Customers Complain that Mentality Polish Is Seriously Fucking Up Their Nails
LatestMentality Nail Polish, an indie brand with a seemingly faithful following, has become the subject of a fairly damning allegation: it destroys your nails.
The Mercurial Magpie, a beauty blog run by Kirby Hartline, has provided the most comprehensive account thus far. Basically, the story goes that consumers started to see nail lifting (something called onycholysis), redness, and burning sensations after using the polishes produced by the company from April-June of this year, causing your nails to go from looking relatively healthy to looking like this:
That is nasty. The craziest part, however, is how Mentality has handled a fairly straightforward issue of faulty or nonexistent product testing. That is, like an offended child.
On July 22, Mentality posted a statement to its Facebook page urging anyone who experienced “sensitivity” to the polish to discontinue use, and offered to replace any orders from the previous 60 days. They also blamed the sensitivity on a new base ingredient:
We purchased degassing equipment to remove air bubbles and found that Arminex base is very foamy, compared to the other manufacturers whose polish base does not foam upon degassing. The trapped air bubbles, we believe caused excessive odor and we are now suspicious of the citric acid used as a preservative.
They have since replaced the suspect base ingredient.
However, the Facebook message was viewed as a half-hearted attempt at reaching the large consumer base, which makes sense because the outrage didn’t really begin until August 21, when bloggers started to address the issue. That’s also when the co-owner, Danny Dannels began to go crazy.
On August 23, Mentality posted on Facebook that the company would no longer be able to issue any new refund requests. That same day, they offered a half-off sale on the polishes that were causing the side effects and posted about their UV Gel Black Line Holo Collection: “Perfect for when you are riled up enough to squabble for at least the next two weeks… Because kicking ass isn’t about being nice.”
That same day, Dannels posted on Facebook that he had fired a group of Mentality beauty bloggers, which is an odd move given that the bloggers aren’t paid and at least one of them publicly removed her support from the company this week. He says he “fired” them out of mercy.
“They need an ‘out’, because a group of very mean people are bullying them relentlessly online. So, they are all fired and I will pull their pictures from our website,” Dannels wrote.