The murky underworld of natural hair products

I have always said that it is my goal to promote natural hair businesses because they are serving a niche market that I happen to be a part of. This year my goal is to get as many diverse companies to giveaway products and therefore get the near 80,000 or so people who come to this blog every month to see what is out there and whether it is worth buying or not.

I have found that while 90% of businesses that approach me are genuine, there is a minority of some strange, mildly dodgy responses that I receive:

-I do consider it dodgy to not have the business owner and location named on your site.
-I do consider it dodgy to have a super professional site and several testimonials if you have been operating for just a month.
-I also have some businesses where google brings up a slew of really terrible reviews including things that are potentially dangerous like mould in newly ordered products! Yet oddly enough, these companies are still running!
- I do consider it odd to have the owner of a company taking a confrontational approach to criticism (Odd though not dodgy as anyone in UK will tell you all about multimillionaire Michael O'Leary who does not mind calling his customers the fword).

I am wondering, what is your criteria for purchasing from a business? Give me your answers in the poll to right! Do you read or care for reviews?

Comments

  1. First thing I do is a google search. I look for the product and the ingredient list. If there is no ingredient list and I can't find one anywhere. That is almost the end of my interest. I do look for reviews but I work in the E-Sales and if I see too many raving reviews for a new product I get suspicious. I love the various forums. Often you can find enough people with real experience of a product or company to make a good decision. One company I sent an email and asked for an ingredient list of a product and they refused. That is fine, they obviously didn't need my business and I refuse to buy any product that does not list ingredients or plays those sneaky word games with ingredients.

    Good article!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with you on forums! It is so easy to go over to lhcf and just type in the company name. Forums are where the product junkies live and they do a really good job of saying whether a company will deliver or not and whether the product is below par or not!

    ReplyDelete
  3. PayPal option and customer service. Due to the forums I frequent, the ingredients list is not difficult to find (sometimes on Amazon.com). I've ordered from a few well-known natural hair care companies that had lousy customer service--will NOT order from them again. Am leary about a company with no PayPal option. Even though there's a service charge to the company, from a customer's point of view, PayPal and its benefits provide peace of mind.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I will explore a company based on forum reviews. Then make sure they have Paypal as an option. Recent shenanigans are going to make it harder for new vendors to get away with shoddy customer service no matter how slight. In fact, I think I'll just be returning those tried and true businesses.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I definitely read reviews; they are my first stop. If they're bad, I don't go any further. I never trust the company web site reviews, though. I go to my hair forums, YouTube, or post to my social media accounts to find real-life users.

    After reviews I factor in cost and ingredients. But honestly, ingredients are not as big a deal to me as to most naturals. I use what works for me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I trust reviews from other naturals, although the mixed reviews often leave me confused. But I often purchase products based on availability and price. Living in Canada doesn't really give you much option, unless you don't mind paying for shipping.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love comments! All comments are moderated so they will only appear on the blog once I approve them.

Popular Posts