[INTRO MUSIC]
So, today, I want to talk about a company that I would suggest you try avoiding for
all of your YouTube career.
And that company would be ReelStyle.
If you follow a lot of beauty/fashion bloggers, then you’ve probably already heard of ReelStyle
within the past year.
And if you’ve been following me for almost a year, then you know that I had worked with
them for a couple of months to create some t-shirts.
I also stopped talking about them not too long after I made the announcement video that
showed my t-shirts and I said you all could go buy them or whatever that you wanted to
do with them.
And that is because about a month or two after - I think two or three months, really -
After I posted that video, I cut ties with them because -
Well, we’re gonna go over those reasons.
Now, I will say that I am not the only person who has had issues with this company.
There are, at least that I know of, three other videos explaining their situation.
I will put those links down below.
Fair warning: I don’t think any of those three are captioned, but -
Long story short, they’re situation is almost identical to mine.
So, just to give a little bit of a backstory, back in February or March 2015, I got an e-mail
from this company that said, “Hey,”
“We really love your channel and we want to collaborate with you and you can make t-shirts
and makeup and nail polish and all kinds of other stuff with us.”
I think it was around February or March. It could’ve been a little bit earlier, but
definitely sometime between December and February, I think.
I don’t know. At least before March, definitely.
And, at first, I was a little bit skeptical because 1: it involves a contract and when
it comes to law, at least with the little fine print in contracts, they’re in a completely
different language to me.
But, a friend of mine, LaurDIY, was with this company and had her own merchandise line and
I thought,
“Okay, this might be legitimate.”
And my boyfriend, Devon, and our friend, Ryan, also said that it looks legitimate and because
Laur is in it and also Estee from EssieButton was with them - or may still be with them,
I don’t know -
Maybe it’ll work out.
So, we got into contact and, honestly, everything was alright.
When we were getting together and doing a Skype call to discuss designs,
they typed to me, I spoke to them, we met halfway with this whole, “Hi, I’m deaf,
you’re hearing” communication thing.
It went well and I was looking forward to working with them.
I got to create three t-shirts which I still have because they’re mine and my name is
attached to them, so I’m going to keep them.
But I got to make three t-shirts and… yeah.
I can’t remember if the release date was at the end of March or at the end of April.
But either way, the date had to be pushed back because I was either A) in LA doing the
movie shoot or in Toronto in April, so
when the t-shirts arrived, I was not here so I couldn’t try them on officially and
do an announcement video for them.
So I get back here, everything is fine, we make a video and I’m pretty excited to get
that going.
And I’m pretty sure that I deleted the announcement video because it’s not relevant anymore,
so if you’re gonna try looking for the video, it’s probably not there.
So fast forward about a month or two and this is the time when people are supposed to be
getting their t-shirts and what have you, and -
In the beginning, everything went alright. People were getting shirts and they were really
enjoying them. However, there was the other half of the customer
base that I had.
Granted, it was a small one, but it was a customer base that I had nonetheless.
I was getting e-mails and tweets, Tumblr messages, asking me what the hell was going on.
And I thought, “Oh, shit. Here it comes.” because -
Here’s what happens: my name is attached - anyone’s name is attached to their merchandise
and they’re gonna get questions first.
And we risk getting a bad reputation because our name is attached to the item.
But, really, communication between me and the customers actually went pretty well because
the minute that they told me what was going on, I went to go find out what was going on.
I got messages telling me that they weren’t receiving their order and it had been four
weeks to eight weeks.
They were getting the wrong ones whether it would be a different size than they ordered
or even the wrong design which I thought was ridiculous.
But the one thing that really kind of bothered me was how they would say that they were e-mailing
them, they were tweeting them, they were writing to them on Facebook, they were calling them,
even, and nobody would give them a response.
They would keep talking to people on Twitter, but nobody would actually respond to anything
that had anything to do with, “Hey, I don’t have my order or I have the wrong one. Can
you please get back to me?”
So nothing was going on until I actually went and contacted them, both publicly and privately,
just to get something to happen.
Now, my grandmother ordered t-shirts, okay, and when my grandmother comes into the picture,
that gets even worse.
My grandmother was constantly calling and nobody was picking up the phone.
I had a friend who was trying to have a conversation with customer service and the answers that
they would get would have absolutely nothing to do with the problem.
And, not only that, but it would sound like they weren’t taking it seriously.
So it’s kind of like if something awkward happens, you know, you’re trying to play
it off and joke and what not when this is actually something that’s pretty serious.
So I was, you know, trying to find out what was happening and they would say stuff like,
“Oh, we’re working on it,” but then nobody’s really working on it.
And then I would tell them to please answer this customer of mine because you are the
people that are responsible for getting this stuff sent out and people are going to you
for customer service because you are the customer service.
And you are not giving any of these customers any service and that was making me very nervous.
So after a while, I just started to contact them and I was like, “Hey,”
“Honestly, because this just keeps going on for more and more weeks, if we can, I would
like to end the contract with you and just go.”
And there was talk about how I don’t have faith in their team or whatever and I’m like,
When you’re not doing anything, how, honestly, how am I supposed to have any faith in you
when
nobody is getting any of their orders, nobody’s getting their questions answered.
And I was actually looking on their Facebook page while this was going on and other customers,
people that weren’t even my customers, they were other YouTubers’ customers or whatever,
they would leave posts saying that nobody was answering their phone calls, nobody was
answering their emails and it had been two weeks to a month, but they would keep -
“So it’s been two weeks to a month since I’ve gotten any sort of response at all”
and you’re still putting out new creators, like six new creators a week -
which just - which just means more merchandise and then talking about all these new sales,
yet you can’t reply to the e-mails about sales that have already happened before the
new people came in.
And, honestly, what’s kind of weird to me is that all of these new creators that would
be part of their lines -
These six new creators that would show up a week, they all have a very low amount of
subscribers.
Now, I’m not saying that nobody should have an opportunity, but it’s just -
You’re not gonna be making a lot of money from people that nobody’s ever heard of.
So, like, with Grace’s situation and I think Sabrina’s situation,
They got taken off their contract because “nobody was buying their product,” well,
If you put somebody in the same line as somebody like -
Somebody with a million subscribers, let’s put it that way -
The amount of people that buy, there’s going to be a difference.
But anyway, that aside, I was - I was done. I said, if we can…
terminate contract and just be gone, I think it would be better for us because I’m getting
stressed about nobody getting their questions answered and you clearly just -
are afraid that I’m afraid of you, in a way -
so I think it’s just better that we split up and go our own way -
good luck to you, thank you for the opportunity, and - just - let’s be done.
If I was a company like this and I wanted to…
If I was on the customer service team and somebody was coming to me with a problem,
I would want to make sure that everything is going smoothly. I want your question answered,
professionally,
I don’t want to make a joke out of it and write some nonsensical stuff in an e-mail
and then, you know, I don’t want to ignore your emails,
I don’t want to ignore your phone calls. I don’t want to ignore your tweets or your
Facebook messages or any of that.
I want to make sure that people that were buying from me are happy.
In the best way possible. You can’t always make everything 100% and nothing’s going
to be perfect, but you can try the best that you can. Alright?
So, honestly, if you get an e-mail from this company, I would be very, very, very careful.
Because me and the three other girls are not the only people who have had problems.
Big creators in that little creator line have had issues.
And I’m not gonna blurt out their problems because they haven’t made anything public.
But I just want to say that it’s happened and we’ve personally talked about it even
face to face, so…
That’s just a little bit of a warning message that I wanted to give out.
I will put links to Vanessa’s, Grace’s, and Sabrina’s videos down below.
I don’t know if anybody else has made any videos since those came out, but here’s mine.
Alright. And I will see you later. Bye.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community