Quote: Originally Posted by biskies /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I just got the email that I was charged for my February Starbox. Let the waiting begin!
Seriously though, there was no way I was cancelling (I love Starbox and I'm excited about my loyalty gift this month), but the referral box issue is kind of bull. They still haven't provided a shipping date for them. Last week, they said they'd ship "soon" (super, super vague) and that we'd get tracking when they DO ship (haven't gotten that yet, so I'm going to assume they likely haven't shipped). They also said that they were behind because there were so many new subscribers that the regular boxes took a while to get out. I totally get that, but, to me, the reason there are so many new subscribers is because of their referrers.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't be even the little bit annoyed that I am at this if A) they gave us a timeframe during which they plan to ship the boxes and B) if they hadn't sent out the "you got a referral!" emails nine days ago and then never shipped these boxes. When I got the referral box email in December, I received this box just a few days later. This time, they sent the email on the 22nd and then I guess just figured they could send out the referral boxes at their leisure? I don't know.
I really love their referral program, but I do have one issue with it. When you actually get a referral from most sub boxes, you get an email immediately, letting you know that, "hey, someone you talk to at least on the internet thought what you said was neat enough to throw money at us!" For Starbox, they don't send the email until the boxes are getting ready to ship. Even further, the email doesn't tell you how many referrals you got. Not all of us know the people that we referred on a super personal nature. It'd be nice to just get a confirmation when someone uses your referral link. I think I might be at max referral boxes for next month, but I'm not sure, so I don't want to use my own referral link in favor of someone else's, but I could be completely wrong about this and wind up with none. If I'd gotten an email when people used my link, I could avoid having to guess at this.
I agree that they should be a bit more "together" with the referrals. They need some sort of system where you can go to your referrals page and see the name of the person you referred, and how many referrals you've had so far in the month, similar to the way the Birchbox referral page is set up. I had 3 referrals in one month when I didn't even expect them, and then other months when I thought I would have referrals, I didn't get any. There's no way to verify that someone used your link properly or not etc.