No Full Payment Until Dolls are Done

This debate really isn't about the cost of BJD's or the production issues that drive costs, it is more about decreasing risks for buyers because we are required to pay for these product up front, then are often screwed if the product is defective or wait times are extended way beyond what was promised or advertised because a paypal claim cannot be filed after 90 days.

I am interested in exploring more solutions about improving how we are using our company feedback system here and how it is being used to make companies more accountable and get word of mouth information more accessible. DOA is a major source for marketing information for companies and I think we have more influence than we think. Personally, I see more feedback about product quality and problems being posted in box openning threads and waiting rooms than in the company feedback threads, heck, for that matter, only about 50% of people I have done business with in the marketplace have given me feedback.

I do agree with the idea that we sometimes accept some pretty major flaws with the dolls we order because they do take so long to arrive, and we are more forgiving than we should be, or are so overwhelmed by the hassel involved with dealing with filing a complaint about it because of language barriers, message boards vs. a person, and the dread of having to send a doll back and wait another few months or more for a resolution. That is our choice, but I think it needs to change if we hope to communicate our expectations for quality and customer service to the BJD companies.

 

I just wanted to add in my two cents, though it's not really bringing anything new to the table...I just wanted to show some support for what I think is a good idea.

I think that updates on batches from larger companies is a FANTASTIC idea.

I am rather on the fence about whether or not to be comfortable spending 100% before my doll is even manufactured. I am a bit uncomfortable with it, but I did make a faith leap after reading recent reviews from a company. I did, howevever, enjoy my experience (and feel better about it) when I ordered a doll from Fairyland through DDE. Once I paid off my layaway from DDE, my doll shipped (Since DDE put the order in as a full payment themselves, which I appreciate)...I felt it was much less of a leap of faith. But I am a rather poor young adult who works hard to afford these luxury items - if I pay for something it better damn well be made, and made awesomely! BUT, I understand the force of flaky buyers...it sucks that we have to put so much faith in a company from across the seas due to the behavior of other buyers, but that's how it is.

BUT, I would feel SO much better about the process if we got updates on batches or something. Even from SOOM or Fairyland (which are reputable companies) I would feel less nervous about the waiting period on a doll if the company gave us at least occasional updates on how our product was coming.

I mean, it would make the process fun in a way, wouldn't it? Like "Batch #13 is done casting, now drying!" would make it all even more exciting, and I would feel more connected to the doll and the company...which really means more likelihood of me buying from them again

 

But cost of production does matter, because cost of production is a pretty big reason why not paying 100% upfront may not be feasible. The debate isn't just about cost, but you can't really discuss options without bringing costs into the mix. It's all well and good to try and protect the customers, but it's a moot point if not paying upfront throws a wrench in a company's ability to produce dolls.

 

I think what the original poster is proposing isn't an odd idea at all, even for luxury items like our beloved fancy dolls. For example, I'd consider original artwork a luxury item -- I used to paint portraits on commission, and I typically asked for a deposit up front and for the balance when I was finished with the painting. I've known many artisans who work the same way, and I think I would do the same if I was a doll maker. Of course, that still doesn't guarantee the work will get done in a reasonable amount of time (just ask my customers, d'oh!), but it does put both customer and seller on slightly more even footing.

 

it seems that these companies must make money... otherwise they would pack up and cease to exist
when i take a commission i offer the option to pay just for supplies to my customers and i am just someone with a hobby.
when i sell a custom doll part of my profit goes into re supplying my stock ... i don't see why larger companies cannot do the same thing, they are not just breaking even and when they are taking months to fill pre orders offering a deposit option doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
i understand flakers and wanting to protect your profits but in most cases these companies have people lining up for limited dolls and if the deposit paid is non refundable then they end up coming out ahead.

i am surprised at how many people seem to accept prepaying in full for bespoke items, not just dolls .. when i order bespoke i expect to have some control and right to ask for changes and a certain level of quality that needs to be shown before i hand over full payment.
It seems that paying in full before the item is even started gives the artist/company the position of power and less incentive to make sure the customer is totally happy.

i like to believe that people/companies are inherently good but offering an option that protects both customer and seller should be considered.
Non refundable deposits are not some out there idea and i definitely think i would favour companies willing to share the risk more fairly.
If i flake i loose my deposit and they end up with extra $$ for that doll, if they flake i don't loose near as much money but they still have my deposit so really its a win win for them

 

That seems a sensible approach to me, one we could hope for in the future even if nothing comes of it!

 

I have escaped the "noose" a few times, buying from several companies that started to run off with people's money a few months after I received my paid for dolls. I fully trusted those companies to keep their end of the bargain when I handed them my money (in some cases I paid over $1200, so I had a lot of trust), but now I am more cautious.
Trust is something that plays a major part in this hobby. You pay the full amount to the doll company and you have to trust the company to deliver your doll. You pay only a deposit and the company has to trust you to pay the remaining amount once the doll is finished.

I've seen this trust being earned by both customers and doll companies, but also being lost by both parties. A middle way would be fairest, but can anyone tell me what lies between "pay the full amount up front" and "pay a deposit now and the rest later"?

 

Yeah, it's hard to figure out what that middle ground might be. At least with paying a deposit, if the seller runs off with your money, it's not as much money you're out in the end. Not ideal, of course, but slightly less heartbreaking.

 

There's an interesting aspect of all this that's we haven't really touched yet- the universal use of Paypal and how Paypal's policies play into all of this.

It was mentioned earlier that part of the problem is that doll production time is longer than the allowed paypal claim period. If there were another way of paying (say, another paypal-like system) that offered more buyer protections, would that help resolve some of the issues? Or if paypal allowed claims out to 6 months or something reasonable for doll production? Or if paypal offered some kind of 'escrow' service, where they'd take your money out of your account and hold it until they got a shipping notice from the seller. So the seller would know it was there, and could trust they'd get it, but you'd know it wasn't actually in their hands until your item was on the way. Heck, paypal could even put the money that was in escrow into an interest bearing account. That'd be a win-win for them, although they might not want to deal with the paperwork...

Paypal as it is, their main focus isn't so much on protecting you as it is on protecting their bottom line. If they have to return money to you that THEY can't recover, that comes out of their pocket, and they don't want to do that. Even though, unlike an individual, they're big enough that they might be able to actually bring legal filings against companies that don't deliver.


On the subject of whether we as a fandom are 'too forgiving' or not: Because this is a hand-crafted product, I'm willing to forgive minor imperfections as part of the hand creation process. Now, there's a limit on that: a doll that's all full of bubbles shouldn't be sent to a customer. But slight un-even-ness in the sculpt, seam lines... those are all things I kind of expect that I've seen people complain about as examples of how we forgive too much.

Where I DO think we're too lenient with companies is the number of chances we're willing to give a shady company when we KNOW they're shady. Look at the number of people who ordered from a recent Customhouse (I think?) sale even though it was all over the forum that they were taking 9 months to a year to deliver at all. Or the number of people who STILL, to this day, trust and defend Dollfair.

I think because it's a small fandom we do tend to get into this mindset of 'They're my friend, and they wouldn't burn me, because we're friends.' Especially when we can put a name to a company. Like "Oh, Sandra is the girl who answers HappyHappyYayDollsEmail. She's so nice. I like Sandra." Even though 'Sandra' might be 5 different reps using the same email address. Or "Well they didn't burn ME, so I won't believe someone else who says they did get burned."

 

You make some really excellent points. I will have to look further into what the buyer protection options are when you pay with a Paypal credit card, maybe that might offer some of the benefits you mention.

Your description of how some bjd collectors view doll companies as their friend because they know someone involved with them directly or indirectly is right on the money. I think some collectors are trying to support the arts with their undying loyalty to their favorite BJD artists too.

 

As someone who agrees with the original poster right up to the neck, I've found this thread very informative.

I've lost money when Mio went mysteriously out of business, spent nearly a year waiting for Dollshe to send me a doll and am now getting lame excuses from Dollmore, who is generally fairly great with the customer service.

While it is true that if you don't want to play the game you shouldn't put down your money, lately it seems that the doll companies have a very unfair advantage and many people are getting heartily fed up.

 

I completely agree with all your points about Paypal. But some companies (and most dealers) let you pay with a credit card without going through Paypal. The credit card companies certainly aren't going to bend over backwards to accommodate us. Their business model is the same as Paypal's: make money.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world" - Mahatma Gandhi

 

You can contact a lawyer to do an escrow service. My family has used a lawyer before when dealing with a lease where the owner told us that he found himself in foreclosure status on the house and may be loosing it. (We'd been his renters for roughly 3 1/2 years at this point) So we put the money into an escrow with a lawyer on time every month and he would let the owner know that we had rent paid and ready and he would recieve it once he had the house out of foreclosure status. It turns out our landlord had spread himself to thin and had to many houses he owned out for rent and not all of them filled. But I'm sure you could contact a lawyer about acting as an escrow service or there may be a firm dedicated to escrow service. I'm not sure but we went with a lawyer for protection.

I get paid at the beginning of the month and then in the middle of the month for my services usually. I do some light consultation. But When I do custom work in my virtual content creation I generally will only take full payments up front that is because after doing alot of custom work with just a deposit upfront and the rest paid after the client had seen the final product (usually after going through anywhere from 0-20 revisions) would find out that they had found something someone else had made and gone with that without notifying me of their decision. So I would be out anywhere from 20-40 hours of work easy unpaid for. I generally got comments of I'm sorry I wish I had waited for yours it's so much better than what I've already paid for. (my turn around time was generally one week but my listed wait time was 2-4 weeks)

Just so people know. With just a website the costs for buying a domain, secure and private registration (as to not disclose your home address), Web Hosting, adding in needed features like having a website and a working shopping cart, buying up all the domains so if someone accidently types www.yourstore.net instead of www.yourstore.com they end up at your store instead of someone else's that has the same name.

Adding in a blog to act as news updates, a basic design template, an email addy with your site address ([email protected]). Security to keep your clients/customers info confidential. Security to guard against hackers. (Went with the best security options i could find because who really wants to risk either scenario?) A database to back up your product info, pricing, catalog, and downloads (if any). buying the web hosting or even just the design from a place like godaddy included extras like search visibility upped and online marketing ad credits to a few different places (ie your banner and slogan to show up in places like facebook) For the first year came to a total of- $3,550 usd/year.

Now let's say you want to have a retail store, a physical location on lease. I spent the afternoon (I know I have way to much time) checking out five major cities and selecting five locations that were downtown and five locations that were close to a highway and not necessarily in a major city. The average cost for a street level retail store was roughly $6,000 usd/month or $72,000 usd/year.

I also searched on lease & within those same cities and within 2 hours drive of the stores for a warehouse. One that could either be used as a manufacturing/production warehouse or as a surplus stock warehouse. The average cost for a warehouse was roughly $4,200 usd/month or $50,400 usd/year.

Now this is just the costs for the start up of the websites, the cost for a store, and the cost for a warehouse. You can mix and match or use alone in any way you want.

This doesn't include utilities, internet, salary, business insurance, Licensing your business!, permits, taxes, employee wages/insurance, Insurance for the properties if you lease/buy you'll need renters insurance for them as well. Registering your business, the fees to Trade mark your name and slogan. This doesn't include the price for having a lawyer/legal department with a notary on retainer. This doesn't include IT support. Shipping charges, a fax machine, printer, copier, a payment gateway. This doesn't include equipment or materials. Advertising, marketing... also things to consider the cost of.

Also this is all from a United States point of view and procedure. I'm sure there are things I've forgotten or not even gotten to in my path of study. Insurance and legal things I know about only because well my parents operate an insurance business and legal/law is my primary degree path. I'm sure other countries have some differences but I suspect that things work roughly the same and have similar aspects to it. I'm not sure about how things are in other countries or even dealing with other countries but I'm sure as I go I'll learn more about that with my secondary/third degree paths.

Although if I was to think of a rough estimate of monthly costs assuming there is a production warehouse, a storefront, and a website ($10,496 USD)...adding in a rough estimate for all utilities($500usd) , security with an alarm system ($100), a lawyer on retainer (1,000), utilizing a bank for a notary(free), advertising(200), salary for employees guestimating 10 employees at 10/hr working 8 hour days 5 days a week (20,000 usd), Insurance on buildings (300usd). Batch of materials of mixing resin, roughly 1000 gallons of resin ($65,000). And I'll stop there with that i'm sure there are more. I'd guesstimate total monthly costs being roughly- $97,596 USD/Month

Thank you for your time and hope I've offered some food for thought as far as overhead is concerned.

 

In my limited personal experience, my credit card companies have been far more helpful in getting money back than paypal. Paypal will pretty much only give you the money back if it's still sitting there in the account of the person you sent it to. The few times I've had to do a chargeback for non-shipped items, I haven't gotten "Sorry, the account of the person you sent it to is empty, so we can't do anything" from my credit card.

 

Perhaps they could pay half in the beginning, and then half once the doll is almost done? If the person doesn't come up with the other half by then, then the owner loses their down payment, and the doll goes to someone else?

Or better yet, should companies start telling you about the progress of our dolls, they could ask for payment once the doll reaches certain stages of being created. You'd have a down payment, as well as payments due during the process. If things finish faster than anticipated, perhaps the buyer could get a set date for payment, and things could be due by whichever time is longer.

Understandably, they can't do this with every doll they sell, so perhaps they do it with certain dolls and not others - though I'm not sure if one kind would benefit more than the other. Perhaps the companies with dolls that aren't as expensive might be better off? I'm not sure.

As I read this thread, I'm also not sure if there's a way to fully protect the buyer and the seller. If the buyer pays up front the full cost, they risk losing a large chunk of money should the company suddenly mess up. If the buyer is asked to pay in increments, then the seller risks making a doll for someone who will flake and not pay the rest. Sure, they keep the existing layaway payments, but they don't know if that doll will be sold to someone or not, and they might lose money in the end.

Maybe we just have to take the risk?

 

I have heard so many nightmares about bad sellers, bad artists, bad whatever, for the most part I do not preorder very often. Even with figures. For the most part I am terrified of these things happening to me. The idea of being ripped off scares the crap out of me. I think the idea of no full payment until dolls are completed would be a good thing, since a lot of these make it impossible for you to open a dispute or claim on paypal if they fail you. That's what scares me. I do not trust most artists because I get scared very easily.

I do think people have the right to charge whatever price they would like for their products. If they are too expensive then as consumers we should not buy them. Over time they will probably lower their price.

 

I'm agree with Nanyalin's point of view. Companies shouldn't ask for the full payment of something that is not even made, but I can understand to be asked to pay a deposit which will cover reproduction cost or part of them, when a company has a huge amount of sales and they can't have their dolls in stock for storage reasons.

I think that when somebody starts a business, he/she must invest some money and work before to earn something, and the same happens with bjd artists and companies. I made dolls as a hobby and I sell them, but I don't sell them until I have them on hand, because what would happen if the factory doesn't send me the reproductions after all or the quality is not what I expected? That is a risk that the company or the artist must take, but not the customers. Customers are purchasing the final product.

Probably the current situation won't never change because we allow it. We assume that we must wait months and months to receive our dolls and we even tolerate bad communication from the companies; but I've learned my lesson after and awful experience with Custom House -_- 9 months of waiting for a doll that was not what I ordered, that arrived with bad quality and broken... I can't understand why people is still buying from them.

 

EDIT: Sorry if my english is a bit rusty here. I'm tired and it shows .

Hmmm... In all the years I've been in this hobby, I've seen a handful of companies flake. But, considering that many of them started out as hobbyist, and considering the many artists we have today, I don't think the numbers of people who've flaked are that ridiculous. Most of the companies are trustworthy.
I have a little experience in casting and to produce 50 dolls, you'll need to sell at least 30 dolls to cover the production expenses alone. You can't realistically expect companies - especially small-time artists and/or new businesses - to come up with that kind of money in advance. We're not talking about giant coorporations here.

Besides, pre-ordering is a pretty common thing. When I order a table, chair, a cupboard I have to pay before they produce it. When our company is asked to make a game, we're paid in advance, when you want a car, you'll have to pay upfront and you'd better have the cash if you want someone to build you a house, otherwise you'll be living in a cardboard box.

I do agree with Nanyalin, however, that the communication between buyer and seller should be good and that it is unacceptable if the customer is not sure what's going on with his order. I also think that having to wait for a (non pre-ordered doll) for over three months is bad business. Customers place their trust in a company and pay a large sum of money. The least they should get is an update whenever something changes.

 

I certainly agree with you, some of the waiting periods are outragous for the amount you spend on these BJD's. It would be nice to have more of a contract or an update with your doll if it's being made (an email for when your doll is being casted, molded, etc. for each step) Now a few months isn't that hard to imagine if it's comming from across the world and it has to be made.

 

I see it like this: you pay them the amount they need to make your doll and they then go ahead and make it.
What's the point of making, say, 100 of those expensive dolls when only 80 or so will be bought? What's the use of making them, when they only might be sold years later with signs of aging, when you can have a new doll only made for you? I prefer to wait for my doll and I prefer companies that don't have to go bankrupt because they didn't know the market and its development.
There are some companies outside of the hobby that work a lot like this, too. There you have to pay them to start. Not the full payment, though. Just a part.
And some companies have also started making dolls during layaway for a while now. They make it after the second payment or so and you'll receive it earlier, therefore.
It's your decision in the end. You could also just not buy a doll on those conditions.