We Relaunched, We Listened, We’re Making Changes: A Note to MSA Readers About Our Latest Site Improvements

Honestly, just go back to the original one! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! It wasn’t broke, why would yinz mess with it?!?! I used to honestly look at this site 4 or more times a day, now I’ve gone days without looking. Do what we REALLY want and bring back the original platform. Thanks

My comments are not showing up, if so it is taking over a day for the post to go through. I guess you all can not see all the critical reviews because they are blocking them. So sad and unprofessional

I think the MSA staff has put a lot of work in to this new site. And I hate to be a buzz kill on a team of people’s hard work…the site is really confusing now though. I’ve been reading pretty well daily for 5 years and I have watched this site grow and change and move forward with new people while the old ones fade out and it’s not been so bad. The reviewers are still doing a great job and I don’t scour the web for spoilers so I just look here so if MSA isn’t the first to get a spoiler out, I honestly don’t mind. I am still finding what I want on here. Barely. I like simple. It’s my lifestyle and I’m not going to lie…I miss the old simplicity MSA had.

Good gosh, I thought you were reading these comments? The website is a MESS! Readers want reviews and spoilers. I had to scroll all the way to the bottom to see any relevant posts. Please listen– we want posts ordered by time and please stop with every other section of your website. I’ve been a daily reader for YEARS until the last couple of weeks. With the revamp, I’ve stopped checking this site for subscription news. I don’t know what you guys are thinking.

I absolutely love this site! I found several subscription boxes I never otherwise would have known about. Thank you for that!

There are 3 issues (for lack of a better word) that I feel are important to be resolved. Both are regarding the swap section:
1) When we are negotiating swaps with one another, it’s pretty common to carry on a conversation. However, there is no notification on the swap page to alert each other when we post comments/questions/answers/etc! We are completely unware unless we open the swap and scroll down to check for it. This is a HUGE frustration for several reasons. One example is that I’ve missed out on several swaps because I didn’t know other swappers replied in the conversation section with questions before they selected the items they wanted to swap for. By chance I opened the swap days later, saw the questions, but the items I requested were already promised in other swaps. Please make some kind of change. Possibly add a red exclamation mark to the swap to indicate a new chat post in the conversation. Super easy fix!

2) Many of the beauty items have expiration dates. And yes, you have a section that asks swappers to post the exp date. However not everyone does. I have had 3 swaps where I was sent expired products. The expiration dates can be very hard to locate, and sometimes hard to decipher. I gave the swappers the benefit of the doubt. But still in total, I took a $62 retail value hit. While the products I sent were new, and either had no expiration date, or it was listed 2 years out. A simple fix would be to include the month and year items are posted.

3) Is there any way you could send reminders to swappers to provide feedback for completed swaps? I’m fairly new, and have completed 25 swaps and have 2 more in progress. All 25 were positive, but only 15 left feedback. As a newer member to MSA, I want to get my feedback posted so that I come up higher in searches, and so swappers feel more comfortable swapping with me.

I want to emphasize I LOVE this site! I have told many friends about it, all of whom have registered and started swapping 😊🤩💜💛💜🤩😊 I would just really appreciate if your would address the 3 topics I explained above.

Thank you so much!

Jaq~

Thanks for listening! I’m glad to see that what was griping me is no longer an issue, lol (posts not showing up from most recent, difficulty finding the latest posts, etc.).

I liked the old format better.

Well kudos to them for listening to the complaints and trying to address them, but I just find the site confusing. When I come to the site now I just see a jumble of stuff I have to navigate and click through to get to what I want – reviews and spoilers. That’s it! REVIEWS and SPOILERS please! As others have said, that’s why I come here. There’s so much extraneous stuff on the website now that the whole experience just feels like a hard sell. I like a lot of the reviewers, this isn’t personal. Of course we all miss Liz but the current reviewers are also very likable and many of them I really like a lot. But I’m heading to “that other site” far more often now, sadly.

It looks sleek, it does. But it’s very hard to navigate and like another commentor, I only want reviews, spoilers, and choice. And they’re hard to find. I don’t hardly ever see any of the 3 anymore. And spoilers I do find are very late. But I hope they do continue to improve because even with me not liking the change, I still find myself here nonetheless.

I saw this headline and thought “they’re going to admit they’re moderating comments to keep out spoilers that are all over the Internet, apologize, and stop it.”

But no, you’re continuing to deny doing it. I don’t know what is up with MSA & FFF but when entire spoilers for a category are up on the FFF website, and other subscription websites, but MSA is only posting partial spoilers, MSA’s continued refusal to post comments and then refusing to admit it is frustrating.

Could you please adjust the comment template to show responses in the order that they’ve been posted? Replies are currently displayed in an asynchronous fashion.

So I realized msa is a big part of my sub addiction…I noticed the things I liked were not being posted or posted too late. I was progressively giving up…now this new site has me lost. All I want to see is Ipsy Birchbox fabfitfun and a few other boxes…their spoilers reviews and choice dates. I cannot find any of these on this new site. I just don’t get it…please come back to me msa…

I’m still waiting for reviews to actually be reviews! The kids’ review section is littered with coupons, but only has maybe 5 reviews? What is that? Have a promo section if you must but get it out of the reviews. It’s literally just an ad! And there are nearly 15 of them on any given page!

Also, please use the contents of the box and not pictures of your staff and families for article thumbnails. I can’t tell which beauty box you want me to subscribe to if the makeup is already applied to a writer’s face. Just use the box so I can see the branding and the contents very quickly. When I’m interested and click the post, THEN show me how the writer applied the makeup or the kids mixed the cake batter in their cooking box. The photos of staff with article titles in tiny font below make it hard to figure out what I’m seeing or why I should want it. I like that it’s included! But it shouldn’t be the main photo.

As others have stated, more reviews — written review, not video reviews or unboxings — would go a long way in helping me to trust the newer writers and give MSA another chance. Because while I’m commenting here, I’m using links from other sites that haven’t done a complete 180 on content and design.

I’ve been following this site since 2014, I wish it would go back to just Liz posting reviews, I even liked the old site, it was much more user friendly, while this one is pretty and up to date with current design trends, you’ve lost focus.

This is definitely an improvement, and re-adding the number of comments to the main page would also help get it back to being as functional as it was a week ago.

Even so, the content isn’t there, so I’ll be checking on a different site until the content here is better than it is there. Currently both content and functionality are worse.

I actually like the new site and recognize that it will take a bit of a learning curve. Thank you for the update and the tweaks.
A bug I found was that when I search for an item such as “Margot Elena”on my Android phone. The item shows up in the search but I can’t actually click on it to then go to that reviews or anything. Which is a bummer, I often look at past box reviews before I decide to purchase a subscription.

mod·er·a·tion
/ˌmädəˈrāSH(ə)n/
Learn to pronounce
noun
1.
the avoidance of excess or extremes, especially in one’s behavior or political opinions.

Maybe find a better word for the need for Big Brother to watch over comments.

Please explain “Comments should appear pending moderation” What exactly do you feel you need to modify?

All of my comments have been deleted in the past week. I am unsubscribing from MSA. It should save me money. I find that the site is not as fun and entertaining as it was. Greed got the best of MSA.

I have an old update that i have not been able to clear. I click, it blinks off. I click “remove notifications” and nothing happens.

Maybe, stop erasing comments. And yes, you absolutely erased my comment about the NFL box.

Can you just do reviews and spoilers. Most of what you post has nothing to do with sub boxes anymore. Might be time to change the name of the site as well.

Please do NOT redesign swap site to this new format! I love MSA swaps!
One very welcome feature would be having ability to search your own listings to edit/delete a specific item instead of scrolling through 100+ “skincare” (or was it under “face”?) items to delete what’s no longer available. When sorting a specific item listing by swapper (most experienced, highly rated, etc) the option “closest to you” doesn’t work & you can’t quickly jump to your own listing to see if yours is a sample or full size or bundle of 2 & what the value is and it’s a hassle to scroll through 84 listings looking for yours (did I list it already or got distracted? Do I still have it?). It would be very helpful if I could easily edit/delete my own listing by clicking on it in the “view listings” for that item once I scroll to it.
It would be great to have a designated space for value & whoever is the first person creating a listing, please state both the exact value & size (“sample” can be 0.1oz or 1.0oz & “full” can be ranging from 1 to 10 oz). Otherwise values & sizes are either missing or all over the place. MSA is doing a great job accurately assessing sample values so I always read your reviews to decide if something is worth the price.
Another suggestion – have a required entry for “month & year received” instead of “expiration date”. Otherwise there is no telling if an item is from this month Ipsy or from a year ago Boxy but listed under FFF add-on because somebody didn’t want to bother to create a new listing under the appropriate box or double listed same item in 2 places.

While you’ll never make everyone happy, I really appreciate the effort that was quickly made to address reader-requested tweaks. It’ll take a bit for those of us who made MSA a daily stop to get used to the new site, but change is good!

Here’s my beef…if I click on the “Load More’ button in the “Latest” category and then click on any of the stories, when I go back to the “Latest” category, I have to start over at the top again and I lose my place. I hate that so much and it keeps me from looking at more than the current page.