On the OK! Beauty Box website it claims that the “five treats for your skin and senses” are worth a total of more than £90 when bought at recommended retail price (RRP)
Is the OK! Beauty Box deal as good as it seems?
This was the question I tried to answer recently, having received this month’s Keep your Cool edit and the five items inside. On the OK! Beauty Box website it claims that the “five treats for your skin and senses” are worth a total of more than £90 when bought at recommended retail price (RRP).
The first thing that comes to my mind whenever I see claims such as this is something along the lines of “surely not”. The RRP figure seems bumped up to make the bargain price look better, but can it really be the normal cost you’d expect to pay in a shop?
During trips to three pharmacies and chemists close to my home I went to get an answer to that question, only to fail to find a single one of the products in store. Clearly I should’ve chosen to live near a bigger Boots.
Happily all of the OK! Beauty Box products were readily available online from a number of different sellers. I have listed the cheapest prices I was able to find for each of them below, to see how it compares to the current £8.99 payment for the subscription services.
I also went to check out whether the magazine vouchers included in the Box – valid for two OK! magazines at a shop of your choice – could in-fact be redeemed.
Ren clean skincare evercalm gentle gel cleanser
RRP: £10
Cheapest found price: £10
The cheapest I could find the Red skincare product for online was £10, with many of the products on offer having extra postage costs as well. There were two bottles on eBay for £5, but it wasn’t clear if they had been used or not, so I am not including them in the comparison. The three pharmacies I visited did not have the product on offer.
Vegan by Happy Skin avacado + cermadies eye cream
RRP: £34.90
Cheapest found price: £34.90
This was another product which I failed to track down in the shops and also was something of a rarity online.
A number of online pharmacies have a very similar product for sale for different prices, including Superdrug advertising a night-cream from the same brand for £12.99. However the eye cream included in the OK! Beauty Box was much harder to find and unavailable – as far as I could see – for less than the RRP.
Learn more
OK! Beauty Box is a UK based beauty box subscription that’s fast becoming a hit with anyone who’s obsessed with make-up, haircare and skincare! Here are eight reasons why over 17,000 like minded beauty lovers agree.
Grüum Iugna calming spray with jasmine & ylang ylang
RRP: £16
Cheapest found price: £16
As I blustered around another IRL pharmacists trying and failing to find yet another product, I could have done with a quick puff of this calming spray.
Surprisingly, there are plenty of the Grüum products available second-hand for around £10, but the cheapest I could find it new was £16 on the official Grüum site.
Balance Me Tripeptide plumping cloud cream
RRP: £20
Cheapest found price: £16
The delicious sounding cloud cream is a product which has a smaller range of prices online than some of the others. All but one of the online shops I looked at were selling the cream for £20, with the only exception being Waitrose which is currently running a promotional price of £16.
BEAUTYPRO super hydrating travel face sheet mask
RRP: £6
Cheapest found price: £5
For my money, the face masks that arrive with most Beauty Boxes are the best bit. There is no better way to plump up your skin after a long day’s work or a trip away to somewhere lovely but skin distressing than a face mask. I found a number of the BEAUTYPRO product available for £5.
OK! magazine vouchers
I wandered down from the office at lunchtime to the closest newsagent and picked up a copy of this week’s OK! – featuring a story about ‘proud mum Kate’ Middleton.
The young man behind the till saw the coupon and called for his manager who – after a lengthy inspection – had me cut off one of the barcodes from the voucher before telling me I was good to go with the magazine. A triumph.
The final tally
If you were to buy all of the products in this month’s OK! Beauty Box at the cheapest price I could find them for individually, you’d be forking out £81.90. That is before postage is taken into account, which I’d conservatively estimate to cost an extra £10.
That means that even with the occasional site specific discount taken into account, OK! Beauty Box subscribers are saving more than £80 this month once they’ve paid their £8.99 subscription fee – and that’s not even taking into account the two OK! magazines thrown into the bundle, worth £7.98.
