues:
Dear subscribers,
We’re happy to bring you some fresh and much anticipated news.
Our priority over the last few days has been to find a solution for our February subscribers who have had to throw away 2 items.
We’ve considered many alternatives in our search for a solution: the ideal ones, the fair ones and the possible ones. We decided to send you two brand name, full-size beauty products to replace the problematic items from our previous box.
We know how much we have disappointed you and we chose among our best available products to give you the highest possible value and quality. These two full-size products will have a combined value of about $35.
We expect to ship these to our February subscribers in about two weeks. Please expect an email in the coming days that will include more specific information about this.A lot of questions and concerns were raised by our subscribers over the last few days. We will answer the most frequent ones soon and we can answer the most pressing ones today:
Pre-paid subscribers:
1 – First time subscribers who signed up in February and haven’t received a box from us yet will receive our next box.
2 – Multi-month subscribers (3-,6- and 12-month) will receive our upcoming boxes and be contacted individually with more details on their account status.Unsubscription requests and automated charges:
We have cancelled all monthly automated charges: current monthly subscribers will not be charged again and will be given priority registration for our next box.About our next boxes:
We expect our next box to be ready in about 6 weeks. As previously announced, we will ship our box only once we can ensure it matches the level of quality we originally set for.Finally, we want to thank the many subscribers who sent us feedback, criticism, suggestions and encouragements during this difficult time. We were humbled and felt incredibly motivated by some of your messages. We learned even more insight about your expectations and wishes. We know it is now up to us to keep you as loyal subscribers.
We are implementing a lot of changes in order to avoid past mistakes and better serve our pledge: a themed box with quality and varied French products that makes you excited the day it is delivered and joyful when you open it and discover the products our team has selected for you.
We will be detailing these changes in the coming weeks.We thank you for your continued patience and we will be posting updates soon.
Copyright © 2015 France in a Box LLC, All rights reserved.
You are subscribed to FrenchBoxOur mailing address is:
France in a Box LLC
407 Lincoln Road
Suite 701
Miami Beach, FL 33139
What do you think of their solution?
Written by Liz Cadman
I received my replacement items today. When a box advertises good from France I assume they are MADE in France. The replacement shower gel is a Lanvin product that a) I can buy here and b) is made in America
Am I wrong in my thinking?
Comment
The two replacement items are revealed!! http://getfrenchbox.com/shop/february-replacement-products/?utm_source=FrenchBox&utm_campaign=9adf3868b2-feb-box-tracking&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_09abd6da1c-9adf3868b2-264459433&mc_cid=9adf3868b2&mc_eid=f055987417
Did anyone receive the 2 replacement products or receive shipping notification yet? They are supposed to mail them out this week…
I got my tracking info for my 2 replacement products yesterday @1:12pm. I should receive them by usps on Tuesday. They will publish a detailed description of the products on Monday. I hope they will be great!
Thanks! I got my shipping notification later on the same day I posted.
I got an email regarding the future for those who have prepaid for a year.
I did also, and forwarded it to Liz.
I’m curious!!!
This is a difficult situation partly because of the immediacy of the internet and the transparency that French Box is trying to achieve.
It sounds like they are trying to fix the Feb boxes and reassessing what needs to be done in the future to provide what the subscribers are looking for and be sustainable. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 6 weeks.
I was going to give them one more month to make up for their bad selections, but I don’t have to worry about that now, auto pay subscriptions are cancelled. I’ll watch out for the reviews of the next iteration of FB and see what happens.
I am still in shock about the difference in Jan. and Feb. boxes was night and day, except the nail polish in Jan. box.
I am also wondering what replacement items they will send and what direction they will take with the next box, pricing, etc.
I do enjoy reading fellow readers’ opinions. I am another foreigner here, of Asian origin, and it is a bit sad to see people picking on others’ writings. Maybe people mean no harm, but it is hard to read between lines. This is a nice place that we can share information and opinions and I hope we can keep it that way 🙂
I don’t think anyone was picking on anyone’s accent buy just saying it was the same as the person from the company. It was neither positive nor negative.
*but not buy
No, I was definitely not picking on anyone’s accent. I have replied to Anna below to make sure she knows that. I was just pointing out a similarity in the wording.
Hi Marie. No, I am not offended, I know how poor my English is (you should hear me speak! !!) Lol! I just want to assure everybody I am not Frenchbox ;-D
Christina and Marie, thank you for responding to my post 🙂
I remember that another person was pointed out as a FrenchBox rep on recent thread and seeing a lot of negative vibes on recent posts on Popsugar and Little Lace Box spoilers.
We subscribe to boxes for fun and surprises. Every box cannot satisfy everyone, but this still should be a fun process, not stressful one. After all, we are all lucky to be able to afford such, right?
What FrenchBox did this month was wrong and they need to fix it. MSA provides a place where subscribers can exchange opinions, provide information, and possibly make some decisions like this case. I think it brought a lot of attention to the company when they read it and hope they do it right for the subscribers who decide to stick around.
Who said I could afford all of these boxes that
Liz now has me addicted to??? lol I think I’ll be paying my credit cards til I’m 90 womp womp womp
That’s for sure! I didn’t even know about these boxes two months ago! Now I am getting SEVERAL! I don’t think I can afford it either, but everyone needs some fun in their lives and I just LOVE the surprise! I tend not to be too negative about the contents. If I don’t like it, I’ll just cancel. But this FrenchBox thing was a disaster, lol. It needed to be complained about! 🙂 and I love this site. I think people should be able to voice their opinions, whether positive or negative! No one is forcing us to read the comments. But I love to see everyone’s perspective!
Not sure whose “counsel” they’ve sought but from this response my vote is no one not directly vested in the company’s bottom line. Replacement items to be sent 6 weeks from now do not make things right. And legally they can’t force a subscriber to accept this so called solution. They knowingly sent unsafe items, not one but two of them (and they’d have a pretty difficult time proving a lack of knowledge in the legal sense). For those not satisfied with the proposed resolution, such as it is, I would recommend disputing the charges with your respective credit cards due to receiving a product not as advertised. It’s your right and your choice. I found their response to be wholly lacking in accountability (indicating to me they have sought some legal advice from some source evidenced by the lack I’d anything approaching an admission). As I posted before, whether and how a company recovers from being caught engaging in questionable product sourcing is largely up to them in how the respond. Saying they’ll send some products more than a month from now isn’t the way to go. found the response to be rather patronizing, devoid of accountability, and in short, meaningless. My comments are not formal legal advice though I am an attorney; my intent is only to help fellow consumers who are dissatisfied with the product they received and the response to that unhappiness by the company that caused it.
Replacement products are being sent in 2 weeks which I think is a reasonable amount of time because of the influx of emails, time involved in assortment of issues, sourcing replacement items, being shipped to them, and then packing them up and shipping it out.
I appreciate them doing something to rectify the situation for subscribers. However, I also see a notice coming very soon to subscribers saying they are increasing their box price in the near future since they told us they can’t sustain quality at $24 a month. I don’t feel good about giving this company the money I’ve given them, let alone more money.
It’s nice that they are trying to redeem themselves and make February’s box “right”. But, Feb’s box should have never been what it was in the first place. I think what angers us all so much about the Feb box is that is was just so BLATANTLY bad. It’s like they pooped in really cute pink box and wrapped it up in a pretty bow and said, “Here you go! Enjoy!” (sorry for the vivid imagery, but that’s the best way I could describe how overtly terrible it was).
If they couldn’t sustain their business model at $24 a month, they should have just said that to begin with (rather than sending junk) and let their customers know they were going to have to raise prices, or do every other month, once a quarter, etc.
Instead, I think we all feel a bit insulted and, in turn, they’ve really broken trust in a big way.
I didn’t get a response after writing asking for a refund..their response was not quick enough. I have disputed it with my credit card company..I don’t think there will be an issue given their PSA announcements. It would be nice if they know the value of the products..they know what they are. They should just tell us now what they are..because their are people teetering on the edge of canceling and there are trust issues here. Again, they should just come out and say what they are.
It concerns me a lot that they have not offered to give refunds to those who requested them – like me. Like you, I disputed the charges. Frenchbox will most likely have to pay fees for this and if enough people file disputes with their credit cards, they may lose their ability to take credit cards at all.
I think that for them to give everyone complete refunds would ruin the company. I will see what the two replacements are. My bigger concern with that serum is that it was made in China. They advertise items from France.
It maybe that they have bitten off more than they can chew. Try the World is a great concept but they can’t deliver either.
As to Mikael Cohen — there are a fair amount of Mikael Cohens from France and I could find no evidence of them being related to French Box in any way. It reminds me of people on no fly lists who have nothing to do with terrorism but just share the same name.
The other boxes were great and I don’t believe this was intentional fraud on their part. Naive perhaps but I will see what they send me
When exterior packaging that shows expiration dates is purposefully removed, and the products were knowingly sourced from third party resellers, and none of the aforementioned was disclosed up front, that’s as intentionally fraudulent as it gets. We all want start ups to succeed but we should all hold them accountable when they fail to deliver as promised. And be properly compensated when requested, preferably as a matter of course, no request needed. Whether a company is ruined by doing what’s legally required isn’t so much a business decision or even a moral concern. It’s legally required.
I have the feeling that they cancelled everybody in order to increase the price of the box and maybe only one box every 2 months or so… Just saying !
I have an annual sub that started feb. What a bad start. I’m thinking I want my money back. I can’t trust what they send, and waiting another 6 weeks for a box tells me they were going to go fully on the cheap again but now that they got caught out they have to have extra time to put together a box. It’s just not saying to me “good company.” More like “we were fully intending to source cheap products but you complained so now we need a new game plan.” I don’t buy the whole small company just starting out stuff. They knew they were buying on the cheap the whole time.
Yeah, that’s what my thought was too. I am also betting that the L’Oreal polish that we received in the February box was from a similarly unacceptable source. Whatever they are doing, it is/was totally unethical. They could start sending out gold bars in their box and I wouldn’t subscribe at this point. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m not giving this company my money ever again. I do not do business with companies that could care less about their customers and it’s become apparent that whatever business model they had (if they had one at all, they probably cannot afford to put quality goods in the boxes because they overspent on the intricate packaging and the shipping every month) was not well thought out or they were banking on their customers being stupid.
*January Box
That was well said.
It is good that they are doing something. However, I would have preferred a full refund as I had requested in an email (that received no response). I have concerns about the bath beads – I simply do not trust the ingredients list posted by French Box as they did not say who the manufacturer was. In addition, the nail stickers were also out-of-date – which, being stickers is perhaps not a health risk, but still.
I think this is fair and I am sure they will do everything they can to give us wonderful box Next time. I will for sure not dispute any charges, if everyone is doing that, it will just kill Frenchbox. I will give them chance and I want them to be around. All the boxes before February were great.
Lol, you’re not Frenchbox are ya? You use the same sort of “dialect” they use in their posts and letters! Ha ha.
Love how anyone who likes a company and forgives mistakes *must* work for that box.
So true! Same exact dialect! (maybe coincidence, maybe not lol). Personally, there are so many things wrong with this situation that two replacement items doesn’t even come close. They either started with a bad business model or just didn’t care or thought we were stupid. I don’t believe their statements about that Mikael Cohen guy not being the owner, too much in common, so I have no trust in the company or what they will be sending.
No, I am just a Polish girl, my English is really, really bad! LOL ;-D But I do feel for them. I can imagine all the stress they must have. I think they really try to find solutions. Actually I just bought annual sub in February after buying month to month. January was so good and I liked all the previous boxes so I committed! And here came February…
I was thinking the same thing. Someone named Anna has been commenting/replying on a bunch of the Frenchbox posts in this same manner and very pro-Frenchbox.
Yes, I am quite active here. I comment all the time on Little Lace Box as well. I subscribe to more then ten boxes so you can probably find my comments in “dialect ” on Ouiplease, Mizzfit, Goodebox, Moxie, Bare Bliss Box just to name a few.
Just to be clear, my original comment wasn’t meant to be hurtful and I didn’t think you took it that way either. But I did notice a similarity and I was sort of jokingly pointing it out. But I’m glad you replied and I hope you weren’t offended. I’m married to someone half polish, and my grandfather came here from Italy and never spoke English very well, so I’m certainly not finding fault with that!
There is another Anna that comments on those boxes as described above. I remember it because we share the same name and comment on the same boxes. French Box did have great boxes. I can understand why some people are willing to give them a second chance. I won’t because of my health issues, but I do see why some are willing.
I think this sounds like a fair solution. They are sending 2 products as replacements with an expected value of more than the $24 (or $14 for anyone who used a coupon code) that subscribers originally paid for the entire terrible box. I certainly don’t think most people would be happy with a 2 item box but technically paying $24 and getting $35 worth of products is a good value. If I were a subscriber I would be happy with this although, I guess, it’ll really depend on what the products ARE.
I’m agreeing with Ellbee, those items were completley unacceptable.
I think they should have mentioned the dollar store bath hearts and the dollar store “French” nail file, which while not expired, certainly aren’t acceptable items to send paying subscribers, in my opinion.
Gotta say that’s a pretty impressive letter. I’m not a subscriber, so I won’t see the end result, but I hope they follow through for you guys!
I think it sounds fair and like they are making a good faith attempt to fix this. Will be curious to see what happens next. I hope they can figure this out.