What are your horror stories?

They ended up getting into it though my old cellphone number. I had just gotten a new phone with a new number and they were getting alerts on the package since I had it set automatically to send them. So I'm guessing they could make some changes to when/ where it was being delivered and what time. I even called the police and TOLD them what was happening and what number to call. They acted like I had lost my mind.

 

The police are so useless!!!

 

My biggest one is that I ordered a mature tiny from Dollshe in October of 2018, and three years and counting later I'm still waiting. Everyone who ordered a mature tiny from them is either still waiting or has given up and canceled their order. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm crazy for continuing to wait...

 

Oh boy, it's time to share my horror story of a completely different variety...

Way back in 2007, at 18 years old, I got my first job as a part-time assistant at Dollfair International. I had only just been introduced to ABJD, and was really surprised to find a dealer locally - and it turned out they were hiring! I worked for Dollfair for 2 months. In that time frame, she, among other things: often insinuated that I was stupid because I made mistakes; routinely insulted the artists she worked with; talked about me behind my back to other people, including to customers; and talked trash about projects she assigned to me even if I completed them to her specifications. This all came to blows during the 2007 BJD Artist Workshop, which I helped set up, because I made a single minor mistake (which wouldn't have been a mistake at all if she'd actually communicated). This mistake led to her increasing hostility over the course of the entire weekend, and culminated in her lying to a 14 year old's mother to make both of us look bad after all of the work we'd invested in making the workshop successful. That was the only job I've ever quit on the spot, and she continued to talk trash about me to customers for years afterwards.

The entire fiasco in 2010 was very little surprise to me, having had first hand experience with how she treated those around her.

My time as an actual hobbyist has been delightfully horror free in comparison to how I entered the hobby.

 

Oh man, I have one that has a happy ending!

I purchased a modded Delf Vampire Elf Chiwoo from Russia in October of last year. I had bought dolls from Russia before and knew sometimes the shipping got a little strange, so I signed up for text alerts from the USPS website for tracking updates.

The seller had sent me photos of my address on the parcel so I knew everything was good initially.

I got a text that had the status "return to sender, no such address" and was scanned at a nearby post office. Needless to say, I jumped in my car and sped over to the post office. I was a bit in a panic because it had been almost 2 hours since the text came in and I knew that office moved fast.

I was able to supply the tracking number and fortunately, the post master knew me personally. She went and got the box and we were able to match the tracking number, and that was it.

The ONLY thing left on the customs form for this package was the tracking/customs number and the zip code. That was it. No name, address or phone number. Had the zip code not been on it, it would never have made it to my post office at all.

IMO it's a horror story turned miracle! I'm lucky I didn't get a speeding ticket

Picture of the remnants of the customs form:

Spoiler: Paper scrap

 

I have one minor story and one with a tragic ending. The minor story is that Doll Zone once sent me two of the same hand (left, I think) and I had to wait months for the right one. Worked out in the end since I needed an extra hand for something... keep that in mind.

And now the tragedy: I sent a head over to the UK for faceup, and sent along a hand for resin matching. The package got stuck in customs and the artist never picked it up, supposedly because they could not afford the customs fees. I of course offered to pay those fees, but it was too late by the time I was involved. The package was apparently sent back to the US/returned to sender, but it vanished instead. I called everyone I could reach trying to locate it, but no luck. Lost the head and the hand, and while I was able to replace the head eventually, the body had yellowed and replacing that one hand proved difficult. Eventually I just decided the character was one-handed, and I used that extra one from DZ to make the end of the wrist.

Still salty over being out roughly 100 bucks, though. :T

 

Thankfully no big horror stories yet, though I'm in the middle of probably my biggest!

Long story short: Shipping.

Long story long: I have an EMS package containing a full MSD doll, 4 limited artist heads of various sizes, and several expensive limited outfits stuck in transit for almost 3 months exactly now. No tracking updates since 9/03, tracking expired. My agent and post office seem reluctant or unable to help in any way. And to top it all off the cost of shipping this package was $172.

Hopefully it shows up at some point (I have some hope since others have ensured me that 3+ month shipping is "normal") but for the first time I'm having to come to terms with the very real possibility that I might just lose a ton of irreplaceable items I've been waiting months and months for... not to mention money.

Worse still... All of my orders in the past year apparently shipped at the same time, so I have multiple parcels in the mail at the exact wrong time. I'm hoping that the others won't be as abysmal as this particular one, but I'm not optimistic.

 

Dolls falling coz they couldn't stand or balance for the life of them.

Having a scratch on their faceup is a nightmare for me. I'll go bonkers if I found any of my babies with a scratch on their face. I'll hide them away until I can send them for another faceup.

Dolls getting lost during shipping. Sellers or faceup artists who goes MIA and not reply your messages