Forgiveness (do we forgive companies too easily or rather the opposite)

No, I agree. There have been ents before, but never ents with translucent armor, and definetly not centaur ents - I think these are very unique ideas.

 

I think some people forgive companies too easily (I'm looking at the over-protective, excuses-making lot), while others are too rigid and non-forgiving. I consider myself to be middle ground. I understand that many "companies" are in fact just small workshops made up of only a few people. It is tough for those few people to satisfy the wants of a multitude of customers (some foreign, think language barriers). Mistakes will be made. I see no issue as long as those mistakes are remedied in an acceptable, professional manner. However, there are some things that can not be overlooked so easily. For me, I would say copying work and behaving unprofessionally repeatedly turn me off to a company. I seek to understand the details of the problem before I brand a company as "bad." An instance of me "forgiving" a company would be my ordering my first doll through Elfdoll. I was aware Elfdoll had some issues before I signed up as a member (closing off the site to members only and then closing membership registration, employee conflict, etc.), but I still gave them a chance. My first doll arrived safe and sound, and Elfdoll is now trusted by me again. The issue I'm having right now is trusting Leeke World. I may be able to "forgive" them in the future, but for now the company has lost respect from me. I previously bought two wigs and am currently happy with the quality. Quality of the product is not my concern. I'm concerned about being lied to. I'm also concerned that I may be purchasing a nearly identical copy of another person/company's work. It's not the mere fact that they were heavily influenced by Dust of Dolls that hurts their reputation in my book. It's the fact that they originally posted picture proof of being influenced by Dust of Dolls, then later edited the pictures to make it seem like they weren't influenced. It is a cover-up that makes me question the integrity of the company. This company can redeem itself, but not right away. Time will tell if I can trust this company again. Like I stated before, this is why I classify myself as someone on the middle ground of forgiveness.​

 

I find that in general there are alot of DOA people who are unforgiving, or they are very limited in their forgiving based on their personal preference towards a company. I think Ring Doll did a doll based on an Anime character and people were in flames over it, but Soom did the same thing and people were up in flames in support of the doll. People use justification that what they see as a bigger company or a company they see as having higher quality dolls is allowed to get away with things but smaller companies are not allowed. People have no problem with Soom's hooved dolls and see them as having done it first, so okay fine. But then have a problem with Resin soul doing hooved dolls. Then you have Angelheim who has done hooved dolls, but it was okay because they were MSD, but no screaming about Soom then doing MSD sized hooves. Or that Soom made a centaur after Souldoll made a centaur. If a company does something bad business practice wise (such as taking money and not providing goods), they should be 'shunned' but if they had a problem, and then fix the situation completely, then people should be willing to forgive and give the company/person a second chance. I know people who STILL scream and hate Dollzone, want nothing to do with Dollzone and will tell you all about how evil Dollzone is because they made one mistake when they first started out.

 

I'm still fairly new to this community so really can't say with any certainty if BJD owners are more forgiving then they should be. I think sometimes its easy to forgive only because you hope that they will pull through in the end. For myself, where matters of money are concerned, I don't forgive or forget unless I either receive the product I ordered (after a long delay), or I receive a refund. Not doing either is just bad business. Thankfully I have never been ripped off when buying online, but that's mostly because I will research the hell out of a seller or a company before I buy from them.

 

Since it is mentioned here, as to Jpopdolls carrying the new elephant, yes people have been repaid, dolls have been delivered and as far as I know, all customers have been satisfied one way or another, a public apology made on flickr. Jpop is doing the manufacture as well as handling all transaction funds. If anyone knows differently, names, facts, not something they heard, please contact me.

On forgiveness, no, not here on DOA and not on most forums, I do not think we do. As Hobbysue just said, she "heard" , it is so much easier to spread the negative than the positive. It seems to me that people like to join into a drama here and other forums. Bad news spreads faster and is repeated by more people than good. It is just the way it is

Forgiveness it seems to me also depends as on the popularity of a company, the more popular the easier to overlook an "inspiration" that was taken from someone else as well as extremely long wait times. Right now I am waiting for 2 Dollshe boys, ordered on November 25, 2010. Two different timelines were given for shipping, both have long passed. Dollshe has produced other artists work, I for fact as I bought from the 2 artists, and the last email I got last week after emailing again... is basically "wait" we will eventually get to you. In the meantime they are soliciting work from artists.......I think if a smaller or less popular company did this....paypal disputes and mud slinging would be rampant. In a couple of weeks I will have waited 7 months, I believe Customhouse got hung for a 6 month wait.

But I think the question not being addressed for all of this "inspiration" is why? Why is this happening. I can tell you my opinion, it is all of us here. These so called companies are usually an handful of people and a website, and the competition for the dollar has become fierce. When one group sees something customers want, but another is not delivering, they will copy and grab that dollar. These days with the economy down, everyone is struggling to keep their doors open. So "inspiration" will continue to be the theme of the day.

As to the issue of copying, I just spent a goodly sum on legal fees to find out what is the legal position of all this, (we have had a huge issue with new comers copying establised artists work on my forum). It seems the bottom line is...if your work can be identified as some one else's, then yes your gulity of copyright infringement. YES, with the new laws at least here in the USA, an artist owns copyright on the work the moment they create it. All this of course, would have to be taken up in civil court.....However.....if 10 pieces or $2500.00 worth USD are sold by the copier....then we have a felony with criminal charges.

 

No, Custom House got hung for waits of well over 8-9 months and dolls that have still not been delivered after over a year for some people. Add to that the fact that they refuse to refund anyone (I have never heard of anyone receiving a refund from CH in the past year) even when asked multiple times and repeatedly fail to communicate with customers (even disappearing off the face of the planet for weeks at a time).

I personally am willing to wait 6 months for a doll, provided that the company is communicative with all my correspondence and is polite and professional. Custom House is none of these things. Even IF you get a response to your message, often they will be demanding and, not necessarily rude, but close to it. I realize there are language barriers, but when a company tells a customer that they must place another order to get a replacement for a part that arrived broken or didn't arrive at all, that is completely unacceptable to me. Custom House has been doing exactly that for the past six months (at least).

I felt the compelling need to post this here, because I personally was the one defending Custom House up until about six months had passed. Once I reached that point, and there were others who were on 9 months, I started to lose my faith in them. I now feel a lot of anger towards Custom House. There are customers from a year ago who are still in a nightmare of not knowing if they will ever see their money or dolls. Watching other people go through such frustration and turmoil has hardened my heart towards Custom House. Their behavior is inexcusable and despicable! I won't say I can never forgive them, as I'm a forgiving person, but it will be a long, long time and they will have to prove themselves for a long time with hugely improved customer service and quality control as well. Only then will I consider ordering directly from Custom House again.

 

I guess if you feel offended by someone's words it would feel like a scream. In the end people can give their opinion and if you don't like it you are free to disagree. I just wish we could stop all this exaggeration about "flames" and "screams" because it doesn't serve any purpose.

 

Yet another repetition of the fallacy that everyone believes 'it's OK when Soom does it'. If different people are speaking on the issue, it is only natural you're going to see different viewpoints. That's been pointed out so many times in this thread that it's a little baffling this is coming up again at all since the facts don't support this as being reality at all. If it's the same person staring down their nose at one issue, and embracing another, that's one thing and is a concrete example of hypocrisy -- but the people commenting on the issues aren't the same ones, or when the same people have been commenting cross-company, they have predominantly been expressing the same opinion consistently no matter what company is involved.

 

Actually, Grael, there's a list out there of people who are still missing stuff they paid for from Charles. I think it's on LJ, but I'm having trouble remembering exactly where. Things like boxes, face-ups, clothing were never delivered or completely refunded. As of when he started selling the new dolls the list was still being passed around. People may have been 'satisfied' in that they got SOMETHING, better than nothing, and some people did get everything- but not everyone got what they paid for.

I think a large part of it simply comes down to whether the company is in China. This isn't to say people are baselessly anti-Chinese dolls. Copyright is VERY different in China, and the vast majority of the recasters and bootleggers are operating out of China because their protection for foreign copyrights is so weak. I actually KNOW people who have had their original sculpture work stolen by recasters in China, so it's a huge, touchy issue for a large number of people.

I don't think the size of the company has nearly as much to play into it as country of origin- I mean, Leeke is HUGE, and the last like three or four pages of this thread has been about them. (ETA: Also, anyone who thinks Dollzone is a 'small' company, in so far as the size of most BJD companies, based on their sales volume alone my only words are this: Ha, ha, ha.)

 

Deadlegato, if you could remember where, please let me know. I will personally see to it that everyone is taken care of.

As for China, well your right and wrong. Many companies have been producing in China, companies that we think are producing in Korea, but they are actually making the dolls in China, and not just the dolls, wigs, shoes, clothing...much of what is sold is made in China, not Korea or Japan. It is not my right to disclose, so I cannot name names.
There are factories in China that will produce anything by anyone, so it comes down to knowing who your dealing with and their integrity. It is not the extablished factories that do the copying, but rather again new comers seeing a fast buck can be made. Established factories would not jepordize their income by producing copies. So really it is not about China, it is about those that see cash here in our community and jump in to grab it by what ever means. As I say it is happening here on a smaller scale but still happening....Americans copying Americans to grab the cash from the BJD community.

As to custom house, I was one who ordered at their first sale...I waited about 6 months for my doll with very little communication, save one email. During that time people were already hanging the company and threatening chargebacks. After I got my doll, there were no other dolls I wanted so I never ordered again, what happened after I do not know about....but as I say at the time I ordered...threats were already in place against the company. In fact after that first sale, there was a huge uproar here that they were holding a sale again when the first dolls we still not delivered. Yes I am willing to wait 6 months or more too, but with Dollshe, there is no communication unless I email, and am told simple they are working on it and to wait. In the last email they did not even give a hint as to when, so I am left without any idea, July? August? Christmas time?

As a producer of dolls, I would like to say this....there is a huge difference between an artist that has an idea and decides to put up a website to sell dolls and an actual entity that sells dolls, wigs, etc. Most artists have very little or no business experience and if something goes wrong do not know how to handle things. We on this end assume that anyone with a site knows what they are doing, but that is not true. My company for example keeps a cash reserve large enough so that if my factory was wiped off the face of the earth, I could either produce elsewhere to satisfy the customer or would be able to refund everysingle person and still continue business as usual. This is not the case with many "companies". There sales of dolls are the sole income of the "company" if something goes wrong they go down the tubes because they have used the profit of their sales as income.

Oh and a quick note about copying. Korea is famous for copying, their laws are different as well. Here in the Pacific Northwest I can go into any number of Korean shops and find "Chanel" "Gucci" etc ...clothing, jewelry, handbags...perfectly copied down to the tags saying Made in France....copying their is rampant and not just style but using logo and names. The problem in China are cheap copies, Korea makes the copies perfectly, hard to tell the difference...here in the USA that would be a felony.

 

I'll see if I can dig it up, but geeze, I haven't seen it in awhile. (Not a geeze aimed rudely at you, I'm just thinking 'Huh, I wonder where I'd even START trying to find that anymore.)

Whether it's FAIR to put more bias against Chinese companies because of the copy issue wasn't something I answered in my post, because I'm still kind of on the fence on the issue. But when a new company is accused of copying, it's usually a Chinese company, and I was brainstorming up some of the reasons why. There's a 'higher bar' so to speak to accuse a Korean or Japanese or even American company of copying than a Chinese company, because of historical reasons. Again, is that fair? Companies who have had designs stolen by Chinese companies would say 'YES! Yes it is!' whereas someone running a company in China, just trying to get off the ground, who keeps being baselessly accused of copying would say 'NO, no it isn't."

Or it could just be that most of the new companies ARE Chinese, and a new company is more likely to get it than an existing one.

 

Sadly I did see a bit of hypocrisy with the Leekeworld case as opposed to some others. Obviously it wasn't with everyone as I can't account for everyone's opinions on the matter. And as you mentioned different people will speak up at different times, so who knows what they may or may not have felt at other times, but the ones I did see, had me scratching my head a bit. Not only did they defend certain companies when they were being accused of being heavily inspired by/copying another artist or author's idea or look, a few of them also owned dolls from a company that was accused of, and admitted to recasting a doll part. But now they wanted to completely boycott a company for doing something they seemed to support before (heavy inspiration). I understand people have breaking points, and that something they may not care about in some degree, they may feel strongly about in another, but what I saw just had me do a double take that it was the same person/s.

 

Yes and no. I think new companies in general are subjected to a stupid guessing-game of "Can I be the first to prove they are copying?" and I've seen this idiotic game played against Korean companies as well as Chinese. On the other hand, there is a clear, racially constructed bias against China in this hobby and elsewhere, and a (false) perception that Chinese companies are more blase about copyright - but Leeke are hardly the first, and won't be the last, Korean bjd company to steal IP, either throygh "heavy inspiration" or recasting.

grael's point about Korea is a good one - Adelaide is full of Korean shops specialising in cheap, cheaply made Korean knockoffs, so I don't have the impression that their respect for IP is any greater than China's. Amusingly, a lot of them sell wallets and cigarette cases with pictures of Volks super dollfies.

Others... well, Custom House is special. Yes, I remember people being abused on this forum because they had been waiting "only six months" for their dolls and, instead of catching up, they held sale out of sale to generate bigger volumes of sales and get more and more behind, which was irresponsible and unethical business behaviour, especially when they were frequently sending out sub-standard product when they did send anything out at all. What is curious is that the fandom was more unforgiving of people than the company - people who were unhappy were told they were going to drive CH into bankruptcy by expecting to get products they'd paid for in decent condition, that they were immature and greedy and needed to learn patience, that they were ruining other people's day, that all their sympathy should be with poor Custom House for deliberately generating bigger and bigger volumes of sales with progressive "special offers". This continued pretty consistently over pattern of sale after sale, broken promises, changed websites, mysteriously helpful (and vanishing) customer sales operatives... It seems that dolly people are more comfortable abusing individuals rather than criticising companies. This also happened with Felixdoll Brownies, and we know how that turned out.

IThe tipping point has, I think, been reached with CH and most people are clear that they can't be trusted, and have made no attempt to redeem themselves. It does give me a certain amount of sardonic amusement that some of the people who were nastiest to other buyers who were worried or upset, sorry, "whining", are now the most vehemently, bitterly anti-CH themselves. I guess it's easier to forgive someone else being wronged than when it happens to you, huh?

 

With regards to the Custom House fiasco... admittedly I was one of the people who was saying "oh let's be patient and give them the benefit of the doubt." After all, the waiting room was already beginning to turn into a negative place when I was only in my 3rd or 4th month of waiting. I had no idea of the history of Custom House (and had I known more about their past, I probably would have never ordered from them). I was perfectly content to wait six months, even though for most that is considered to be a rather long wait. However, as I neared my six month mark, I started to look around at the others waiting. The ones who had been waiting longer than I had (many by two months or more). In particular, my attention was caught by Hobbysue's case, where she had a rather large quantity of dolls and a lot of money tied up into Custom House with three separate orders. I started to get nervous and worry. I still wanted to remain positive, because honestly, who wants to wait for dolls in a negative waiting room?

Truthfully my experience with Custom House wasn't all that bad, compared to some others' experiences. And I chose to stay in the waiting room, even after I received my dolls, to root for and cheer on those who were still waiting. Sadly enough, there are still people waiting for dolls that were waiting back when I still was as well. It's been watching the torture that others have been going through that has caused me to become so angry towards Custom House. I hope that people come to the waiting room and see the truth about CH so that they can make an educated decision on whether or not they wish to order.

 

As I mentioned on the previous page: you can’t copyright an idea, but you can copyright a design. The idea of hooved dolls or vampire-hunters who are half vampire, or chainsaw wielding maniacs is up for grabs to everyone, but the specific design of for example Soom Beryl or the Angelheim MSD hooves cannot be just taken and replicated. If you make your own version of an idea, it’s okay. If you take someone else’s version of an idea, it’s not okay.
Perhaps some people still scream and flail around about Dollzone being evil copiers, but the ones who scream and flail around about the evil people screaming about evil Dollzone scream a lot louder.

After the public apology Charles tried to sell items right in front of people who had already paid for those items, but who had never received them. Perhaps it’s just another slip up, a mistake that can happen, but it’s very tacky.

Dollshe is know for the infamous long Berman wait that took over a year. That people are now again waiting close to a year is no surprise to me. It’s annoying, especially when you get to hear “Next week.” month after month, but if you order from a company that has a history of ridiculously long wait times, don’t be surprised when you have to wait for a ridiculous amount of time.

 

Truth be told that's a big thing for me. I'm not saying a waiting room has to be all sugar and spice, but when you've got 100+ plus people all waiting for basically the same thing, and you've all been waiting for a while,of course some more then others. Coming into the waiting room every other day just to read about someone else being frustrated, I think just makes everyone else more frustrated. It's not that I don't care about someone waiting almost a year or more for a doll, but it's more like, hun you're preaching to the chore. And I'm sure we'd all like our dolls sooner rather then later. As such I usually just don't check the room for several days and then when I do it's only to see what, if any progress has been made.

Are you referring to Charles trying to sell his new doll on DoA? Or did he actually try to sell it to the people he still owed money to? Honestly I think if it had been stated in the news thread that was posted here that the sales of that particular doll would go straight to the people who were still owed money then he might have gotten a slightly different reaction. But it ended up sounding more like "Hey, I'm back come buy my new doll!".

And yes again the long wait for Dollshe. Before ordering my doll I didn't know how long the waits had been just that they'd had some long ones. I was comfortable waiting, I'm still comfortable waiting, partly because I think the situation with them is a bit different with CH. Dollshe has at least been communicating with us. We now even have a general idea of how many dolls have been shipped, how many orders they had in total, about how many they are producing a day and that they're working on the weekends to expedite things. Even earlier they were telling us why they were delayed that they were working on the feet, or we don't have the packing foam, or the neck cap. Whether or not you/we liked their excuses, at least we were getting something. With CH as far as I know, they were only ever getting next week, next week, next week. Members even started to make their own versions/reasons why CH was so behind. I particularly liked the we accidentally blew up our own factory with fireworks during Chinese New Year or something along those lines. xD

Ugh..didn't mean to write so much and I think I've gone off topic. >_>

 

I think what Muisje meant was that Charles was selling the same exact items that people from previous orders had paid for, but never received. Essentially selling things out from under people who'd already paid for them.
That, to me, is completely unacceptable behavior.

Custom House's lack of communication with customers is what angers me the most about them. That, and their blatant illegal behavior. As Hobbysue has pointed out multiple times, it's illegal for them to outright ignore/refuse to refund people who have been waiting this long and have requested a refund. I know that there's someone in the waiting room right now that has been waiting nearly a year and has repeatedly asked for a refund, only to be outright ignored.

A negative waiting room is definitely not enjoyable, but with Custom House I think it's important that the waiting room stay honest (aka negative, because that's what Custom House is about these days) so that people who are thinking of ordering and don't know what's been going on will have the chance to look and say "oh wait, do I really want to give this company my money?"

 

Charles tried to sell on another BJD forum (as he's banned here at DoA) a fullset doll that included a clothing set, while at least one member of that forum had paid for the same fullset doll, but got only the doll (after a lot of trouble and paying for shipping twice) and not the clothing set. So he was selling stuff he owed to other people right under their noses.
It could be that he was selling more dolls and I do know that at that time not everyone who paid for a doll had gotten one. I don't know if they have received what they paid for by now.

 

Ah, that I did not know. That does seem rather tactless.

I have no problem with people being honest about a companies dealings, whether that includes long wait times, bad customer service, or receiving damaged goods when they do finally receive them. These are things I'm sure most people would want to know before hand.

 

What saddens me most about the CCC ordeal is that Charles had friends try to sell dolls he had in his posession here at the DoA market place. This happened after the appology on Flickr. With every CCC doll that is sold by someone from the Netherlands I now have to wonder if it's a doll someone else has already paid for and thus I won't take the risk of buying a doll that may belong to someone else.
He asked for forgiveness, he got it from many and then he damages the doll community (because his actions hurt the trust people have in the DoA market place). Nice way to handle a second chance.