I started writing this post early this year but abandoned it thinking maybe I was being crazy. I’ve since grown out my nails and gotten deeper into the nail community again (follow my nailstagram if you’re interested), and as a result have seen this company pop up again all over the place, so I feel compelled to share this now.

I fall prey to Instagram ads regularly. I got the Static Nails Pop-On Manicure ads for probably a good year before I succumbed to them, but succumb I did. As I got more into doing my nails last year, I decided it was time to try press-ons. I bought two sets of the Static Pop-On Manicure in Mademoiselle Round and Holographic White French Round.

What is a Pop-On Manicure?

The Pop-On Manicure (POM) is Static’s version of press ons. Supposedly, each set of 24 nails is reusable if you follow their instructions on how to apply them. Each set comes with Static’s proprietary glue, which is supposed to dissolve with time so that the nails will eventually “pop” off, allowing you to remove and reuse them (since you don’t have to destroy the nails by soaking them in acetone).

What I Liked

The sets are fairly affordable at $16 each. I got mine for $12 apiece during the holiday season. They did take several weeks to arrive, but with the pandemic and the time of year I think that was more a shipping problem than a Static problem.

I applied the Mademoiselle Round set soon after I got them. The color was really pretty and the instructions were easy to follow. One caveat here: before this, I’d used press ons all of twice in my life, and the first time was when I was 5 and had a kiddie set that came with a Barbie doll. So I am really not great at applying press ons and probably used WAY too much glue. I take full responsibility for that, given some of the problems that came later.

For the first few days, I liked the nails. But that did not last long.

What I Didn’t Like

At first, the nails looked pretty good. They didn’t look great though. The color I got was more sheer than I expected and the glue underneath showed through a lot (which might be more of a user error than a defect with the product). The nails were also a little bit thinner than the Kiss nails I have used perviously, and they had kind of a cheap-looking shine to them. But still, they didn’t look awful, and the shape was really even and lengthened my hand nicely.

However, within just a day or two of wear, a couple of the nails cracked and I lost huge chunks out of multiple nails. When I lost the first chunk, I was cleaning out my car, so it’s possible I hit my hand on something and didn’t notice. But given that I had done a whole bunch of yard work with no issues a day after applying Kiss nails a few months prior, I wasn’t impressed.

I attempted to fix this issue by trimming the nails down to a shorter square shape and filing them smooth. Again, they looked okay for a few days after that. The paint from the french tip fade started to wear off, which wasn’t lovely, but if you didn’t look too close they were not the worst. But after a few days, a huge chunk popped out of the nail that had gotten damaged before, and two other nails were beginning to split.

After the second split, I had to remove these. I soaked each finger in acetone for a few seconds and then gently rocked the nails side to side until they lifted off. Again, this might be user error, but I either soaked too long and/or lifted too hard and accidentally peeled a giant hole in my thumbnail that took forever to grow out.

At this point, I’m wishing I had chosen an opaque color for my second set of these. I did some things wrong with these, like overdoing the glue. I think an opaque color might look nicer and be more beginner-friendly. And I will say that what they say about the nails not falling off seems to be true – although obviously I can’t speak to whether they dissolve properly over time, when I tried to remove them those suckers were ON THERE. But overall I’m just not impressed. Even in the very beginning, the nails looked kind of cheap, and I had much better luck with drugstore Kiss nails that are cheaper.

Red Flags?

The nails weren’t great, but I probably wouldn’t even be writing this review were it not for the weird things that I learned afterward. After trying the set above, I tried to leave a review on the Static Nails site. I wrote a pretty neutral review acknowledging that some of my issues with this might have been due to my own mistakes in applying them. But my review never showed up on the website. I contacted Static to ask about that, and they said I was supposed to have gotten an email link to confirm my review, which I never got. I understand tech issues – where I work, we deal with them all the time and I know it sucks. So maybe it was a glitch. But it felt weird.

Because I’m a bit of a Karen at heart, I decided to look up Static on the Better Business Bureau website. It’s not great. As I write this, when I visit their BBB listing, what I see is a 1.45 out of 5 customer rating from 42 reviews and 58 complaints. A lot of the reviews and complaints are similar to mine, with not-great products being followed by worse customer service.

And here’s the kicker – Static doesn’t do returns. The reason, according to their website, is “for sanitary purposes.” But other beauty companies like Ulta, Sephora, and Sally Beauty allow returns of beauty items – they just don’t resell them. Not offering returns, especially for items that aren’t sold in stores where you can see what you’re getting, is their prerogative but in bad faith.

I am not the only one who has gotten a bad feeling from Static Nails. If you search for independent reviews of their nail lacquer, you’ll find mixed reviews, but negative reviews seem to get spammed with comments about how, actually, the nail lacquer is wonderful. (Many of the positive reviews I saw were from bloggers who had product sent to them via Static’s PR team along with an affiliate link, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but in this situation, seemed icky.) Other reviewers have also come up against the weird, deflective customer service that I did. And I am not the only one whose negative review hasn’t shown up on Static’s website.

Conclusion

I don’t recommend Static Nail products, which I’m sure you have guessed by now. It’s a shame, because the nail colors and press-on designs I’ve seen are really nice. But there’s just too many weird-seeming business practices for me to feel comfortable buying from them again. Not sure what I am going to do with the second set of press-ons I bought. Probably chuck them into the trash, where they belong.