More Maven: Are monthly boxes worth it?

So as you know I have been a member of the monthly program called Julep. It is one of the only, and it may be the only monthly nail polish box. A box gets sent every month to your home filled with nail related items. As time has gone on though, the boxes have gotten smaller. This was my first maven box back in september. Note that it contained two polishes and two nail care items. Now they contain 2 polishes and one nail care item.

 

If you missed out, here is the link again:
Join the maven box using my link here:

All Products

Use this code to get your first month’s box for one cent…

Use discount code color2012 at checkout for your first month. First time mavens only. One per household.

They do have some awesome products. Currently there are issues with their shipping, glitches that need to be worked out.

I think the company have outgrown their current customer support network, as it takes about two days to hear back from customer support.

It really is a great program. In your first box, you can expect at least two polishes, and a hand care product. Usually at least $60 worth of product. This is only available for those living in the US and Canada.

That being said, the shipping glitches are really starting to turn people off of the program. It seems that more mistakes are happening, the company however does have great customer service, when you can get ahold of them. The customer service agents are friendly and willing to try to correct an issue as quickly as possible. I’ve had my share of shipping errors.

I do like the product, although it’s a little expensive to buy on it’s own, at $14 a bottle. Being a maven gives you a 20% discount, and for $20 a month you get a nice little box sent to you that contains full sized products.

The polish has a nice formula and lasting power, it’s free of the big 3, and the colors are amazing. Especially take a look at their oscar collection. I have not gotten my february box yet, but I am looking forward to it. I urge you to try out julep, see what you think. For a cent, what can you be losing?

New Look?

So do you find it easier to read now that I’ve changed the look? I liked my old picture but it was just too hard to read.

Brother MFC series printers- The good, the bad and the ugly

So we have been using this printer for the last seven months. To be honest, it is more frustration that anything.

 

It is supposed to be an all in one printer suitable for a small office. It however is more of a printer suitable for the home office, not an office that does any reasonable amount of photocopying.

My first problem with the printer is that when printing, the printer doesn’t hold more than 20 printed pages before the pages begin to fall on the floor and the printer jams.

My second problem is that the printer seems to use a large amount of toner. The toner is easy to replace, but it is pricey. Each color has a different toner cartridge. If one of the toners is empty, the printer stops working, and will not print in the alternate colors. This means always having four toner cartridges available.

After about seven months of use, we found out today that the drums need to be replaces as well after a certain number of copies. This is an added expense.

The machine is fairly loud given it’s small size, it also throws off a good amount of heat when on standby.

Yet another problem is the faxing function. It isn’t a machine that one can leave hooked up to the fax, if you are running your phone and fax on the same line, as the fax will pick up after 4-5 rings. There is no way to shut this feature off, without shutting off the fax function. Now you might be asking well why is that a problem, the problem is that the fax clicks on before the voicemail does, so the caller is faced with the fax signal sound instead of the voicemail. It took some missed messages to figure that out.

In order to print on both sides, it needs to be done manually, this is time consuming, given that it only holds 20 printed pages.

The printer looks nice, it’s on the cheaper side for all of the functions, but saving money isn’t worth the frustration. It just does not work if you have any amount of copying and printing to do each week. We print about 300-400 pgs per week, and this printer is inadequate for our printing needs.