I ordered a perfume sample and got the wrong one. A journey into the dark heart of a Mad Tea-party ensued:

 

Hi Joanne,

I’m the founder and creative director of Sigil and I wanted to say thank you for your purchase from us. At Sigil, we are committed to bringing you the highest-quality, gender-fluid, natural fine fragrances and beauty essentials. We also believe in doing business for good. Our social mission sees us giving back to nonprofits who directly reflect our vision and values.

We appreciate your business, and are excited to have you in our community. If you have any feedback, or want to say hi, reply to this email. As a special treat, use the code MODERNALCHEMY at checkout to shop with 15% off your next purchase.

We’d love to hear from you. Be sure to follow along with us on Instagram for all the latest, too.

With love,
Patrick Kelly
Sigil founder

To: Sigil <info@sigilscent.com>
Thank you for your nice welcome. Here is my problem: I wanted to order a sample of Amor Fati, which sounds like something I would love.

But on the Amor Fati page, when you click on “sample”, it brings you to the Individual Sample page. There, I clicked on “add to cart” without realizing that there was a drop down menu where I had to scroll down to Amore Fati.

So, instead of Amore FAti, I was sent Aqua Viridi (the first item in the drop down menu.) And it is truly awful to my nose!!!!

I can’t take the time to go to the post office to send this sample back to you. I would like a sample of Amore Fati, though. I think it should be complimentary, due to the confusing mechanism of ordering a sample.

I expect to love Amor Fati, and would be more than happy to leave an enthusiastic review!

Best,
Joanne Wolf

Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com> Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 3:01 PM
To: Joanne Wolf
Hi Joanne,

Thank you for your email. The product you’re purchasing is also available for confirmation twice at checkout to be sure there are no questions. You can use the checkout code SIGILFRIEND for a very generous discount at checkout.

Enjoy,
Sigil

[the generous discount was $5]

Joanne Wolf    Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 3:21 PM
To: Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com>
The sample link on the Amor Fati page defaults to a different product! Maybe you could clarify this to your customers.

Here’s what I would like to happen to resolve this: Please send me what I wanted and paid for in the first place, a sample of Amor Fati.

I look forward to resolving this matter.

Thanks,
Joanne Wolf

info@sigilscent.com <info@sigilscent.com> Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 3:27 PM
To: Joanne Wolf
Hi Joanne,

Thank you for your response.

As you mentioned previously, there is only one sample product detail page with a drop down to select the sample you would like. I’ll send a note to our developer to see if there’s any way to try to have the dropdown force select based on the referring URL that came before the product page. But it’s the customer’s responsibility to confirm cart contents reflect their intended purchase. You are served an itemized list at the cart summary page before entering your card or payment info, where it lists the name of the sample(s) and any other items in your cart.

We don’t accept returns or exchanges and do not offer refunds.

If you’d like to cover the cost of shipping from our warehouse I can try to get the cost of a new order for an Amor Fati sample covered, without shipping. Let me know.

Cheers,
Sigil

Joanne Wolf      Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 3:41 PM
To: Sigil <info@sigilscent.com>
I’m disappointed by your response. Shipping is around 7$ and I’ve already spent $24 for something I don’t want, due to your problematic coding.

I buy things online all the time! And this has NEVER happened to me.

I will leave an honest review of Aqua Viridi, and I can also mention your rude customer service on Instagram and on my own website, https://godammit.com/

with sadness,
Joanne

info@sigilscent.com <info@sigilscent.com> Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 4:02 PM
To: Joanne Wolf
Hi Joanne,

Sorry to hear offering you a free sample after shipping costs won’t be agreeable.

We understand your frustration, and for others’ sake will see if there’s any other way we can make it more clear that what’s in your cart is what you’ll receive after checkout.

Also very sorry to hear you found our service rude as we strive to listen for understanding.

Let us know if you change your mind on our offer to send you a free sample.

Sigil
An experiment in modern alchemy®

Joanne Wolf      Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 1:25 PM
To: Sigil <info@sigilscent.com>
Well, so many things to digest!

First, you sent me a reply to my review of Aqua Viridi, but did not publish the review. Why is that? Only positive reviews published or what?

Second, returning to your website, I see that when you put a product in your cart, ANOTHER PRODUCT IS ADDED that you have to manually uncheck in order not to buy it! Who are you guys, Donald Trump?? This is one of the dodgy practices that have been reported on the Trump donation page! How terrible! Again, I buy things online all the time and have NEVER encountered this! You guys should be ashamed. It is clearly deliberate and not a coding bug.

Third, I order fragrance samples from Smallflower.com on occasion, and they are usually $5 I have subsequently purchased the full size products.

Fourth, I just purchased some lingerie from a small niche company whose policy is: if it doesn’t fit, you may have one FREE exchange, with no charge for return or new shipping. I love my item that I received in the exchange and will be back to buy more.

So, here is a serious question: What’s wrong with you?? You are happy to lose a customer over $7?? Is it the principle that bothers you or does $7 mean that much to your profit report? If I had liked the fragrance I wanted to try, I would have notified all my fragrance-junkie friends, and I would have eagerly purchased the full size bottle. What a win for you, and a great return on a seven dollar investment!

Please think this over and explain your customer service philosophy. I am documenting this conversation and look forward to your response.

Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com> Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 2:51 PM
To: Joanne Wolf
HI Joanne,

I hope you’re having a great afternoon.

I’ll answer your questions below in-line. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do for you.

Have a great rest of your week.

Sigil

Joanne Wolf    Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 3:09 PM
To: Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com>
I am having a super great afternoon! So nice of you to mention it. I won’t take a screenshot for you. Simply order a sample and watch what happens. A full bottle is added with a total of $140 or something. You need to uncheck the full bottle that you did not ask for! May we not be honest here?

regarding my negative review: it is sincere and not the result of a threat. I see that you don’t show a single negative review…dishonest and no help to the consumer.

I do think that others should be warned about your hostile and deceitful practices and will do my best to get the word out. Not a threat but merely an honest effort to spare others this unpleasant experience.

You have a blessed day, okay?

love,
Joanne

Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com> Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 5:34 PM
To: Joanne Wolf
Thank you, Joanne.

I’ve tried to replicate the issue but am unable to do so. My guess is you did have a full size in your cart. Nothing can be added there without the customer choosing to add to cart.

You’re our first review below 3 stars! We just launched reviews on October 1.

We’ve been very thorough in our explanations and answers to all your concerns about our policies, your checkout experience, etc. Let us know if we can do anything else for you. Have a great week and weekend ahead.

Cheers,
Sigil

Joanne Wolf    Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 6:52 PM
To: Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com>
I do have one more concern re your policies: given the length of this correspondence, I’m wondering if it’s the principle, or the seven dollars that motivates you? Surely the time you’ve put in today was worth far more than $7, unless you’re a volunteer.

I hope you’re having a great evening and that every single day henceforth brings you rapture and personal fulfillment. Top that!

yours sincerely,
Joanne

[days pass, during which, Karen-like, I write to the fragrance website where I first encountered Sigil scents, and advised them of my bad experience]

Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com> Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 10:56 AM
To: Joanne Wolf
Hi Joanne,

I hope you’ve been having a great week so far. Happy autumn.

Your concern was escalated to our leadership and we were able to make a small quality of life improvement to our checkout experience. So now the mini-cart more clearly displays the variant name of the sample, not just when you get to the payment processing/cart confirmation view.

Anyway, all this to say we probably wouldn’t have caught this for a while without you mentioning the confusion you experienced.

So we wanted to send along a $50 digital gift card. You’ll receive an email with that info shortly. I hope this helps. Thanks again for being so understanding and thorough in your explanations before.

Cheers,
Sigil

Joanne Wolf    Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 2:35 PM
To: Sigil Scent <info@sigilscent.com>
What a delightful outcome to this tawdry conflict! My quality of life has definitely risen a notch or two by your timely attention to the website glitch.

I can’t wait to try the fragrance I intended to buy in the first place!

Wishing you an abundant autumn and a joyous Diwali, followed by a bountiful Thanksgiving, a healthy Hanukkah and a magnificent Christmas to celebrate His birth.

Very very sincerely yours,
Joanne Wolf

I just saw this chair at 1stdibs and couldn’t help thinking “Mom of Shoes!”

So from now on, let’s consider ourselves her personal shoppers! If you see something that would fit in with Mom’s fabulous new decor, send it to me at:   sisterwolf666@gmail.com

Why do people want to look at those photos of pretentious-looking girls wearing important shoes with fur coats and enormous handbags? Who gives a shit! I’ve only looked at The Satorialist once and that was enough. Forget about his images; his text is nauseating!

I don’t care about him or his French girlfriend or any of those blogs that feature smug anorexics wrapped in leather or whatever is supposed to be fierce and covetable. No matter how often they’re praised as “effortlessly chic,” they look like they’ve spent half of their lives in front of a mirror.

I can’t even understand what I’m supposed to feel when I look at those pictures. Am I supposed to feel inspired, like maybe I can appropriate the Look for myself? Am I supposed to be envious? I just feel vaguely soiled from looking at them.   It’s like porn for the post-sexual consumer.   And to me, they all look the same, they’re are the same cliche, all lauded   for being original and “getting it right.” Getting it Right is my new linguistic complaint.

Fashion is still an obsession for me, obviously, with a certain amount of love-hate conflict. Here are some looks from Secret Squirrel, a brand you can find at the Australian fashion wonderland The Grand Social.   This is what I would buy if I had some money and some common sense:

It’s casual but elegant, tomboyish but okay for an old bag, much better than leather shorts or another pair of jeans.

Here’s another look from Secret Squirrel. I would feel perfectly comfortable in this for an evening out, not that I’m ever going anywhere.

You’d think I would know who I was by now, when I buy clothes. Instead, I keep buying buying shit I can’t walk in, can’t style properly, or can’t even figure out what I was thinking when I bought it.   I think Secret Squirrel could help me to Get it Right.

Remember when it was summer, and we’d cut off an old pair of jeans to make shorts? I still do that, nearly every year. Why do trendy brands like Vince think we want to pay $195 for a pair of cut-offs? Why do they think we’re that stupid? Are we?

The brand “What Goes Around Comes Around” really thinks we’re stupid.   They want us to pay $195 for putting some studs in a pair of Converse lowtops.   The studded hightops are $350. As if!

WGACA is a multiple offender. See this “Chanel” necklace? They want you to pay $795 for it, because you think it’s vintage. Chanel is the most counterfeited brand in the entire world, and some of it is very convincing if you don’t know better. This WGACA shit is being sold all over the place for tons of money. It’s just crap.

It annoys me to have my common sense challenged like this. Everybody’s all up in arms over a pricey T-shirt by Balmain, but the assumption that the style-conscious consumer is a stupid idiot is rampant across the board.

I hope those cutoffs don’t sell. I need to think that no one’s that stupid.

R13 is a line of denim produced in Italy that triggered my irrational yearning last year with an ad campaign featuring a tomboy endowed with an endearing Fuck You attitude.

See how pissed off she is?! Her Angry Runaway Look is particularly resonant for me, but obviously the appeal is widespread.

Look how pissed off she is above, in the new season droopy jeans!

I can’t remember if I’ve already divulged the shameful fact of my jeans hoarding. I have 22 pairs of jeans in rotation. Some are black but they’re still jeans. I’m not counting the leather ones or the red ones. My only consolation is that my friend Mark has 6o pairs of Levi’s. Thank you, Mark!

I’m pretty sure that I could live with maybe 4 pairs of jeans. A baggy pair, a tight pair, a high-waisted pair, and a black pair. But just thinking about it makes me nervous. Hoarding is a difficult and persistent problem, I am learning.

Luckily, I’ve just realized that I don’t need the R13 droopy jeans ($275) because nearly all of my jeans look like this by the end of the day. I am not exaggerating. They start out tight in the morning, and later on they are sagging to the point of falling off.

I can’t get them a size smaller, because then they’re too tight. God has worked hard on this conundrum, always making sure that the next size down will refuse to stretch out enough. Let’s give Him the credit He deserves for this!

I would like someone to provide exhaustive research on the fit of different brands and styles of jeans: For example, which work best for flat butts, big butts, long-waisted figures or big hips with a small waist. I want to know which jeans will stretch out a full size and which won’t.

Isn’t there a huge market for this? Or is it only the wish of a hoarder with drooping issues?

Today, I went to Beverly Hills with the BFF and she had to hiss “Cher!” at me before I noticed Cher standing right by us in the Neiman Marcus shoe department! I turned to gawk at Cher, who looked just like herself only much smaller. She is actually quite tiny, in height and weight. She said to her assistant/handmaiden something like, “It’s really cute, isn’t it?” and her voice was EXACTLY like her voice!

I was so excited that I couldn’t stop staring. My BFF wanted me to stop, but I didn’t care. I wanted to take in every element: The black cargo pants with a million zippers, the long blue-black hair, the sunglasses that she never took off. When Cher sat down and removed her jacket to reveal a tight black bodysuit, I squealed, “Oooh, look at the implants!”

My BFF managed to move me along and we went upstairs, only to find Cher in the same place 30 minutes later. Her assistant/handmaiden was helping her to try on jackets, which she held open for Cher like an attentive date.

We tried on sunglasses while I kept an eye on Cher. I modeled a pair of sunglasses by some stupid brand I’ve never heard of, that the salesgirls were pushing aggressively. “Aren’t these glorious!” I exclaimed a little too loudly, raising the eyebrows of a gay guy who clearly didn’t agree. Everyone tried to persuade me that another pair was more flattering but I was fixated on the glorious ones.

Meanwhile, Cher was strutting around in the new Olive green Balmain military jacket.

It looked preposterous on her but she seemed quite taken with it. I turned to the salesgirls and squealed, “Look! Cher is trying on the Balmain jacket!” They nodded and the gay guy confided, “She likes Balmain.” I complained to the BFF that Cher should leave that jacket to the girl whose boyfriend hits her. It took a while before she retrieved the word, “Rihanna.”

I bought the glorious sunglasses with ny NM charge card, meaning they were free! Don’t tell my husband.

Then, we walked down the street to Saks. A frightening, giant Nordic woman showed me some awful new lipstick by Guerlain, and the BFF bought a sexy bustier by Camilla and Marc. We relaxed in the Saks cafe, where I ate an apple tart that cost $9 and started to realize that the sunglasses were a tragic mistake.

But at least I saw Cher!

Happy now? Me neither!

Here you can see the stupid leggings that I was the last to know about. I think they are less horrible than reputed to be, but they are not comfortable and there is no point to them. Where would I wear them, and why? It’s like wearing an elastic girdle from waist to ankle.

If I were a black prostitute with a bubble butt, maybe.

These stupid Black Rats retail for $175. You can win them for the price of shipping and handling, simply by explaining to me why I bought them, in 500 words. Or, by making me laugh out loud. I will post the winning entry and then I’ll have one less reminder of my tragic shopping addiction.

If only I hadn’t bought these Rats, I might allow my self to buy this amazing cashmere sweater from Henri Bendel. It was designed by a student-teacher team from SCAD, and comes in two different floral patterns.

Admit it’s beautiful!

Finally, back to PAP Smear business: Did you see the Church Lady’s blank face when asked about the Bush Doctrine? Of course I didn’t know what it meant either but I’M NOT RUNNING FOR VICE PRESIDENT! He should have asked her about birth control or why she drops her g’s when she talks to Alaskans.

Please, please, take her away.