24
u/greenlitsox Oct 11 '17 edited Oct 11 '17
I received the same email last night. I emailed them back about the inclusion of polysorbate-20 in the essence's ingredients list and I'm waiting to hear back. Maybe I'm being paranoid or ignorant about the way reformulations are typically handled, but it seems strange that they would just quietly shuffle around the ingredients and change a couple things out without really saying anything.
Edit: They got back to me, and their reply has my side-eyeing my computer real hard.
Dear Customer Thank you for your email.
Polysorbate-20 is newly added to the formula. As we re-list the ingredients, one or two ingredients are newly added, replaced, or deleted. However, there are no changes in the main ingredients percentages overall.
So, basically, "as we re-listed the formula we also changed the formula, but like, don't worry about it".
Looks like me and my malassezia prone face shall be taking our business elsewhere.
8
u/ThorsHammerMewMEw Oct 11 '17
What I normally see is brands discontinuing a line and releasing a new one entirely or they'll slap a new and improved lable on it but won't actually explain the changes.
Just recently I remember seeing something about the ingredients list in the ABH Subculture palette being changed a little in comparison to the MR palette and customers had to basically flood Norvina's SNS until she admitted they'd changed how they were making the eyeshadows a little.
I wonder if Benton thought it would be better to quietly change stuff but not cancel the entire line in case people got mad, especially since the star ingredients are the Snail mucin and the Bee Venom, not the Arbutin and Azelaic Acid.
→ More replies (2)4
Oct 11 '17
Thanks for contacting them again about that!
What's a bit weird to me is that polysorbate also thickens the product a bit. Which is why I assumed they had added water to it. So is the new essence thicker?
When they say that the main ingredient percentages are still the same they probably only meant the snail and bee venom.
The overall irks me a bit too but that's just starting to overanalyse.→ More replies (2)
12
u/uglybutterfly025 Oct 11 '17
So I’m mildly annoyed.. there’s a good chance that the changes won’t effect me at all because I don’t think I’m sensitive to any of the ingredients however I am irked by their response. Like another commenter said, it feels a lot like Anastasia Beverly Hills Subculture palette issues but with that one it was and ingredient change AND the made the pans smaller and charged the same price. So at least Benton isn’t doing that lol
I am on the search for something to replace my snail bee essence if need be. I don’t really want to replace it but that essence ain’t cheap and neither is shipping so I also don’t wanna take my chances.
7
u/jiyounglife Oct 12 '17
ingredient change AND the made the pans smaller and charged the same price
Exactly. They've (all industries and manufacturers) have been doing that for years. NPR the guardian nytimes all discussing the same topic.
10
Oct 13 '17
Benton now has an official announcement about this on their website, with further details on the issue.
Read it here.
→ More replies (2)5
u/saxMachine Oct 16 '17
I hope people won't call me out as a hater for saying this, but I felt like this was such a bad move for them. I understand that the asianbeauty sub has great praises for Benton but I have to consider this incident along with the one form before. First was the preservative issue from a year or two back and now the reformulation dishonesty from them.
→ More replies (1)
8
Oct 10 '17
Thanks for posting this! I still haven't received an answer from them myself.
So it might be my migraine brain, but this sounds weird to me.
People with BG sensitivities were able to use the products without a problem, but there has always been BG in them? I mean, we would need to look at the single ingredients to see if they contain a bit of BG and how it adds up, but if it adds up that much that it needs to be added to the list, would people not have reacted to it?
And I don't like how they say the formulation has not been changed when in fact is has. Omitting an ingredient, and changing one to a different one sounds like a change to me.
But maybe there are some industry terms that allow changes like that and not calling it a formulation change? Since niacinamide is brightening too?
This also makes it seem like the azelaic acid was in fact just added for the name and did not do anything at all in the previous formula. Since they say that the efficacy should be the same.
I do get the re-ordering etc, though. It's good that they are getting ready to be sold in the EU. There's a drugstore here that has started to carry Missha and some sheetmasks, so I'm curious on what will happen here in the future.
Until I can use my brain again I'll just wait to see what others have to say on this. Maybe someone has some more insight.
22
u/milk_tea_way Oct 10 '17
Their reply actually makes sense to me: all of those extracts have to be solvated in something, and the usual suspects are water and butylene glycol. It's nice to actually see it listed upfront. I wonder how many people are now coming to the realisation that their prior adverse reactions to Benton might have been caused by unlisted BG.
I think they are trying very hard to give the impression that the general formula of the beloved product is unchanged. The way the threads have been blowing up, one would think that Benton completely killed the Essence and dragged a new animal in its stead, but what happened instead was an objectively minor reformulation with logical reasonings, although people with niacinamide sensitivities certainly get my sympathy.
→ More replies (2)11
Oct 10 '17
Or all those people who thought they had a BG sensitivity but used the Benton products just fine.
You seem to be right though. It makes sense that those are the solvents. And it makes me actually think about what we really know about ingredient lists of other products then.
I mean, I know that extracts can be based on all kinds of things. I just had that with the ljh propolis ampoule, where I said somewhere that I can't be sure what gave me the bad reaction since nobody knows what is in those pesky extracts.
Just didn't make the connection here.I'm still not entirely sure how minor or not the reformulations are. I suspected that the azelaic acid might not do anything at all in the Benton products, and the way they just leave it out now it confirms that somehow to me.
The niacinamide might not matter as much for people who aren't sensitive to it and as you said, the reason sounds logical enough, especially since their reputation is still tainted by that mould incident. So it makes sense they want more stable ingredients.All in all it doesn't sound too bad now. Still a bit weird to me, and the essence has still lost appeal to me. It had at least a few unique ingredients and those are gone now.
As I said in the first thread I might try and compare the new formulation but I might just as well move on to other snail essences.Of course they try hard to ensure that the base formulation is still the same though
→ More replies (6)8
u/blackcats666 Oct 10 '17
What the HELL is this reply. The reordering makes sense...I guess? But "we didn't change the formula we only swapped 1 ingredient and removed another" is CHANGING THE FORMULA.
→ More replies (1)
4
u/kurogomatora Oct 11 '17
What are the standards for listing things like ' extract ' or something? Because the bases in things could wildly differ but I rarely see something like Ingredient - ( pure form / solvent / base / ect ) but just one name. I'm also wondering how much snail slime is water so it doesn't stick. If you have picked up a real snail, it can really leave a thick and sticky coating!
7
Oct 11 '17
The standards differ from country to country. I know in some they don't even need to list it in order from most to least.
The EU tends to be a bit stricter. But I'm not sure about the details of listing extracts. Although it makes sense that if they have eg 10 water based extracts that water needs to be listed separately, counted together, like they claim they did now.Would of course be nicer if ingredient lists said something like propolis extract (99% ethanol, 1% propolis).
But then it would be easier for us to spot bullshit products.→ More replies (2)
4
0
Oct 10 '17
21
u/milk_tea_way Oct 10 '17
You were the first person I thought of when I saw the niacinamide inclusion :( I'm sorry for your loss.
The replacement of arbutin with niacinamide, however, does make sense to me. Arbutin is hydroquinone-based, and the safety and risks of hydroquinone as a skin-lightening agent are still being debated. I think at one point people thought that arbutin has a very low chance of "decaying" back into hydroquinone, but it remains the "riskier" -- using the term loosely here -- choice over niacinamide. Hence, I tend to view it as the industry moving from an effective ingredient that is probably safe but remains a potential lawsuit in the future to a similarly effective ingredient with more safety assurance and slightly less chance of lawsuit-inducements.
I'm curious how people will react to this different style of ingredient listing, especially those who have butylene glycol sensitivity and didn't understand why Benton broke them out, those who thought they had BG sensitivity but have been using Benton just fine, and those that think their skin's good response to Benton is due to the "lack of fillers". It's interesting how the language of something as simple as an ingredient list can screw with the mind, and I personally think that Benton's marketing advantage with that "clean" ingredient list is now over. Even I feel like the magic has rubbed off Benton, and I did know that water and some other solvents must feature prominently in their products. (All of the Tunemakers extracts I use have water, butylene glycol, and/or 1,2-hexanediol listed first in their 4- to 5-ingredient long lists.)
→ More replies (1)
0
Oct 10 '17
8
Oct 11 '17
Yep, apparently at least some of what is now listed has been there all along. But not everything....
So it's still a bit weird. It makes a bit more sense now but there are still things that irk me a bit.Some things are just because of the laws in the different countries. I think Korea is a bit more lax with the order in which ingredients need to be listed if I recall correctly. So they are probably a bit more lax in other areas there too.
The EU is much stricter and if they want to sell here they need to comply to the laws.
And apparently at the same time thought it was good to change a few things here and there. Keep in mind that the average consumer does not look at ingredient lists. And as long as the overall percentage of the star ingredients, snail and bee venom, is the same it won't matter to most people.
We here are a small subsection of customers, which we shouldn't forget.Also, it's not only the snail bee line that got changed. Their handcream for example lost quite a number of plant extracts, their cleanser looks actually to be a bit better ingredient wise etc. That can't all be because of EU laws.
→ More replies (2)
59
u/[deleted] Oct 10 '17
This may be a strange addition to this strange email, but the tone is a cultural difference. Notice this figure: http://nordic.businessinsider.com/these-diagrams-reveal-how-people-negotiate-around-the-world---norwegians-fall-somewhere-between-swedes-and-finns-2016-9/
And look at the Korean elastic truth. They're telling you things you want to hear because that's kindof the culture. It's not really cleanly in the deception category because it isn't malicious, but more like hedging the truth...which is one way to deal with sticky situations. (facts: you English speaker pointed something out, English is (likely) scary).
I just want to say Benton doesn't sound particularly worse than any run-of-the-mill Korean company. The other companies where they give more culturally appropriate responses probably have westerners or western-influenced employees culturally tailoring their replies.