Oh man, this mess. ): I feel for everyone who didn't get this box even when they had abided by the rules. If I'd known about the stacked coupon, I would've gone for it as well so I don't blame any of you for "taking advantage" of a glitch in the system.
TBH, I looked around and exactly what I suspected happened. Someone also posted the deal to SlickDeals and it ended up on the front page. Honestly -- and i'm not saying I agree with what L'occi has done -- but if it were maybe a few dozen or even a hundred people figuring out the glitch on their own, they probably would've honored it, but when something hits the front page of SD, especially when it's that cheap in a holiday season and looks "gift-y", I wouldn't be surprised if there were over 1000+ orders. So they'd be giving away somethign they were marketing for $15 at that price plus a $10 gift card plus the gift set. I'm sure after a certain point, when they hit saturation in orders, they probably just canceled all orders with the box regardless of if they used the stacked coupon or not.
Again, I'm not saying I agree with what they've done, but I think looking at it from a marketing perspective, I'm not entirely surprised. L'occi always seemed to me like they want to brand themselves as a ~luxury~ brand. Regardless of if they are or not, I think the brand is trying to position itself in a position where it seems exclusive and makes its users feel like they're using something high end. I'd say about 95%+ of the sales by "luxury" companies (YSL, Dior, Chanel, etc etc) when it comes to makeup in the US is not really to "high end" customers, but it's the appeal of exclusivity that drives the sale. So I think from a marketing position, maybe the CEO or director of sales at L'occi felt okay with making that decision, when most of the people (the SD people) who took advantage of that glitch probably aren't interested in the brand, are ONLY interested in a deal (which, for a luxury brand, are not a group of people you care about), and would never buy from the brand again or in the first place if they didn't see the deal. it does have the unfortunate side effect of maligning maybe 10-20% of the people who would be serious customers who they were trying to court.
So basically I guess you can thank the people at SD for messing things up *shrugs* I mean, they've done it before with Zoya when Zoya plucks up their codes. I've seriously seen some people say in the comments, guys btw, they would never use polish but they went ahead and placed a bunch of orders because it was a 'good deal' (like when you could add a color spoon and check out or it didn't need the $10 min to go through). But I guess the internet makes it really easy for people who want to abuse the system.
/emoticons/
