The Budget Babe | Affordable Fashion & Style Blog

Designer Discounts at HauteLook.com

A friend recently invited me to join HauteLook, a free site that offers members access to exclusive on-line designer sales. While it's too soon to tell if this site will prove useful, upcoming sales for December - which include fashions from LaRok, Rock & Republic, and Ya-Ya - look promising.

Here's what they say: "HauteLook is a private club which organizes exclusive 48 - 72 hour on-line private sales for its members. Held only for the top designer brands in the fashion industry, HauteLook provides an exclusive platform where these brands can reach their customers directly. As a result, HauteLook members are able to receive discounts of up to 75% off of retail prices on the latest fashion merchandise from the comfort of their home or office."

Join HauteLook Today!

Comments
This is the first time for me to get to check out this site, I ran across it on a nrews channel.
#1 Karen (Homepage) on 2008-05-05 09:53 (Reply)
I've ordered several items from Hautelook (Smashbox makeup and William Rast Jeans). Neither were shipped within 7 days (as stated on the site). One order was delivered, but only 1 item was included; the invoice indicated that I would be credited for the other two items; but no credit was listed on my account. When I called, their records showed that I was only supposed to be credited for the item I actually received!

I'm still waiting for my other order.

So my advice to those of you who purchase on Hautelook - pay for the expensive, expedited shipping (which hopefully happens as it should!!) or just be prepared to wait weeks (in some cases) before you order anything. The reps who answered the phone were nice enough, but they didn't have any answers and didn't immediately return my calls and NEVER responded to my emails.
#1.1 R. Seymann (Homepage) on 2008-07-08 16:46 (Reply)
I'm surprised at the negative reviews! I think a lot of it stems from not understanding exactly what Hautelook is. They order directly from the factories only what has been purchased, and THAT is how they can get such great prices. There is no overstock or unsold merchandise. That being said, they have to wait for the sale to close, order with the factories, wait for the shipment to arrive, repack with any items from other sales, and then ship again to the customer. As you can see, a lot is dependent on whether or not the factories ship promptly and actually ship the proper items and amounts. Waiting for your item to arrive is what allows you to get (up to) 70% off. Personally, I've ordered 4 things from them and haven't had any issues. I'm not saying some of you don't have legitimate complaints, but complaining about not having a tracking number after a few days or having to wait more than a week is ridiculous. As for the people with legitimate issues, I hope it works out. According to the site, if items are short-shipped, they not only give you a refund of your money but ALSO a $20 credit with them for the inconvenience.
#1.2 Mandi on 2009-10-22 09:00 (Reply)
I recently joined Hautelook and haven't been disappointed. The prices were great, no problems with the shipping or service, and the variety of the sales and designers were perfect. Love Hautelook and would recommend it to anyone.
#2 skirtsnshoes on 2008-07-31 17:31 (Reply)
Hsutelook is the biggest scam of a company. I bought a Rebecca Minkoff puurse, they took the money out of my account, and i received a confirmation number that it was shipped. I never received the purse and I am still waiting for my refund. I do't recommend this company to anyone unless you want to give away money and just wait for an item youw ill never receive.
#3 upset customer on 2008-09-17 11:22 (Reply)
The same thing happened to me except no one will answer my calls at all! I've e-mailed and called several times and get no resonse. What a scam! It's been a month and though the web site says my package has been delivered - there is no package!! Ugh! I better get my money back fast or they are going to be reported and shut down.
#3.1 Stephanie Adcock on 2009-08-24 11:56 (Reply)
I have been ordering items from Hautelook.com for several months now. I haven't had any problems, except one item....and I don't believe it was Hautlook.com's fault as much as the manufacturer. It was very late in arriving to me. But I am a patient enough person so it didn't bother me. Another time I was at fault. I ordered something for my daughter and wanted sent to her address but forgot to change the address....so the next day I e-mailed Hautelook.com and told them the problem and it was corrected to the right address.
#3.2 Terry on 2012-04-15 21:43 (Reply)
This company is BAD!
I've never received ordered items on time. They're fast at taking out money but slow at delievering.
Also, their customer service are not very helpful.
For Be&D bag that I ordered, they took out my money from my account 3 days after I ordered, but but I've never received the bag after waiting for weeks.
So I called the rep. and found out that they didn't have enough item so they returned it without my knowledge.
If they don't have enough item to sell, they shouldn't have process my order and take money from my account, or at least they should've give me a notice that it was short item then credit it right back.

But they didn't credit it back to my account right away even after they found out it was their mistake.
After few calls, the rep. told me they'll credit it back to me, so I was still waiting it to happen.

Suddenly, today, I received the bag that they said they didn't have enough quantity.
And the worst part was the bag was DAMAGED.
And it came with the notice that it's not refundable!
I was so mad and called the Rep., she said, she'll email me the returning label, and once they receive the item they'll credit me back.

I'm still waiting for that returning label.
And my money was out since 11/23.
I've never expierenced this trouble in my entire life.
Just hoping I can finally get my money back.

And all this time, none of the rep. apologized for their mistake.

So my advice is, DON'T USE THIS SITE!!!!
If you are looking for discounted luxuary goods with good service, go to RueLaLa.com or ideeli.com
They have great customer services and fast delivery.
#4 Stephanie Lee on 2008-12-11 13:51 (Reply)
I am sorry I didn't see this site BEFORE I ordered. I did not receive the sweater they say shipped. A discount on products you never receive is just lost money. No one responds to email...no information about the order is on the site, and I sit on hold and then get disconnected. Next stop Attorney General!
#5 Susan Jones on 2009-09-10 17:35 (Reply)
Ordered beginning of August, waited forever for a tracking number. I know shipping takes long and that's how these websites can sell for cheaper, but this was ridiculous. They say it takes 10-14 business days to arrive. I didn't even get a tracking number until 2 weeks later, and when I did, it wasn't active. it just showed "billing information received", and stayed that way for another 2 weeks. Everytime I called, they said they were waiting on one item to see if they could locate it since they over-sold it on the site, and wouldn't be shipping my order until they could locate it, and if they couldn't, they'd just ship out my order plus a refund on that item ("short shipment"). So I waited some more.

Finally got a package a month after I placed my order, (without the tracking number ever working) only to find out it only contained 1 item out of the 4, with the invoice stating a refund on one. I called asking why I only had 1 item when the invoice states 3 items and 1 refund. CS rep kept trying to explain that the other items were arriving separately and that I should wait ANOTHER week. I kept trying to explain that this whole time, I was not made aware that only 1 item was in stock. They told me they were only waiting on 1 item and would ship the rest out once they found out the status of that one over-sold item. She kept trying to explain the "short shipment" procedure to me when I already understood that. She kept going around and even said, "let me explain this in a way you can understand". Um, I understand your short shipment policy, but I'm asking why I was never notified about the other items, or why the tracking number that took so long was never active, and why I was never followed up on it, why I never received an email about the short shipment even though the site says they will contact you in 5-7 days regarding the matter, etc.

So eventually, she was basically telling me to wait even longer for the other 2 items since they were all coming from different locations. I was wondering why I was waiting so long when I lived in the same city as this company. I called yet another time and was told the same thing, to give it another week. Finally I called today, only for them to tell me that i'd be getting a refund on the remaining 2 items. Wow, thanks for letting me know this whole time that I wouldn't be getting 3 of my 4 items, without warning, and with me having to call on a regular, while customer service acts like I am bothering them. Maybe if they updated me on the status of my order once in a while, or even ONCE. All 4 items were a gift to 1 person, and here I am, almost 2 months later with only one.

Take your business elsewhere!
#6 sheryl on 2009-09-22 18:35 (Reply)
omg ! now i feel stupd cuz i ordered a coffe maker with idk what else an now feel so stupid because i should have done some search befor i ordered damm it !
#7 ady on 2009-10-05 01:51 (Reply)
Ok I know your reading bad comments but I've ordered from Hautelooks a lot and have yet to have anything bad happen to my orders
#7.1 Antonya on 2010-11-08 17:19 (Reply)
I agree with Mandi completely. Hautelook is not a regular site where they have your items on hand. You are getting items that would normally run you $300 for less then a hundred, thousands for a few hundred, etc. Waiting longer for shipping is fine by me considering how much bang for my buck I'm getting, especially in these hard times. The site explains that their shipping takes longer. They even have an icon time line. Not sure what more some people need in front of them to understand. I also agree that some of you have legitimate complaints and I hope those gets sorted out. Thankfully, out of the many I know who have ordered from them not one complaint. I even canceled an order once shortly after I placed it because I found a code I wanted to use. It took less then a minute over the phone to cancel. They have never not answered when I've called during their business hours.
I definitely think the site is worth it.
#8 Sarah on 2009-10-30 08:43 (Reply)
Please Sarah, I was on hold yesterday for over 30 minutes and like Susan Jones i was disconnected.
I have gotten over 80% of my orders without issue but when u the Consumer notify Haute that there is an issue with your order, prepare to struggle in order to get it rectified.
If they catch the problem first before it ships, I have been lucky enough thus far to get a refund and Haute Dollar credits to spend.
Haute is not perfect, u sound like a Haute plant on this site, not a real consumer.
#8.1 disatisfied shopper on 2009-11-04 23:27 (Reply)
I haven't had any issues at all with them. My BCBG dress came today and I bought it about 2 weeks ago. I expected a wait since I'm in Canada so it actually came much sooner than I thought it would.
#9 Rachel on 2009-11-09 16:40 (Reply)
I have apparently just been lucky when ordering from HauteLook in the past. I wish I had done my research before making them my "go-to" sample site. Today when I hit a glitch @ checkout, I spent over an hour on the phone w/ two completely incompetent representatives, one of whom was supposed to be a supervisor, who could not explain why they needed my LOGIN & PASSWORD to PLACE THE ORDER FOR ME, AS ME!!!, from their computer, as opposed to just taking my order over the phone or fixing the problem...& then they acted like I was out of line for questioning the business practice of getting consumers' confidential login information!

The first employee I spoke w/ also informed me that she could just "get all of my information from IT" if I didn't give it to her on the phone. Um, how secure is that? I was then told that "somebody from the legal department would call me," which later turned into, "no one from the legal department is here at 4pm on this business day," to "well, we actually don't HAVE an in-house legal department."

At the very least, this is a very poorly run site w/ very poor customer service & very unorthodox, potentially dangerous (for your personal credit&identity) business practices.

I could deal w/ slow shipping. I cannot, however, deal w/ incompetent, underpaid representatives w/ bad attitudes threatening to access my personal credit information.
#10 Sara on 2009-11-24 19:51 (Reply)
I'm a member of the site and so far the few complains which are shipping and product images. It takes forever to arrive and the images on the site are poor. It never really show you the product details. They only have a few images for a single product and uses some cheesy models. They need to learn from European online retailer who always offer 360 degrees product photography (ex: www.mediaspin360.com/blog/). This way I can see the product in all angles and zoom in to inspect the details before I buy anything.
#11 Jessica (Homepage) on 2010-01-28 15:19 (Reply)
I was really happy shopping with Haute look until I realized that they are SCAM artists. I was purchasing some jewelry from H2 Hammerman and it was listed on their site as 56% off. So just by chance I decided to check out the prices elsewhere, well GUESS what, the prices on Hautelook were inflated by 20% to 30% over even SAKS FIFTH AVENUE (regular not discount)..so instead of getting 50% off actually you are getting 20%. They are INFLATING the price over what it is normally sold retail so that you think you are getting a bigger discount!!!! CHECK IT OUT people. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL PRACTICE. I caught them on this and let them know and they were extremely rude to me after I have spend thousands of dollars on their website
#12 Laura H. on 2010-08-03 14:41 (Reply)
i actually have never purchased anything from hautelook but i can tell you this. i was looking forward for today's sale, costa blanca, i was expecting things like $10 or $5 because first of all it is NOT a good designer brand, second of all, costa blanca is everywhere in malls. however, the regular prices listed at costa blanca are over $100!!!! i love costa blanca for their low prices and good variety styles they have i know this for a FACT that nothing in costa blanca is over $60. HAUTELOOK IS A SCAM! i am unsubscribing today. i cannot believe they raised the prices even more than 50%, you think you're getting a discount? no you probably can get it in store for cheaper
#13 julia on 2010-10-21 17:09 (Reply)
Ordered from them a few times. My most recent was Urban Decay and I got everything timely. I feel bad for anyone having issues but I guess I'll see what happens when I do. Until then, I will continue shopping b/c the deals I've gotten rock!
#14 Brianna on 2011-01-25 20:50 (Reply)
I ordered many items from HauteLook and I will NOT order from them again. First, I've discovered some of the sunglasses I've purchased from them (Fendi, YSL, Pucci, Dior, etc) were found CHEAPER elsewhere, as well as watches that I've bought (Valentino, Fendi) were $50 - $200 CHEAPER elsewhere! I E-Mailed them (no answer), called them ("disconnected"). I normally don't write reviews, but it had pissed me off so much to write this.
#15 Janet on 2011-05-24 10:01 (Reply)
My daughter (who is really savy and a "professional" shopper) has been recommending HauteLook for quite some time therefore I didn't do my typical vetting - I placed an order this weekend - this is probably the worse web site I have ever tried to use - ordering three inexpensive beach toys for my granddaughter took the better part of two days!, I was not option for shipping (I guess I got "slow boat to nowhere" special shipping deal...), shipping fee was more than 1/3 of the total purchase and I was NEVER given an opportunity to agree to the total fee, I never would have paid what they charged for no tracking/info shipping yet within seconds the money for the purchase was taken from my bank account. Written many eamils, no reply, place many phone calls - either NO answer or placed on hold and call is dropped.

Good thing I am only out $40, I could have purchased the same items locally for less than what I paid (personal choice, thought I would give them a chance, didn't feel like going shopping) - bad thing - over priced items, "shipping" is ridiculous, customer service is non-existent, total scam - I agree, don't waste your time or money - good for those very few who had good experiences - be happy about your good luck as your good experience is obviously rare - there are many legitimate sites out there.

Site should be shut down...sorry I didn't check them out further.
#16 Beth on 2011-08-12 06:34 (Reply)
Wow, I just came across this site. I've been a Hautelook member for almost 2 years now. I've ordered jewelries, shoes, clothing and I have no complaints so far. I am very happy with the service. I'm from Canada and I don't have issues with the shipment nor the quality of the product, I usually get my orders in 2 weeks which by the way most online orders are offering except if paying extra. Styles are fantastic and their prices are lower compared to other online stores. Yep, I compare the prices before I order.
Overall, I am very satisfied with Hautelook.com
#17 Joyce on 2012-01-15 12:44 (Reply)
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