Review: Sephora.com

With the internet becoming more widespread and developed every single day, it's easy to see why beauty experts Sephora have offer almost all their products online at Sephora.com. The site offers some interesting incentives for shopping on their website, particularly the "3 Frees": Free Shipping ($50 orders+), Free Returns and Free Samples (3) with every purchase. Sounds great, right? Let's see how good these free things really are:

Free Shipping (on $50 or more): Free shipping is extremely common on many sites today; in fact, it's a rarity to find a site that doesn't offer this incentive to it's customers. At Sephora, $50 worth of product is not hard to accumulate, and sometimes it's nice to stock up on a few faves if it means free shipping. The only problem with free shipping, is it often takes a while to arrive. Sephora.com uses UPS, so depending where you live, it can take up to 1 1/2 weeks for your order to arrive. I live in Utah, and it did indeed take that long for me to get my package. If Sephora used the post office, I have no doubts that delivery would be significantly shorter, so I have to question Sephora's choice of delivery. I know it means cheaper for them, but I'd be willing to pay a few extra dollars if it meant my order arrived a few days earlier. 

Score: 3 out of 5

Free Samples: For every order you place, you receive 3 free samples. And, if you are a Beauty Insider, you have the opportunity to get deluxe samples with your order as well. Samples can be primers, foundations, fragrances, moisturizers, etc. It's a great way to try out new products and add a little bonus to your order. You likely won't find this at many other online beauty retailers, so this alone is worth shopping at sephora.com. 

Score: 5 out of 5

Free Returns: Returns should never have a price. I believe all stores should have free returns, which is why this isn't that exciting to me. I recently returned a product to sephora.com. Their return policy states that it may take up to 30 days to process a return. Well, when my return still hadn't been processed within that 30 day window, I called sephora, and they said it could take up to 6 weeks! I received my credit within 5 weeks, but to me, this is a little long for a "free" return. It's free yes, but I had to worry for 5 weeks that my $100 return could have possibly gotten lost in the mail. Now, this may not be typical, but neither is it super convenient. I'd recommend planning on a s-l-o-w return when shopping sephora.com

Score: 1 out of 5

Overall Score: 3 out of 5

Analysis: Sephora.com is a friendly place to shop, and provides almost every desired beauty line in one place, but when shopping, forget about the "3 frees".

EDIT: Get 20% off at Sephora from Nov 6-10, by using code FF2008!