Sunday

How to get a discount on Lush Christmas Gift Sets

Picture the scene: Rich and I are in the living room, I'm on the Lush site browsing the Christmas gift sets and he's doing some geeky majigger on his laptop. "Wow, look at this gift set! It's £126!" Rich: "WHAT?" Me: "Well, it's got loads of stuff in it. It must be worth about £170!" 

So I decide to look up the value of buying each item individually. It's £10 cheaper than the gift set. A bit cheeky but surely they won't all be like that? I work out the cost of a couple more. Turns out they are all more expensive to buy as a gift set.

I get that they're wrapped nicely and it's convenient to just grab a gift set but come on! Paying £10 for some wrapping paper and a box is just ridiculous! 

I was so shocked that I put out a little tweet to let people know about this, and it turns out I wasn't alone in being surprised. I decided to work out the value of each gift set and put it all in a handy little chart so you don't have to do the maths. (It's pretty long, but there's more stuff at the bottom so just scroll straight past if you fancy). 
As you can see, it turns out that only one gift set is actually a better deal: You save a whole £1.17 on the Treats gift set. Amazing, I know!

However, as I was working these out, I noticed another trick Lush are employing to make you think it's a better deal than it is: You don't get the amount of product you expect.

Take the All the Best gift set, for example. It's £25.95 and it includes Ocean Salt facial scrub. That product alone is worth £7.25, so it's got to be good value, right? Except when you look closely at the gift set description, you see that it only includes 45g, rather than the 120g pot they usually stock. The gift sets that stock Fun are the same- Rather than the full-size 200g bar, you end up with half the amount.

Now, I love Lush, and I'm not for a moment trying to turn anybody against them. Go ahead and buy people Lush gifts for Christmas- Just make your own instead. Set yourself a budget, buy as much as you can and present them in a basket or gift box from ebay. Lush is getting your money, you're getting better value for it and your friend is getting a more personal gift. Everyone's a winner! 

22 comments :

  1. Oh gosh this is just silly, gift sets are always meant to be better value for money! I think that 'Fun Tin' is ridiculous, double the price than if the items were bought separately!!

    Rebecca x

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  2. I noticed this last year too, its very very cheeky! I love Lush but I have to admit I did go off them when they discontinued one of my favourite products and then a couple of months later had it in the Retro section for more than double the price! It just really put me off the brand, I still use their products, but definitely love them a little less :)

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  3. Oh wow.. I never actually realised how little you get! x

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  4. Well done on noticing this! And i love your little chart you put together, that's so handy!

    Adele-Marie xx

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  5. That is incredibly shocking! Thanks for the heads up :)
    Amy x
    -A Little Boat Sailing-

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  6. This is insane, I can believe it but I never realised that they would do it (if that makes any sense at all!) Definitely helped when buying presents, thanks :) xx
    somethingotsay-fashion.blogspot.co.uk

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  7. As I said on twitter, I used to only buy the gift sets when you used to get the 10% off voucher but now you don't so I always just buy everything individually because it works out cheaper! I love that you worked it all out though in a handy table!

    xx

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  8. I am actually shocked by this. I always look at the gift boxes because I do love the packaging and that it's all in a cute set. I'd rather buy separately and create my own set.
    Such a great post!

    Tamsyn-Elizabeth
    Peach Pow XO

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  9. Wow this is really interesting! Thanks for pointing this out :) will definitely be making my own gift sets this year x

    Abby | Beauty and a Blogger

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  10. Great post had a read a while back but thought I would comment too! I love how you done the chart and I understand how it's much more expensive so in future I will be ditching the gift box :( as you made some good points about doing it yourself x

    www.krystelcouture.com

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  11. Oh, naughty Lush! But thanks for bringing this to our attention! I'd always just assumed a gift set must be better value - serves me right for being lazy! x

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  12. Oh my goodness! Thank you for doing this! They should put it up somewhere that they're doing this, it's just not fair!

    theinelegantwench

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  13. Wow, to see the price different written down is a little maddening. The boxes aren't nearly as pretty enough to justify that price hike I'd say.

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  14. Oh gosh. How different will the US Lush be from the UK? I bet they will have almost the same prices as you have and the same results. And I was just at LUSH the other day too!

    http://urhappybunnie.blogspot.com/

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  15. wow! i'm so surprised! i always presumed the gift sets would be better value! glad you spotted that!

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  16. Oh, LUSH. Such a sneaky, sneaky tactic. It's not totally okay that they make their gift sets a bit more expensive but then shouldn't teach their sales associates to let the customers know they were getting a value with the box. I'm a math geek and did the math and it always came out to more if not the same price. I even had a customer do the math in store once and she was like "this is more than if I'd bought them separately, why are you SA's telling me it's a value?" That was mortifying! I quit after the holidays and it put me off of LUSH for a while :/ This is helpful and I'm glad you're letting everyone know! Besides, personal gift boxes would be SO MUCH cuter!!

    - Jess
    The Mod Mermaid

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  17. Very cheeky of them! Surely gift sets are meant to be better value for money! I've seen a couple of blogs say the same thing xx

    whathollyhearts.blogspot.com

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  18. I really didnt realise this! I bet they're not the only ones! xx

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  19. Hmm, this is really interesting as I was just comparing this price method on the Australian site (as I live here haha) and surprisingly enough, not all gift sets are consistently more expensive than buying each product individually.

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  20. Hmm, me thinks this could lead to some good 'How to make a LUSH gift cheaper' tutorials? X

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  21. Huh, I did the research for this as well and got different results..maybe UK gift sets are different? The Seasons Tweetings gift set is $59.95 US dollars here...(36.84 pounds..), so maybe its the price difference.
    You get a Buffy (11.95$), 15g of Celestial ($16.63 per oz; this set has 1/2 an oz, so about $8.32), Charity Pot ($5.95 for 1.7 oz; this set has 3.5 oz, so $12.25), 100g of Noriko ($6.95), 50g Peace Massage Bar ($13.95), 45g Ro's Argon Body Conditioner ($32.95 for 7.9 oz, this set has 1.5 oz, so $6.26), and 100ml Rose Jam ($9.95). The total is about $69.93. That's about 42.79 Pounds. You save $9.68...plus my Lush Times has different pricing for some reason; like the soaps are more expensive.

    Not sure if there was some miscalculations on your part (maybe I did some, but I used a calculator and Lush's website :) ) or if UK gift sets are different; but I just don't want people to be mislead; a lot of gift sets are actually worth it!

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