brea s.

I LOVE this site and its eponymous products. I own the ebags brand Mother Lode, a laptop pack and the packing cubes and I they are essentials. I use and abuse them daily, travel with them and they take it. Highly recommended for bag purchases, but PARTICULARLY recommend that you take a hard look at the ebags-branded option, if there is one, for items you're considering.

Cannot recommend highly enough.

I've been a member of Bookmooch for awhile now and have always had good experiences. I've sent 14 books and mooched 12. I've had a couple of people not respond to requests and have had to cancel them and start over. But everyone who's accepted a request has sent the book and I've never had a book reported lost. I realize that's USPS and not the site, but it's part of the experience.

The biggest downside is that I like to read a lot of 'literary fiction' and I don't always find some of the titles I'm after.

If you read and don't want to keep the books afterwards, Bookmooch is a good trading resource. Recommended.

I've ordered books through this site several times now. Shipping is low and I've found almost every title I've been looking for, even obscure ones. My Half Price Books isn't half as good!

This is a must shop for avid readers--I can't recommend it highly enough. It may be one of my favorite sites, period.

Quarterly offers curated boxes from tastemakers. For example, Tim Ferriss and Pharell Wilson both curate monthly subscription boxes for the site. The hardest part is picking.

I subscribed to Book Riot, which is like heaven for readers. I get a box once a quarterly and it's reasonably priced for what I receive. Quarterly offers no spoilers--you have to choose a box, pay and cross your fingers that you'll love it as much as you think you will. So far, I have.

Highly recommended site - pick a box that reflects your own tastes.

Have loved Sephora since its first store opened in NYC. It's like a makeup playground--you can try and sample pretty much anything they sell. They ask if you need help, but don't typically hover over you--they let you shop in peace.

That said, these days I strongly prefer the website.

I know that items are being picked and packed--no one's opened them.
Free shipping if you spend $50, which is pretty easy to do. Or, combine an order with a friend to hit that and you're golden.
The site has sales, deals and specials that you can't or won't find in the store.
Plus, you get free sample (3 per order that you pick from about 9 that you're offered and you have a chance to buy a particular item they feature at a significant discount.

The in-store killer is the approach to samples. If you get someone helpful, they can sample anything for you - including perfume and they're generously sized. Otherwise, forget it. They seem stingy and out of sorts when asked for samples, even when you're obviously buying something. Sorry, but I don't buy $30 lip glosses without sampling.

Not perfect, but fairly close. And, recommended.

Even though the quality was inconsistent, I LOVED the idea of trading boxes with other moms back in the early days of ThredUp. But then they changed the model. I had box 'credits,' that simply went away with the new model; however, they did give me a $10 credit for my first purchase.

My first purchase was good, but not great. I got a new-ish looking pair of shoes for myself and outfitted my younger son with some mini-Boden pieces. They are (or were... I haven't been back in months) weak in older boy sizes. What I paid was the high side of fair, but softened with the $10 credit.

Then, I tried selling. I actually sent two stuffed bags. The first one had winter coats - one of which was outgrown before it was ever worn (LL Bean) as well as jeans, shoes, all kinds of stuff. I got a fraction of what the clothes were worth (probably $400 worth of clothes for which I received about $24 dollars. But, the convenience of shipping from home and not having to drive to donate at Goodwill made it worth it. I never knew of course, what happened to the clothes they didn't accept--they aren't too clear about that.

A few months later, a local children's boutique went out of business. I bought all I could for pennies on the dollar - NWT! - and gave away or gifted what I could. What I couldn't - and I'm talking brands like Hanna Anderson, Zutano and more - I packed up to send to ThredUp. At that point, they were practically begging for 'designer/boutique' brands and a check on the site showed these were brands they accepted. I also through in a couple of lightly worn mainstream brand items - Old Navy, Oshkosh, because I didn't have enough of them to warrant a trip to a donation center. I didn't care if ThredUp didn't take those and gave them away.

I waited. And waited. And waited. About two months and multiple emails later, I got a version of a 'sorry, we've been so busy' note. And then I got my check. It was for $4.74. The items they accepted? The Old Navy and Oshkosh stuff. ONE of the probably 40 or 50 boutique pieces was accepted; the rest were declined with vague reasons.

Like others have said, it made me sick to my stomach. I don't know where those clothes went, but they were current season and they were salable. Heck, I'd rather GIVE them away to kids in my area than not know if they were resold elsewhere. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say SCAM (although some have), but for sure, not transparent and honest.

I've never been and never will be back. There are other consignment options closer to home that offer better selection at better prices and I can see exactly what I'm getting and I can see clothes I've sold them on the sales floor. Trust and reputation was the main reason to choose ThredUp and quite frankly, they've lost both.

I really like Ipsy. I've subscribed to several beauty-themed monthly subscription boxes and Ipsy so far is the best of the bunch. I've received 4 monthly 'boxes' so far and they've all had at least a couple of samples that I've loved. I won't use them all, but someone I know will and for $10, it seems well-priced. My wishes:

- Every month, the samples are packed in a makeup bag that fits the theme or season. Cool idea, but I'd rather receive the option of choosing to receive the bag OR an extra sample. A bag a quarter... maybe, but a bag every month seems excessive--I just don't go through makeup bags that fast. I can't even gift them that quickly!

- I wish the site didn't seem to promise customization of items. It has a 'quiz' that personalizes selections based on your profile. It asks things like color preferences and categories of interest or disinterest, but doesn't seem to do much - or anything - with the information. They say that there are nine or so different sample bags each month, but it seems like I'm just randomly selected. These are frustrating, because the value of the bags vary--with some people receiving samples from high end brands and others receiving drugstore brands consistently. Nothing wrong with drugstore brands, but it stinks to know that you're paying the same amount as someone else and they're receiving the exotic sports car while you're driving the economy model. You know?

But, those are wishes--I like and would recommend Ipsy to any cosmetic junky.