If you should decide, in a moment of weakness, to try Luminess, know that if you change your mind in the middle of ordering, YOU CANNOT CANCEL! Your order is taken by an automated voice and, no matter how many times you press "0, " to reach a human being, or yell into the phone that you want to cancel your order, no one will respond because no one is there.

Should you call the company the next day, most likely you will get routed from department to department to departmen to department to department, also by an automated voice. Again, not allowing you to speak to a human being to cancel your order.--or even to press a button to do so.

By the third day, if you do finallly reach someone, most likely his or her English will be poor, heavily accented and very difficult to understand. When I told one of the Luminess representative from India to please cancel my order, she replied: "Business is slower on Tuesdays and Thursdays." What??? Also, be aware that what you read on their web site as their cancellation policy apparently really isn't. I was told they have a whole other policy for "trial periods"--one that I couldn't find anywhere on their web site. But, to my understanding, the one I couldn't see is the one that "really counts. "

I also learned that you cannot refuse the package when it arrives. According to a rep from the Southgate, MI, U.S. Postal Service, the way Luminess has it set-up, YOU have to pay the return postage PLUS Luminess will charge you an additional fee of between $30.00 and $40.00 to cancel your order. If that's not enough, you cannot return the package via U.S. Postal Service, you must drive to a Fed-Ex office. But not just any Fed-Ex office. It has to be a sub-station. And not just any sub-station. It has to be a ground sub-station, not an air sub-station, as I time-consumingly learned. Good luck finding one. The nearest one to my home was about 40 miles away. But, should you find the right sub-station and pay to return the package, it will be back on your doorstep within a a day or two. Why? Because, I was told, you cannot refuse to accept the package! So, there it was again, back on my front porch.

Should you decide to forego refusal of the package and send it--again at YOUR expense (another $12.00) -- ia regular mail, you'll get it back again. Why? Because, I was later told, you have to have an authorization number (good luck getting one of those) or Luminess will return the package to you. How very convenient. THEY can refuse to accept the package, but YOU can't!

The rectangular white box is now back again. So
you call Luminess and wade through all the various departments and people (who will try extremely hard to sell you something else), then learn that you now have to open the box and put the authorization code on the packing slip inside, as well as on the outside of the package. If you don't do this, Luminess will once again refuse to accept the package. The problem is, if you open the box, you could possibly be opening yourself to accusations and raiding of your bank account if the product is in any way damaged, If the package is opened and the airbrush machine damaged, YOU could be accused of breaking it and become liable for the over-$200 cost, plus the nearly $40.00 cancellation fee.

I was also told that if I "blogged" anything about the company, went on TV, commented in a newspaper (I'm a former reporter) or used any other public forum (which I said I would do), they would keep my money. If I kept my mouth shut, they would "graciously" return $39.95--but keep the $72.00. I was also told that if I did let the public know about their practices, that "the sword cuts two ways." Does that sound like a threat to you?

I've had to cancel my credit/debit card at the bank, close my account, contact every company to which I had paid a bill or ordered something on-line to explain, file complaint papers with the Texas Attorney General's office, complete more papers for my bank's fraud department, and fill-out papers to, hopefully, get the $72.00 "trial period" fee and $39.95 cancellation fee back.

Even though I was on the phone with the automated voice for only 2-3 minutes, tried to cancel, and even hung up in hopes that the order hadn't gone through, the grasping, greedy hand of Luminess refuses to loosen its hold on my money--which I truly need.

This company MUST be stopped.