Tuesday, February 25, 2014

LensVillage Review



Now that the craziness of Fashion Week has finally died down and things are settling back into place, I finally got the time to blog. I also updated my layout, so it's now a very professional, minimalist look which I already hate. My youtube channel is also updated for the first time in a year! It has a hair review up, go watch asap after reading this! 

As of late, I purchased two beautiful lenses from lensvillage.com. This is the first time I ever purchased from them and I feel that lenses and the companies you purchase from should be reviewed separately. The quality of the lenses don't usually reflect on the quality of the company. 

So quick story was my Dueba Puffy 3-Tones Gray lifespan had officically completely worn out and I needed a pair of lenses for Uptown Fashion Week (which I attended and will blog about) as well my Birthday.  I only had 10 days to get these lenses and nowhere I typically purchased from, had a low prices on express shipping. As of late I've been only ordering from thedollyeye.com. I used to order from geoeyecandy.blogspot.com, which is a San Francisco based store but they had closed for sometime in 2010 as well as some sketchy blog store that used to sell Geo lenses for $10.

So I'm not used to paying over $15 for circle lenses nor have I ever had to pay shipping before. But I needed these in a rush and out of the popular and trustworthy stores, LensVillage was the only one to have a flat rate shipping policy and had the lowest international express shipping price(sue me if I'm wrong). Their international shipping was only $12, so I asked a friend to order with me which made the shipping price lower.


Shipping:
The packaging was pretty standard. It was wrapped up and the packaging had no dents. It came with two animal contact cases. Everything look like it was nicely and carefully put together. Shipping was really fast too. Despite a huge snow storm, it took 4 days to reach my door after it was shipped. My only peeve is that it takes 3-4 days for them to actually process my order out for shipping. I think that the longest I ever heard for any company.  So with that in regard, they receive 3.5/5 stars for shipping.



Price:
The prices on the website are standard  for most of the major retailers of circle lenses (i,e loveshoppingholic, pinky paradise, honey color etc) Most contacts are around $20 which isn't an abnormal price. Honestly its a sigh of relief for some of us New Yorkers, because the only place to physically buy circle lenses is a store in Flushing, Queens and they up the price all the way to $40 for non-name brand circle lenses. Man, ya should of seen my face with that lady when she told me that price. I didn't even haggle, I stormed my ass out. But I do recall once a time a go when I used to sell circle lenses, the bulk order of Geo Lenses straight from the manufacturer was about $8-$12 a pair, however Geo mandates all retailers to sell at a certain price.  Dueba and other big manufacturers however (at the time) did not mandate this. So are you really telling me the price shouldn't be even a tad lower? You know beat out the competition with prices...

But it is a comfortable price so 4/5 stars for that.


If you can see (I'm sorry my camera didn't focus), the website on the container is thedollyeye.com which explains pricing aspect a bit but also makes you question, if you are only going to buy per say one pair from the Puffy 3 tone series, skip the middleman and you get a lower price and free shipping.

Promotions:

This made the store really attractive. I didn't originally look for the sales because I was in a rush but they were holding some excellent sales. I had purchased the Puffy 3 tones Violet and the Geo Nudy Browns for my friend, so we qualified for the buy 2 get one free deal. So I received the Geo Nudy Blues for free. Following that, they had an instagram promotion where if you posted a picture of your new lenses, you get a rebate. I was lucky enough to be one of the first 50 so I did get that rebate. On top of that I already had 5% off the order to begin with thanks to Carisse Iris (mydarlingrainbow)'s reference code.
So they recieve 5/5 because that was the best sales I ever stumbled upon accidentally.

Customer Service:

I was actually expecting terrible CS but they were really on point. Despite me not having a real issue. I did FB message their PR on how I really needed those lenses on time and 4 days had passed without my items being shipped yet. Within a few hours my order status had changed. I also got an email when I got the rebate. It was personalized and very professional which honestly had impressed me. \

So 5/5

Will I ever buy from them again?

On overall service they deserve a 4.3 so yes whenever I have a big order or need fast shipping I will order again. I didn't have any ordeals whatsoever.

I hope this helps you guys when searching for a circle lenses retailer. This review was not sponsored in any way or form.

I will be posting the actual review on the Geo Nudy Blue and an updated review on the Dueba Puffy 3-tone Violet soon.

In the meantime keep up with my social media.
 Instagram
Youtube
Tumblr
Twitter




Thursday, February 13, 2014

The Reprisal

New York winters are terrible.

I'm literally snowed into my house with 12+ inches waiting outside for me. There is more snow to come too.

I know the people in the city are like this snow is nothing. Please drive 10 miles north so I can throw 20,000 snowballs at you.

People down south, 2 inches of snow and the whole state gets shutdown.

I hate winter.

Thanks to winter, my package from lensvillage.com got delayed. So when I do get it, I'll  go ahead and review it. But in the meantime here are more sneakpeaks from secret project.

 These were rushed and edited because I needed pictures for a casting call prompto.

I passed the casting call by chance. But the fitting and dress rehearsal is during my trip to Japan so -___- thats a negative. For some reason, my hair looks like an ombre blue when the photo was printed so I love it to the max but now my agency has it (I wanted to keep it and hang it on my wall lol)



If you like this look be sure to hype it up on lookbook

Ciao Lovlies