I Gave It Three Stars. Then I Bought Three More Bottles.
"I would have given it one star if I hadn't noticed the hydration." A verified buyer on the shipping, the two weeks of nothing, and the month it took before her elevens went away.
Here is the review I left. All of it.
"This has definitely made an improvement to the overall appearance of my skin but isn't a miracle worker. I have finished the first bottle and am about to start the second."
Three stars.
I want to start there, because I am not somebody who loved this thing. I am somebody who rated it a five out of ten.
And then went and spent my own money on three more bottles.
That sounds like a contradiction. It took me a while to work out why it is not.
First, why it only got three stars
Let me get the bad out of the way, because there is real bad.
The shipping was awful. They were out of stock when I ordered. The backorder took two weeks longer than they told me. Then the actual shipping took another two weeks.
So I sat there for a month before I could even start. If you are the kind of person who gets annoyed waiting, know that going in.
It is not a miracle worker. Those are my words from the review and I stand behind every one of them.
My mouth lines are still there. The fine ones around my mouth have not gone anywhere. I want to be clear about that.
And honestly? I would have given it one star if I hadn't noticed the hydration.
That is a three star review. I meant it.
The first two weeks were nothing
I want to tell you exactly what happened, because I think the order matters.
Weeks one and two. Nothing really. My skin felt wetter, I guess. That was it.
Not smoother. Not younger. Wetter.
If I had been judging it at that point I would have written it off completely.
Then I stopped for two days
Around week three or four I stopped using it. No reason. Life.
Two days later my skin got dry really fast.
Not a little. Fast enough that I noticed it and thought about it and went back to using it.
That was the first real information I got. Not from using it. From stopping.
When I wrote the review
I finished the first bottle. Then I got an email asking me to leave a review.
So I did, and I wrote what was true at the time. It had made an improvement to my skin overall. It was not a miracle. Three stars.
That is where most people would stop reading and move on.
Here is what happened after.
Bottle two is when my elevens went away
They are gone.
The two lines between my eyebrows. The ones that were there whether I was annoyed or not.
It took about a month of using it every single day, and it happened during the second bottle. Not the first.
I did the math on that and it came out to about $70 for my elevens to go away.
That was worth it to me.
My mouth lines are still there. I already said that and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
But the elevens are gone, and I look at that as a fair trade.
So why did I buy three bottles to begin with?
I should be honest about this, because it changes what my story means.
I did not buy one and then reorder. I bought three the first time. Ninety days' worth.
I do not know exactly why I did that. I think part of me knew that one bottle of anything has never told me a single useful thing.
And it turned out to matter, because my elevens did not go anywhere until bottle two. If I had bought one bottle I would have finished it, written a 1 star review, and quit.
I would have quit one bottle before the thing I actually wanted happened.
That is a slightly sickening thought. I have no idea how many products I threw out at week four that might have gotten somewhere by week ten.
Then I bought three more
I have just finished bottle two. I ordered another three.
Not because it amazed me. It did not.
Because I actually like using it every day.
My skin gets dry now, at my age, and this is the thing that stops that. I found that out the hard way when I stopped for two days.
So it stopped being a wrinkle product I was testing and turned into the thing I use at night. Like brushing my teeth.
What I would tell somebody exactly like me
If you read reviews the way I do, which is looking for the reason not to buy, here is what I would want to know.
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1
Weeks one and two will be nothing.
Your skin will feel wetter. That is all. Do not judge it there.
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2
One bottle is not a test.
I wrote a three star review at the end of bottle one and I stand by it. I also would have been quitting one bottle too early.
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3
Give it ninety days. That is three bottles.
Mine took a month of daily use before the elevens went, and that landed in the second bottle.
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4
Use it every day.
I am not saying that because a company told me to. I stopped for two days and my skin told me.
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5
Know about the shipping before you order.
Mine took a month to arrive between the backorder and the delivery. Worth the wait, but only if you know ahead of time.
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6
The 30 day guarantee is for a different question.
It tells you whether your skin gets along with it. Mine did. It will not tell you what it does to your lines, because thirty days is not long enough to know that. No company's guarantee is.
What I actually wanted to know
My real question was never about the science. I cannot evaluate that and neither can you.
I wanted to know whether women like me believed this, or whether it was only the company saying so.
So I read reviews. Not the glowing ones. Those tell you nothing.
Three months in. Said her marionette lines had not quite disappeared, but she was seeing progress.
Two thirds of a bottle in. Said she did think she saw a visible difference, and that the areas around her mouth were smoother.
Said she was 50/50 on whether it would do anything and gave it a go anyway. Two weeks later her crow's feet and the lines beside her nose were less noticeable.
Said the women she golfs with comment on her skin.
Olivia. Not a woman being paid. That is a woman being careful.
Julie. "I do think." Not "this changed my life." That is how a real person talks.
And my three stars are still sitting up there with all of them.
That is the part that means something to me. Anybody can buy five star reviews. Nobody buys a three.
Where I stand
I am not revising my three stars.
The shipping was bad. The mouth lines are still there. It is not a miracle and I have said that from the start.
But my elevens are gone, I am on my fourth bottle, and I paid for all of them myself.
If you want results, it does work. If you do.