Rant time - contacting companies, and my own fix

So a little while back, I mentioned my want of a Vaseline Lip Therapy Rosy Lip pot. I actually contacted Vaseline to simply ask if this product was, in fact, available here. I'm going to actually post the response here...

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Hello Jackie,

Thank you for contacting us regarding Vaseline Lip Therapy Rosy Lips.

Our Unilever product line is global. Often times, certain products may be found in local U.S. stores which have been imported, and are not currently manufactured or distributed by Unilever in the U.S. The various products which our company manufactures and markets in the United States are designed to meet the needs and preferences of the American consumer and conform with U.S. government regulatory standards. Unfortunately, given the vast array of products available worldwide, it is impossible for us to keep up with requests to supply specific varieties or to provide in-depth knowledge concerning these imported products.

We are aware of Netgrocer and Drugstore.com as well as a company called Access USA. They claim to be able to ship U.S. orders anywhere in the world.

The URL's for these companies are listed below:

PLEASE NOTE:

UNILEVER IS NOT AFFILIATED IN ANY WAY WITH THESE WEB SITES. WE CANNOT ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY REGARDING ANY ORDERS PLACED WITH THE SITES LISTED BELOW. THE URL'S ARE PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

http://www.netgrocer.com

http://drugstore.com

http://www.myus.com

We hope this information is helpful.

Sincerely,

Your friends at Vaseline

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So, essentially, how I read this response translates to:

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Hello Jackie,

Thanks for contacting us with a question. We say this only because it's required, in reality, we would not thank you for this question. We cannot begin to explain the pointless "in depth" knowledge required to understand how sometimes, stores in the U.S. sell products imported from other countries. It is impossible to keep up with requests to supply specific varieties, even though you did not request anything in your question, you simply asked if the product existed.

Below we're going to list some useless websites we're aware of. You may be wondering why we feel you should be aware of them - keep wondering. They do not sell the product you're asking about. Also, the last site isn't even geared towards people in the US - even though it's quite apparent we knew previously in our response that you are in the US, by the end of our response, we no longer know this. In fact, all three sites claim to sell to the UK. So have fun with these URL's.

EVEN THOUGH WE ARE PROMOTING SITES THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR QUESTION, WE ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH THESE SITES.

Hope we wasted enough of your time reading through this and including useless links.
Sincerely,
Vaseline

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Okay... okay, I know my translation sounds a bit hostile, but honestly, I contact companies with questions and comments all the time, and usually, they're either very polite and quick with their answers/responses, or they simply don't respond. I would have much preferred no response over the useless one I got. They don't even really answer the question, only say something like "we can't supply everything" and "some things are available in the uk but not in the us".  They don't actually say "Sorry, no, Rosy Lips is not available in the US, unless you order the UK version".

Now I know that sounds like I'm being too picky about the answer, and anyone could see that their "skirting around the question with generic answers" is a "no", but let me explain why I asked in the first place.

These are some pictures of the lip therapy lip pot products in the UK:

The last picture is the Rosy Lips.


These are the lip therapy lip pots in the US:

Bit of a difference, yes? Here is the Rosy Lips lip pot I saw all those months back:

So excuuuuuse me, Vaseline, for asking whether this product was available here, because it sure looks like the US version. And yes, I DID include this picture when I asked my question. And you explaining how you can't always make products available in the US doesn't explain how this picture looks an awful lot like the US version.

Sigh. I suppose it could be photoshopped. Such a shame too, because I would love to have a rosy lips lip pot. Guess I'll have to resort to different measures...



Tada!!

I added some coloring myself and made my own rosy lips. lol.

For both I used a gel food coloring. There were just two differences in how I did each one. For this one, I removed the lip therapy, mixed some gel coloring in, then heated it to a liquid. That actually separated a lot of the coloring, which resulted in this cute pink color. I can only just barely see a color difference when I put this on, but I like it! It looks a lot more pink in real life - the flash kind of kills it a bit.

Then for this one I used the remaining coloring that originally separated. I took out the lip therapy and mixed it together, and only melted it enough to be able to get it back in the pot. So it's not as smooth, but it has more color. This one definitely colors my lips red. Hehe.


So there's my ghetto rosy lips. Haha. I likes them. :)