Volks pureskin SD, SD13 leg break

I got an email back from Volks today, that I am less then pleased with.

"Dear customer,

Thank you very much for your email.

We thank you for expressing your concern to us and
highly value your input in such matters.
We will do our best to respond to customers' expectation.

As for your second question, we do not plan to
redesign SD bodies for now.
Your understanding is appreciated.

If you have any other question, please feel free to ask.
Thank you very much for your nice words and cooperation."

Obviously, this isn't really exceptable. It's like saying "Yeah, we're going to sell them anyway". I'm not saying that people shouldn't by the SD10s, but they should at least be warned of what could happen, and be told ways to handle the SD10s correctly to prevent the problem.

It may be useless, but I will email them again with pictures and suggest this to them. For a $600-700 doll, its worth it to make sure they understand, I think.

 

Hi my friends
I have some tips about how to cope with the SD10 leg breakage.I bought a SD10 body body last year.....and I found the broken line at one side of his knee.My friend taught me that I can use both"epoxy putty"and"clear bond" to fix it.First,I put the "epoxy putty"inside the broken knee part,after drying(please make sure the putty is really dry!!!!),I jammed the "clear bond"into the breach.
After drying,the broken part stopped to 'break",and even became stronger!The "epoxy putty"helps a lot to avoid attrition.Hope these help^_^.
http://www.allproducts.com/chemical/kuanyo/

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The thing is, we shouldn't have to cope with it. It should not be happening at all. These aren't barbies you can buy at walmart for $10 which are breaking because of a design flaw. People pay upwards of $600 for these dolls and it's not right for the company not to at least acknowledge that this is a problem.

I'm glad some of you have found ways to fix and mod the dolls to help the problem, but not everyone is brave enough or willing to do this. There is no reason a $600 doll should be expected to break with normal play, especially from a company that prides itself on quality and craftsmanship.

I'm not volks bashing, look at my sig, I only have their dolls, but I do find this SD10 problem and their handling of it to be unacceptable. I do encourage everyone who has this problem to write to volks and inform them of it. Even if they don't replace it the more people who mention it the more they will see that it is indeed an issue.

 

Thanks jyhhaur329. That looks like a pretty severe crack. It's good to see it holds fine now with the repair that you did.
It's also reassuring to see that all of us who tried to fix or prevent the knee breaks seem to have come to the same basic conclusions of how to handle it. Makes me think we're really onto something.

 

I'm going to sound like a total stupid idiot now... but um how do you tell if you have a SD10 body vs. a SD13 body? I know my F-16 is oldskin pureskin but I'm not sure if he is SD10 or SD13 because I'm retarded like that and I got him from another DOA member, not Volks. He's been fully sanded and sueded by Volks though, not sure if that makes a difference.

*edit* I just looked at all of Hitasura's comparison things, she has SD13 (new) vs. SD13 (old) in one of the shots but no SD13 (old) vs. SD10 (old). I'm still freaking out a bit...

 

F-16 heads are usually put on SD13 bodies, so that is most likely what you have. But so far no one seems to have heard of knee cracks happening to boy bodies anyway, SD10 or SD13.
And if he's F-16 he should be pureskin, not oldskin, since they changed the numbering system of the FCS heads when they changed to pureskin.

 

I'm pretty sure he's a new head on an old body. ^^;

 

You'd definatly know if your boy was on an old SD10 body! It has huge ball joints at the thighs, wrists, and ankles. Heres a sale thread for an SD10 body with pictures.
http://denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67423
It looks very different from the SD13 old bodies.

 

Oh god I'm a retard... I forgot about the whole jointed/non-jointed torso difference. Um, ignore me, I was just being paranoid. >_> I'm still tempted to write to Volks. I wish we had a petition.

 

Yikes, all this is making me afraid to play with Gwena too much. I've always handled her knee joints carefully and there is no sign of damage, and I really prefer the look of the standard SD10 body to the swarikko body. But I think I'll probably wind up giving Gwena the body from that Carol I'm expecting anyway. She's already on her third body upgrade . . . what's one more? >.<

I really, really hope Volks will do something about this issue, though their response so far has been disenheartening. I hope all of you with broken dolls can be as lucky as Kellyhime was and get replacement parts!

 

Oh ok, nevermind then... but yeah you got it all sorted already.

 

>_> We'll just call it one of my blonde moments, though I'm mostly brunette right now. Has anyone started a petition?

 

I really hope, when we send emails to Volks, we act with respect. Yea, this issue really has gotten the shaft and that's not right, but let's not forget everything Volks HAS done, and what an awesome company they are. They really do care about their customers. But no company's perfect. . And being rude and accusing isn't going to help anything

When this happened to me with my pureskin, old knee SD10 body it was really irritating. I wish we had at least the option of buying extra legs to fix the one that breaks. >_> If people are able to, before the knee breaks, put epoxy or something to make the knee stronger to begin with, that would be a good idea. jyhhaur329 has an awesome idea.

 

Of course, I would never be anything but respectful to Volks. Yes, they really are a great company. Just right now, I can't help put notice the offhand way they've dealt with this so far. Haha, I know its a stupid comparison simply because of the size of the Volks company, but I think if we said this to any other BJD company, they'd be having a heart attack right now. Volks know theres a problem, but they are not doing anything to help the situation, not even the offer of the chance to by new parts. Honistly, I think it might be because they don't fully understand the situation.

So, thats all I hope to do. Make sure they fully realise whats going on, in the hopes that they can rectify it. Because really, I don't want to see anymore posts of people panicing because their doll just broke. I mean think about it, theres only what 4000 active members on DoA? Not all of us are SD10 owners, yet a significant number of us are having our doll's legs break, and we only represent a small percentage of the total BJD fans out there. For a $600-700 doll, that is far too many people for it to be a conincidence. But, Volks seems to think it is, so they're not doing anything about it. I'm not doing it cause I want to be mean or cause I'm angry, I'm doing it cause I want to help them.

Yes, modding is an excellent idea. Haibane already gratiously told me all about it. However, it shouldn't be nessasary.

I had exams yesturday and today, so I haven't been able to write the email yet, but I plan to do it tomorrow. If you guys want, I'll post it before I send it so you guys can read. It may even be helpful if other people email in too.

Also, do you think I should link Volks to this thread? I'm planning to put the pics of Nikitama's doll into it too.

Oh also, if anyone else would like to contribute pictures of their broken dolls, that will certiantly help our case!

 

I completely agree with you. It's a problem that needs fixed, and they probably have an idea of what's happening as you say, just perhaps not of how much it's been happening. Maybe individual emails from the people it's effected would leave an effect after a while as well?

It really makes me frustrated that we can't buy parts, like you say. <.< I would be pretty content with that, but they won't even give you that. I think that's the least that they could do.

It is a big problem, it's not fair, and it does need fixed. We shouldn't have to be worried about it.

I should have been clearer, I don't believe anyone here was being rude, I just wanted people to stay nice as time's going on. ^^;

I may not be remembering it correctly, but I remember a while ago when someone started a petition about Luts resin color being different colors a lot. And it was worded rudely, in my oppinion. I just didn't want to see that happen to this. ^^ I doubt it will, and thank you for that and helping to make sure it's done nicely! ^_^

 

The body is pureskin, not oldskin. It has the old style knees, however. It's definitely SD13.

 

There are three styles of SD13 boy body; oldskin, pureskin old knees, pureskin new knees, I own the oldskin and pureskin new knees and haven't had any problems with breaking or heard of any.

 

Volks will replace broken body parts at cost if you take the original part in to them, they always have. The only problem is they don't do it via mail, ie via the website. But all you need is someone who lives near a Volks store. (I would assume the LA store does it as well, but I don't know for sure, but all the Japan stores do it.) All you'd have to do is send the broken part to someone living near a store, and get them to take it in and get a replacement. Sometimes they have replacement parts in stock and you can get a replacement part right away (I did this with a foot that got broken in the mail) or sometimes the part has to be sent away for and can take some weeks to arrive. (I had this problem with FCS white and LE beauty white parts, they took about 4 weeks to arrive.) I did this for several friends while I was living in Japan without problem. A replacement pureskin lower leg part costs 3,675yen. (I have a list of the cost of all replacement body parts, you get it when you replace a part.) While this is not a solution to the problem, at least you can get the parts replaced if you don't feel capable of fixing them yourself.

 

So..if my Kohya's hand broke I could get it replaced by Volks if it was taken back to them in person? Any clue if they would do it with *oldskin* beauty white parts still?