Buyer Beware: Biobliss

Update (10/5/2011): Please refer to the comments below to see the response that was personally posted by the Owner and CEO of Biobliss on this blog post. In light of his comment, I am cautiously optimistic that Biobliss is working out the kinks and may offer the amazing customer experience every fabulous beauty lover deserves when they use/order from their company!

I want to preface this by stating that this post is based on my experience only.

I read about Biobliss on a few blogs and thought I'd give their forehead patches a try. I don't have any noticeable wrinkles, but the patches themselves intrigued me! I went onto their site and took advantage of the Biobliss Trial Patch Double-Pack, which allows you to try two patches for free if you pay $4.95 in shipping. I thought this was a great way to give beauty enthusiasts like myself the opportunity to try it. I paid the shipping and eagerly waited for my package to come.

It came fairly quickly because it shipped from Rhode Island and I live in New England. I tried one of the patches out that night. According to the instructions, you cleanse your forehead with one of the cleansing wipes provided, then remove the patch, press the on/off button (which will set off a blinking light), then stick it to your forehead (it's tacky).

Biobliss forehead patch in packaging. You can see the on/off button on the round circular part of the patch.

I pressed the button and nothing happened. I waited, then pressed it again and it began to very slowly blink. According to the instructions you leave this patch on your forehead for 1 hour, at which time the blinking light will go off indicating it's time to remove it. I put it on and set a timer. Other than the feeling of having a giant sticker adhered to my forehead there was no other sensation. An hour later, the light was still slowly blinking. I waited another 5 minutes ... still blinking. 10 minutes ... still blinking. 15 minutes after an hour had passed and this patch was still slowly blinking. I took it off anyway and didn't see a difference, but then again, I don't have any noticeable forehead wrinkles so I figured it wasn't a big deal. Hubs suggested I leave the patch out so I could see when the blinking light went off. I did and an hour later it was still slowly blinking. We looked at it together and tried pressing the button a few times. Suddenly the blinking went from slow to fast and the patch looked as though it puffed up a bit and became cool to the touch. I read the instructions again and it said nothing about pressing it more than once or watching for a rapid blinking as opposed to slow blinking.

I sent an email to the company and received this response:

Dear DJ,

We apologize that you had problems with the patches you received. While we do state that the patch is active for a

I would apologize for having an issue with the patch received and advise that while we do state 1 hour there is some variation in the amount of time that each patch is active.  We will ship her another set of product for her review.

Make sense? Nope, because the customer service rep actually forwarded the comment from his/her supervisor to me, began responding to me, then hit send before completing the message to me. Okay, honest mistake that shouldn't have happened, but people make mistakes. I received a second email minutes later that said the following:

Dear DJ,

We apologize that you had a problem with the patches we sent you. While we do state that the patches are active for a one hour duration, they vary slightly in the exact amount of time each patch is active. We would love to send you an additional set of two patches for you to try and review. If you are interested, please let us know and we will be happy to ship you two replacements. You can email us back at customerservice@biobliss.com or call us toll free at 1-888-243-0646.

Again, apologies for the inconvenience.

Thank you,
Biobliss Customer Service

This time the message was complete and they did not include the comment from their supervisor. No apology for the odd message prior, but not a huge deal I suppose. I emailed back and said I really appreciated their attentive customer service and that I'd be interested in giving the patches another go. I received the replacement patches about a week later.

Again, I followed the instructions to the letter. When I went to press the on/off button nothing happened. I pressed it again ... still nothing. I must have hit that button and waited a few minutes in between at least 7 or 8 times. I got Hubs and asked him to try. Same results. This one would not turn on at all. Hubs peeled back one side of the circular button and looked at the stuff inside (not sure what to cal this "stuff"). Essentially there was a piece of metal that should have sent off a charge or electricity when it made contact with the other metal piece once you pressed the button. Hubs used took a butter knife out and touched it to one of the contact pieces of metal and got the light blinking and the patch began to cool and puff up a bit. The problem was, as soon as he took the knife away the blinking stopped and the patch returned to the way it was before. I'd received a dude. The second patch worked fairly well. I had to press it several times to get it going, but it did work. The light did not go off after an hour, it continued blinking indefinitely.

I was going to write this review last night, but ended up having a million other things to do and figured I'd get to it today. Glad I did!

After dropping my older guy off at school, I received the following email:

Dear DJ Murphy, Thank you for participating in the Biobliss Look Younger Today program. Your renewal order for two Biobliss patches is about to be shipped. We are delighted that you are one of our loyal customers and we hope you have enjoyed the results of using Biobliss. As a member of the Look Younger Today program, we want you to be the first to experience our new Biobliss for Eyes. As your initial program benefit, we have enclosed a set of our new eye patches as our gift in your shipment. Since the launch of Biobliss, many of our customers have asked us to develop a patch to treat those fine line and wrinkles around the sides of their eyes, commonly called "crow's feet" or "laugh lines". We did just that. Biobliss for Eyes was introduced to great excitement at the International Congress of Esthetics and Spa in Long Beach, CA on September 12th. Your order for two brow patches has been processed and automatically charged securely through Authorize.net to your account. There is nothing more for you to do except to continue enjoying using our Biobliss patches. A charge of $44.99 will appear on your credit card. Shipping is free. We appreciate your business. Having younger and fresher looking skin has never been easier. Enjoy! The Biobliss Team Providence, Rhode Island

*Sorry for the weird change in text, copying and pasting the email in made things a little wacky* As you can see, I'd somehow been enrolled in their second most expensive monthly program. To my knowledge I hadn't signed up for anything. I tried calling the company and got their voicemail, informing me their business hours were 9-5 EST. I waited and tried calling again at 9am and got the after-hours message again. I waited and called a couple more times. I finally got the regular menu at about 9:05. Ironically, there was no option for general customer service, just to place an order, call about a current order, or receive more information regarding the patches if you're a medical professional. I chose the current order option and got a woman rep.  I explained to her what happened and she said she'd cancel my subscription. She asked for my name and address and then told me it was canceled and was about to get off the line when I asked how it happened in the first place. She told me that because I had purchased the Biobliss Trial Patch Double-Pack that I'd been automatically enrolled in the program and that my order form had stated this. I went back through the site and found the fine print at the bottom of the order page. Screenshot of Biobliss order page when you choose the Trial Patch Double-Pack I'm not sure how well you can see it, but the font is extremely small and much lighter in color than the rest of the page, not to mention the fact that the page itself is so long that that portion of the page doesn't show unless you intentionally scroll down. If I had received an email stating that as a result of my order I would be automatically signed up for this program I would have canceled my "subscription" right away. I looked at my conformation email for my order and NOWHERE, not even in small print, does it state anything about this automatic subscription enrollment.  When I asked the rep about this and told her I felt it was dishonest all she said (with no emotion) was, "I agree."  No apology, no explanation. I was pretty thrown off by her indifference, but I probably shouldn't have been. I told her that there should be more obvious information regarding this auto-enrollment on the product page as well as through an email. She said she'd pass my comments along and then got off. Long and the short of it, purchase from Biobliss at your own risk. Not only is the company using some slightly dishonest practices to amp up their business in my opinion, but their products may or may not work as they're supposed to. Again, this is just my opinion and this is all based on my experience, but I wanted to share it.