Bill

A little over a month ago I subscribed to the dollar shave club using their most common option which is a cartridge with four blades.  It costs $6 per shipment (they typically ship on a monthly cycle) and you get four cartridges per shipment.

I now know why they send you four per shipment - they aren't very sharp and they dull really quickly.  I could get, at most, 2-3 decent shaves with one cartridge and I typically use a Mach III Turbo for about a month (10+ shaves) before I notice any dulling.  However, the quality of the blade wasn't my only problem.

The cartridge on the four blade is just too damn big for me to get a good shave around my nose and mouth. The bezel gets in the way and prevents my getting within the last couple millimeters of my nose so I end up having to use one of my older Mach III Turbo's to finish the job.  Really, the only thing the dollar shave club has going for it is the price - but the blade is worthless to me if I can't actually shave my entire face.

Thus I've switched to a different subscription plan that will give me exactly the cartridge I like on the schedule I like.  Amazon.com offers a subscription on all sorts of products and I've setup a recurring subscription for Mach III turbo cartridges every five months.  I'm actually getting 10 sent every five months as I hope to shave my head a little more regularly.  You can order them without a subscription or customize the frequency from 1-6 months.

With the dollar shave club I would have spent $30 for five months of cartridges and with the Amazon option I'm spending $28.97.  Sure I'm getting half as many cartridges but they last twice as long and they do a better job of shaving even when dull than the dollar shave club blade did while sharp.

#dollar-shave-club #shopping #mach-iii-turbo #amazon #shaving #razors

Last week I signed up for the Dollar Shave Club.  I had seen their pretty funny viral ad video about a year ago and had been thinking about subscribing to their service but I had a backlog of blades I'd bought on ebay and it took until last week for me to run out.

So I took the plunge.  Today the blades showed up.  I don't shave daily - I'm lazy - instead I shave maybe once every three days.  I also, on occasion, shave my head; the whole thing.  As part of my initial test of their blades I'll be shaving both my face and head.  We'll see how that goes.

The blades arrived in pretty simple packaging - just a stiff brown envelope.

The razor handle was packaged in nothing more than a plastic baggy.  I'm not even sure what purpose the baggy serves.  Along with the four blades and the handle there were two paper inserts.  The first is the larger card that jokes about not drinking and shaving - trying to keep the schtick of the video alive.  The second is also just a jokey little card that tries to be witty in the style of "The Princess Bride" by making a reference to Asian land wars.

Overall I didn't think either really did much for the experience though I suppose had they neglected to put anything in the envelope other than the blades and handles I'd have knocked them for having incredibly cheap packaging instead of just thinking they have basically cheap packaging.  Honestly, I don't care about the package so long as I get a good clean shave from the blades.  So, how did that work out?

Here was my face pre-shave:

Not too much growth but I needed a shave.  The razor worked okay.  It was probably as about as effective on my face as my traditional Mach III turbo XL.  However, it didn't clear as easily which is probably due to the fact that four blades are wedged into the same space I normally have three blades (or maybe just a little more - the cartridge did feel a little larger).

My face was already red before shaving but you can get a general idea of how close the blade got (that's my ear on the left of the image).  I think it feels just a little less close than the blade I'm used to using got but it is barely noticeably different so it could be my mind playing tricks on me.

My head is a different matter entirely.  When I shave my head it usually comes out feeling incredibly smooth. However, certain parts of my head, no matter how many times I shaved it or from what angles I attacked, I could not get them feeling truly smooth.  Here is my head pre and post shave:

#dollar-shave-club #shaving #razors