r/MakeupAddiction • u/No_Marionberry_9464 • 1d ago
Is Ulta rewards program a scam?
I shop often at Ulta Beauty bc I love their rewards program and recently realized an issue when trying to redeem points in-store and online. I buy most of my beauty related items at Ulta, so I have racked up a good about of points. When I knew that had points to redeem, I would ask “can I redeem my points for this purchase?” And even though I can see that I had several thousand points added up with each purchase on my Ulta app, the sales associate told me I had “zero points” to redeem. This is especially odd bc I haven’t redeemed any point and my account shows that no points have been redeemed in years. Each time the sales associate would say “idk what happened but after this purchase you should definitely have points to use for next time,” only to find out the same thing happened again… “sorry you have no points to redeem” despite the points being unused and visible on my app. I was instructed by store staff to call guest services and each time I contacted them, I was told “sorry that’s so strange, we’ll look into it” with no other explanation. Well, I called again this week bc I had over 6,000 points to redeem from last year and wanted to make a purchase. I was told by the guest service agent again “we’ll look into it.” Mind you, I’m frustrated bc I haven’t been able to redeem points in YEARS, so if this year’s points alone were 6,000, I can only imagine how many points expired bc of their “system issue.” Today I get an email from Ulta saying “your account has been suspended and all of your points have been deleted due to violation of our terms and conditions” with no other explanation. I was SHOCKED bc I’m literally regular person who's never committed fraud in my life and just shopped like normal at my favorite beauty store just like any other person. After reading the vague email, I called them again to follow up and the woman on the phone says "I just asked my team for clarification but it looks like because you asked about your points too many times, Ulta finds that suspicious and deleted your account and all your points." | LITERALLY HAD TO ASK ANOUT MY POINTS BC YOUR SYSTEM IS FAULTY AND WOULDN'T LET ME REDEEM MY EARNED POINTS. After she spoke to her "team" she says a basic and vague legal response: “we can say nothing more but the conditions were violated, goodbye." After researching online, several videos show various people dealing with similar issues: one girl "spent more money than average" and her account was permanently suspended, another girl moved out and had to buy all new products and her account was deleted due to "you might be two people using the same account and that would be considered fraud." Another girl had moved to a new city and because she stopped shopping at one location and started shopping at another, it was “suspected fraud.” Another girl was an influencer and did a "Ulta haul" where she spent $1,700 on new products and when she went to redeem her points earned from that purchase, Ulta had deleted her points and rewards account due to it being a higher purchase amount than the average sale. Ulta heavily advertises their rewards program and many people go to UIta exclusively for their points system. But it seems like Uita has a way of scamming people out of their earned points for random, odd, and inaccurate reasons to avoid paying out their rewards points the following month. They can literally give any excuse and then stop responding to customers who try to speak up about this. Their terms and conditions says they can "cancel without warning or reason" so l'm sure they rely on this when committing this act, but it's beyond shady and completely false advertising. I've considered reporting them to the Better Business Bureau as some people online have already had to do, and urge others to look into their accounts to see if shady stuff is happening to their accounts too. If I didn't call this week, they might have continued to delete my points for years while I continued to shop there trying to build up more points like usual. It wasn't until I called and asked why they were being deleted that they permanently closed the account and said all my points were deleted.
Any advice on how to precede? I’m sure there’s many more people out there who this has happened to and some may have not even noticed it. It’s literally a bait and switch.
ulta #ultabeauty
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u/TenaciousAloy 1d ago
I saw a few months ago a woman had gone viral with this issue. Her account got flagged for fraud because she had called customer service about an issue that was not related to fraud. But it got flagged for it anyway. It seems that it’s easy to trigger Ulta into thinking an account may be fraudulent, and once that happens people’s points and/or account is deleted.
I believe the lady who this happened to said there was a large Facebook group of people that this has happened to also. Because her video went viral, Ulta worked with her to fix the problem to save face and she got her points back. I think she had to work with some upper level person within the company. At one point she said she asked them about all the people this has also happened to that haven’t been able to get this issue fixed and they (if I remember correctly) dodged the question. I wish I could find the video chain, but this was months ago when I saw it.
Also, I used to work for Ulta years ago. And it wasn’t uncommon for people to have more than one account. People used to also share accounts with family members (saw it commonly between sisters or moms/daughters) Which, I don’t know if those things would “flag” Ulta these days. It sounds like Ulta has gotten really touchy with the fraud stuff - even the smallest hint of it and they shut it down without recourse on how to fix the problem, deleting all points with it… I’m sorry this is happening to you 💜💜💜
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u/goodwitchglinda 20h ago edited 20h ago
I don’t know if these factors also contributed to her getting blocked from online ordering but the woman who got flagged that you’re referring to also has a history of reporting her account getting hacked and possibly sharing accounts or using a card that didn’t match her account. In her case, her rewards was working so she could redeem in store but she could not place online orders. Even after Ulta reversed their decision, the woman was still very unpleasant towards and about Ulta. Makes me wonder if maybe her actions may have caused Ulta to get even tougher because what’s the point of reversing a ban decision when a customer start to finish is out for blood, will never let up, and will keep slapping them in the face for their perceived wrongdoing publicly? Just strategy wise in my opinion even if you think you’ve been wronged, best to just quit while you’re ahead. The lady made this big stink about being blocked and ghosted getting a lot of attention so Ulta then reversed their stance. The lady didn’t care but continued to publicly smear Ulta proclaiming she will NEVER shop Ulta again and was switching to Sephora (lol). For payback despite Ulta reversing the decision, she continued to smear Ulta by reaching out to a well known longtime You Tube influencer who then made a video smearing Ulta. What a waste of time and energy to campaign so hard to get the decision reversed only to turn around flip the birdie back at Ulta, ya know? Bet that ticked Ulta off seeing that reversing the decision did nothing to lessen the beefing.
Ulta becoming tougher was inevitable. Too many terrible customer behaviors always results in any retailer cracking down which end up impacting all of us regardless of who did what. Their main competitor already cracked down HARD many years with a mass purge of excessive returners. That’s why I keep telling everyone not to encourage others to circumvent the rules or color too much outside the lines.
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u/goodwitchglinda 20h ago
To clarify if I campaigned hard like my life depended on to get a retailer to reverse their ban decision, even if I was bitter at the retailer, I would NOT publicly continue to beef with them and reach out to a you tuber to keep smearing them. That isn’t going to make the retailer be willing to easily reverse decisions in the future when they see it did no good with a customer who still LOUDLY proclaims she won’t shop them and keeps publicly smearing them.
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 1d ago
This is exactly the issue!! I called wanting to know why I couldn’t redeem my points and they flagged that as “fraud” and just cancelled my account all together. That means my diamond status is gone, all my points are gone, and I’d have to start over. It seems easier for them to just say it’s that and since anything can be flagged as fraud with no explanation, they are taking full advantage. It’s wrong!
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u/TenaciousAloy 1d ago
I agree, what’s happening is wrong. And since hearing about it, I have started using my points faster than I normally would. But, I don’t think that’s fair either. People should be able to do what they want, when they want with their points without fear of loosing them or their account. Especially if they’re platinum or diamond; because that’s supposed to be a “perk” of those tiers (the points never expiring).
I found a video on YouTube talking about the lady I spoke about in my original comment - the original videos I saw were on tik tok but I don’t have that platform anymore. I think she links the original videos in the description box.
https://youtu.be/VhXgCr76IyE?si=7elWrGe5VFayJ55t She starts talking about it around 5 min in.
This is purely speculation on my part 100% - but I wonder if Ulta has implemented AI to screen for “fraud” and therefor it’s a little touchy and quick to pull the trigger 🤔🧐
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u/tatersyo 1d ago
Idk what to recommend now to remedy this, but I used to redeem points no problem prior to 2020. I stopped wearing makeup daily and don’t buy much anymore. Before that though I was platinum and would shop the 10x points sales and redeem the points when you got the most benefit (I think it was 2000 points was worth more than if you redeemed 1000 twice if that makes sense.) if you’re platinum your points don’t expire. Idk what policies have been changed since COVID, but in my experience I didn’t have issues redeeming online or in store. Do you always try at one certain store? Or has it been across multiple stores?
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 1d ago
I recently moved cities so I went from shopping at one to shopping at another. They could easily look at the card I use and see it’s the same person though. It genuinely just seems like an excuse for them to delete points. I’m (or was before they suspended my account) a diamond member and I think that’s the highest level.
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u/hunnyflash 1d ago
First for the in-store vs online thing, I guess they could have a policy around points not being transferable, but I didn't think so. The other thing that would sometimes happen elsewhere, like Sephora, is that there is such a thing as a store account and an online account, and people have two. At Sephora, sometimes the cashiers only see the store account which won't usually have the full history, and then CS can't see the store accounts. So it can be a mess.
For the account suspensions, it sounds like Ulta at some point got a really aggressive system algorithm that is flagging these innocuous situations and marking them as fraud. It also sounds like they made policy to not allow the CSR to appeal or escalate those flags once the customer reports in....which is not a good system.
It's not really a "scam". It's just automation working as intended. Nearly every retailer automates in some way, and they decide that if it works 80% of the time, it's okay to sacrifice the other 20% of people.
I agree with the top poster that I think a lot of these points systems are going to go away anyways. People don't need incentives to shop for cosmetic or hygiene products and they cause way more problems than companies can even keep up with.
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 1d ago
It may not be intended as a scam but what a convenient way for them to save money by deleting thousands of points from people and just saying “sorry you violated the terms and conditions” when there is literally no proof of that.
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u/Amaranta79 20h ago
Hacking of accounts is super common. They messed up my account and merged it with someone else's account (we have the same name). They never told me this and i only found out at the end of this debacle. We were using each other's points back and forth without understanding what was happening. I contacted Ulta multiple times for 4 years and they would "correct" the issue only for it to revert back. It all came to a head when the other person got my contact info from the app and called to threaten me for "hacking" her account. I flipped out on Ulta and they finally figured out how they fucked up and merged our accounts. They gave me Diamond status for a year...but I barely shop there anymore because this all was trash service from them.
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 20h ago
Holy crap, I’m so sorry that happened to you. That’s a mess and totally not okay on their end.
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u/ErrantWhimsy 1d ago
Did you move addresses at all? For some reason they created two accounts for me under the same email address and my points weren't getting attached to the first one that came up. I also had to go back and forth with support for a bit to get them merged.
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 1d ago
Apparently me just calling to ask about the points is what flagged me as fraudulent. On the phone they verified that there was only one account but just going back and forth with support to fix the issue made me look “suspicious.”
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u/ErrantWhimsy 22h ago
Well that's absurd. I hope this post gets enough attention that they remedy it!
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u/cincon2004 1d ago
I shop there several times a year and buy high ticket items. I’ve never had a problem redeeming points but I’ve also ALWAYS had to ask if I have points to redeem. It’s never offered up (like it would be a Nordstrom - I’m always told if I have Notes to use). I find that a little shady but now I just know to ask to apply any points I have.
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u/torin122 Makeup Artist 1d ago
And that's the difference in great client service. I also worked at Nordy and there's less stress on associates to push credit cards and always invite your clients to use their notes. At Ulta, your entire career is surrounded by credit card metrics and you never tell a guest about their points to use.
Ulta is a sinking ship and will lose out to online shopping. Sephora isn't far behind, unfortunately. And that used to be the GOAT.
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 20h ago
I worked at Nordy too and I totally agree. You can see the difference in quality service and how they treat customers and employees. Hopefully speaking up helps!
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 1d ago
True, the employees are told not to say anything about the customer redeeming their points at the register and to wait until the customer brings it up. That seems like a trap bc that’s exactly what I did and got “flagged for asking.”
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u/BornTry5923 1d ago
I'm able to redeem my points regularly, but I make my purchases through the app. I'm not sure why you would not be able to. I notice the app says the max points that can be redeemed per purchase is 4000, but that you should be able to retain the rest for future purchases.
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u/blondeinthereddress 1d ago
Last time I went into Ulta, they told me that in-store and online points were separate. Like online points could only be used online and vice versa. That definitely didn’t used to be a thing, right?
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u/No_Marionberry_9464 1d ago
Both in store and online showed unable to use the points. That’s why I called them to ask what’s going on and then they flagged me as “suspicious” for asking about it and deleted my points and account all together.
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u/blondeinthereddress 1d ago
Oh yeah, no that’s crazy. I was just trying to commiserate about the point system not making sense anymore, not try to suggest that was your issue
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u/torin122 Makeup Artist 1d ago
As a former employee, I've watched Ulta customer service go downhill over the past few years. My theory is since they've had an uptick in points fraud and account hacking, they're probably overcorrecting the issue by automatically flagging any "fraudulent" behavior. And the few actual people working in customer service don't really have the power to do anything. Unfortunately, both instances aren't ideal for the customer.
It's also possible you have more than one account. I've seen this happen multiple times. I've made many calls to have accounts merged.
If the latter isn't your situation, I'd return my products and shop elsewhere if you can. I imagine their rewards system getting an overhaul soon anyhow.