Why You Should Never Buy Manic Panic Brands

So, not travel related, but, as a frequent traveler who gets a lot of positive hair comments I can segue.

I have been coloring my hair since 1998. It started out as green streaks on Christmas eve courtesy of my mom. Fast forward, I've been various shades of magenta and hot pink off and on for the last 13 years, more notably deep magenta (and sometimes with blue) since 2016. It's been constant. I do it myself, use NO bleach, and learned from a master colorist that I trust very much. Needless to say, I'm no dummy at my hair. Until now.



In December I purchased a Manic Panic jar of Enchanted Forest because I thought I wanted to change my hair some, like I am apt to do. I hadn't used this hair color since high school because I found brands I liked more, but I really enjoyed this teal shade and thought I would give it a go.

I was very wrong. Not only did I spend an hour trying to color the ends of my hair this teal (which was previously blue but faded back down to a lighter shade of purple from not touching it up for about 8 weeks in preparation for this change), plus let it rest an hour just to have it WASH OUT with the water but it also combusted. Not exploded, mind you, but all color faded out of the jar only a month after opening it. I shit you not, it went from teal to grey in just a few weeks of disuse sitting on my bathroom shelf in no direct sunlight.

Look at my evolution there. Now, I know how to use color. I don't bleach my hair, I use a 30 developer on my L'Oreal HiColor ONLY, in a mixing bowl which was promptly washed out after use, dried and only then did I add the new teal shade into the bowl. It did not fizz or bubble or turn as it would have if ANY developer were somehow still in the bowl. I even did a smell check because sometimes you can still smell residue. MP does NOT smell good but it also didn't smell like my magenta so I thought I was fine. It washed out same night.  I put the jar of color, half used, back on my bathroom shelf with my other supplies and sighed myself to bed after a night wasted. I know some brands don't typically work on my hair, especially over other color brands (despite the time spent NOT coloring my ends, pictured) so I didn't really think much of it because I knew it's a cheaper product. Bummed but not the end of the world. And that's exactly what went down, untouched.

Fast forward to four weeks later- one of my theatre friends has a daughter who likes to add color to her locks and I thought maybe Dana would want this color for her kiddo. I went to get it from my shelf of hair supplies where I left it and it was grey. Like dead man found in the water grey. I thought maybe the pigments had just settled at the bottom for some reason so I gave it a shake. No teal.  I opened it up, no swirls of color so I got my tint brush and gave it a stir. No color. Where the fuck has my overpriced teal gone?

Not thinking they'd see it, let alone respond, I vented on my Insta (see above) and was hit with this reply:
"Our hair colors do not contain any bleach or chemicals. You can clearly still see the remnants of the dye on the jar, so not sure what was mixed in there, but it is not our hair color." I responded and then never got a return. (I said bleached like the sun bleaches fabric, not to says that I put bleach IN the jar and got upset that it bleached it...?)

So are they implying that I switched their hair color out and put in a different color to try to get free goods? Or that I bleached the dye myself as a mistake? It's hard to really tell with their run on sentence, but what I did take away was that they never apologized for my having to reach out to them for faulty goods, not did they try to fix the mistake, even if it were my own oops. They attempted to blame me for not knowing my shit and were snarkier than even I am- because if I had a product out and someone reached out I would NEVER use my sass against them like this. Customer Service is serious and it can make or break a company. Or a blogger.

I digress. After a few days of seeing targeted ads for MP I decided to reach out to another channel of theirs-their Facebook page. I did so thinking that their Socials aren't run by the same people and might get a more polite reply from them if I tried again. Again, wrong. Same happenings- I was accused of not knowing what I was doing, was basically called a liar and then belittled by them. The conversation lasted for days because it was them saying please do this, now this and this; your basic third degree bullshit. I went along with it thinking that if I did what was asked and had proof to back up my claim and was nicer about it than they were then surely it would amount to something. And it did. It amounted to a load of shit. Because the company is a load of shit.

 As you can read for yourselves, I gave them the info requested and they strung me along for days. Which is whatever, weekends happen. Until today's messages I still had hope that they might at least give me an apology, even if it was an "I'm sorry, we don't know why that happened." but all I got was an allegation that I did something wrong and was blocked from contacting them. An INTERNATIONAL business blocked me for harassing them when I was only responding to THEIR messages back to me.




I gave them everything they had asked, responded with all info necessary, while I still knew they were giving me the third degree. Meanwhile, backstage, my buddy Elissa was looking into their history of horrid customer service online and letting me know that this is not a lone case- their CS leaves something to be desired by EVERYBODY. So, I am hoping that my very lengthy and uproarious rants shows the real truth of what they think about their customers. They do not care about you or me. They wants your money and that's it. Clearly we are not welcome here. Not very punk rock at all and it offends me, as a real punk, a real political movement enduring, fist raising voicing punk, that they'd liken themselves to someone like me and the others who care about the issues that the PUNK MOVEMENT was founded on. They are exactly the kind of corporate greed that we do not want to keep around. (Punk rock came about in America in the 70s as a relationship to the late 60s rock style that was a little harder, a little stripped down from synth and such, not saccharine. It also moved to be an anti-establishment movement and with political rages such as conformity, rebellion, equality and feminism. The music stood for something besides making money, the fashion was engaging, recycled and oftentimes handmade. The punk genre progressed to ska and pop styles but the messages were still there, unlike shit like today's pop about butts and cash and smoking pot. So now you know some history.)



Well, I sent them the batch info and then was told that I needed to wait until the "chemist" was back in from the weekend. Sure, buddy.  So I waited. And yesterday, nothing. No emails from them.But I let it be. I still don't know what the purpose was of them checking their warehouse for the batches. They never said why, and one is to presume it was to check if it was expired or to offer me a fresh jar or something. But no, it never came up. I took time out of my life to give them everything they had asked for to help my case and they just blew it off. Then this morning they said they spoke to their chemist and declared to me that there's NO WAY that their precious product would EVER do something like this, so, yeah, I guess I got it confused. I guess I bought that special disappearing ink style hair color and jokes on me for trying. But really, they went OUT OF THEIR WAY to be a dick to me, especially by blocking me, then UNBLOCKING me to tell me to stop harassing THEM, then BLOCKED ME AGAIN! Fuckin what? You give me the third degree for DAYS and then tell ME to fuck off?



All I wanted was an apology. It's free and easy to say. Instead they accused my of tampering, lying and bullshitting them. They must be really hard up for cash or something to not even offer me an apology.  And to say that nobody has ever made that claim before? LITERALLY everyone I spoke to about it said they are garbage. Twitter is FILLED with people saying they were treated poorly. For YEARS! YEARS worth of complaints. Figure it out!

A story: I worked at Domino's Pizza for a few weeks some time ago and we got a call because a customer was upset that THEY knocked their pizza down to the ground when they got home from picking it up from us. We made them a new pizza AND a free dessert just to make sure they got what they ordered and will thank you, come again. All because they dropped it on their own property. And we rushed it for them so that it was ready by time they came back. THAT is how you do customer service. Good job, Greg!

So, to the greedy trashmonsters at Manic Panic- fuck you for being terrible, especially in a time like this when one spot of kindness can go a long way. I did not ask for money, I did not ask for free stuff or have guns blazing in conversation. I had a weird issue with one of their products and was treated like I did not matter. And as a human being, I absolutely matter. As a company, though, Manic Panic no longer should. Hopefully a lesson can be passed on about how not to treat paying customers, and how paying customers should look to better handled companies like Arctic Fox. The color lasts longer, it's near same in price and actually smells good.



I always hope that people will show kindness, especially if it's their job to do so. Like, be good at your job. Even if you don't agree, even if they're yelling at you or you're not in the mood. Fake it. We all had to at one point. It's your livelihood to be able to front in these situations like you're a professional person, and that you work for a company that values their customers by way of showing kindness when their shit goes awry. Even if I did miff this up myself, even if something DID get into the sealed jar somehow, the fact is that I still bought it and it is no longer usable and I came out to address a problem. If I had just said hey, this shit washed out as soon as water hit it that first night, then I bet they still would have blamed me for that in their condescending way like people don't matter. And that's just it- the people don't matter to them, and they proved it by repeatedly treating me with such disdain, such disrespect. So now I am no longer showing kindness to them and theirs. They don't want it anyhow.

Manic Panic, your hair color is bullshit. Your customer service can eat a hefty bag of roach coated cocks. As a company you are a total fraud. And decidedly un-punk rock. Filthy liars.

Be kind out there, and for Punk's sake, STAND FOR SOMETHING.


If anyone has a similar story with MP being jerks share it below in the comments and hopefully our points will be made public as a warning to others not to bother with this brand. Just the same, share below if you've had a positive interaction as well so that we know they have at least one decent person working there. Unlikely, though it seems.

Comments

  1. It is a bummer that Manic Panic didn't work out all that great. It's not cool when a product can't even last. I can't believe that they tried to accuse you of falsifying their product. You're saying what happened. It is worth reporting them to the BBB. It is really not worth the trouble. Thanks for sharing your story

    Nancy ♥ exquisitely.me

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the idea! They were so rude and the conversation was DAYS long just for it to end by them calling me a liar and then blocking me

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
  2. Wow. That was poorly handled on their end. Companies shouldn't get defensive by a poor review or feedback. They should work with customers individually to figure out a solution. Not accuse them of tampering with their products.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly, and from what I read, they treat everyone this way!

      Delete
  3. Oh that's such a shame you had a very negative experience. Clearly not a brand to purchase from, thank you for warning us. On the upside, your hair colour looks amazing, I wish I was brave enough to go for a colour like that, it's so uplifting! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lisa you can!! There are tons of styles in fashion now, even doing a fun color underneath your hair so that you only really see it if it's pulled up! Or streaks or strips or just the bottom there's all kinds of things and I'm sure you could do it

      Delete
  4. wow they were so unprofessional, thanks for the heads up!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks so much! It's not MP brand on my head at all!! Haha yeah they were so mean about everything then lied so much! It's like it's run by 15 year olds.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mine has been on my shelf for the months. Still red. Your story don't add up withpigments clearly on the outside of the bottle. You tried to put blue over red. That doesn't show up honey.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, dummy. Does it REALLY look like I don't know how to use hair color?? Since 1998?
      Blue and red makes purple.
      I bleached my hair.
      These are not pictures of my MP colored hair.
      Do you not see the silver color of the dye?

      Delete
  7. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment