What is your best and/or worst buying experience?

My best is when I ordered my grail with all the options in the resin color I wanted even though it was the most expensive option. I had always been tight with my budget and tried to order the cheapest options before so going all out this time made me so happy.

I won’t talk about my worst because it could start drama and I want to let go of my resentful feelings over it.

 

Best: Honestly, from Atelier Momoni! I've ordered a doll both preordered and in-stock, the communication was always good, the dolls were beautiful, they arrived sooner than expected... great time all round! Love the dolls. They're so fun and easy to play with.

Worst: I am never going to buy dollshe again. The doll is beautiful, absolutely stunning, I can't fault the craftsmanship and when she did finally arrive (2 years later...) I was really sick and kind of loopy and she was a reasonably good pick-me-up... but the wait times were absurd.

 

I've been lucky to never have an outright bad doll purchase, although I've struggled with eyes getting lost in the mail and clothing sellers who wouldn't communicate. Best doll-related was BiutteChan doing the face up for one of my boys. Their communication was absolutely phenomenal, and they kept me up to date with all of their progress.

The worst was 100% an accident, and the sculptor was great other than this. They just accidentally set my full layaway at one month instead of giving me a month to make the first payment. Was rather panic-inducing for a $1300 purchase that I was expecting to have three months and six payments to pay off.

 

Best: Dollmore! I bought my first doll from them and he's amazing! I ordered faceup, body blushing, and sanding service. He came with underwear and pants as a gift and they even let me choose what eyes and wig I wanted for him! And the best part? He was shipped in under three months! I order from Dollmore regularly and I'm never disappointed! Shipping costs to Canada are also very reasonable.

Worst: -cough- Dollshe... I ordered a Saint two years ago and he's still MIA currently. That said, I've still ordered from them. Luckily, my second order was a positive experience. I did a four month layaway which went smoothly. Fortunately my doll was shipped in about a week after my final payment.

 

Best experience has been a lot of the great people here on DOA! Secondhand dolls have a charm to them and well it's nice getting stuff right away, true. People here have been really great.

Worst experience was Nobility Doll Muscle Body. They promised a lot, then sent a barely functional doll I had to mod a lot to get to even sit upright. I ended up selling that body on- I just couldn't enjoy her.

 

I think my worst buying experience thankfully wasn't an experience I bought a doll in. Someone answered a Wanted thread I started on here and tried to scam me. For a while I wasn't really keen on posting Wanted threads, but I decided to do it again in a discord server last year, and literally eight days later I had a head for my girl Fable, who I'd been wanting to shell for years. Definitely my best purchasing experience.

 

My best experience buying a doll is kind of a funny story! I had some money to splurge on a doll so I looked at dolls that had caught my eye but were too expensive at the time. Denver Dolls had two dolls in stock that I had long admired and was trying to decide between. I'd put one doll in my cart and then the other doll. Finally, I decided on one doll and made my purchase. The next day I realized that I had purchased both dolls by mistake! I contacted Denver Dolls and they said they had already shipped both dolls! So I planned on not opening one doll box and returning it to DD for a refund. The dolls came in a few days and I opened the one doll I planned to keep. The other box sat on my dining room table for a week! I wanted to open it - the doll inside was Dearmine King, who I had long admired, but he was in white skin, and I had decided I didn't want any more white skin dolls. I finally broke down and opened the box and I immediately fell hard for King! His white skin had beautiful yellow blushing and his face up was flawless. I ended up dying his ears, tail, and paws a light golden yellow to match the body blushing. I have 50 dolls, and King has turned out to be one of my top three most favorite dolls! Worst experience ever - I bought a doll on EBay and then was completely ignored by the seller. I was so angry! I contacted EBay and they refunded all of my money within a month. I have bought some nice dolls on Ebay, but you have to be extremely cautious! I should have been suspicious because it was listed as a pre owned doll, but the photo was a stock company photo of the doll. I'm sure they never even had the actual doll. I should have asked for more photos before buying!

 

My best experience was buying a doll based on looks only to find that she was greatly engineered

My worst experience was buying a doll head from an artist and receiving what appeared to be a junk cast... Then, seeing everyone else's beautiful owner photos, while mine was looking, um...

 

Best: I have had many awesome transactions on this forum and from companies! For a new doll, I think my Kara Klum from Dollmore was the best--amazing customer service, shipped within about 3 months, came with some freebies. During my wait, Chinese New Year happened, as did Dollmore switching over to a new website, which deleted my order from my account, but they responded to my email quickly, assured me he was fine and fixed it. They told me an estimate of when he'd ship, then sent another message saying he was delayed two weeks because the optional hands didn't match after casting, and they wanted to redo them for me. They shipped 5 days later. They were just truly wonderful! Alice's Collections has always been amazing too. Secondhand, a few months ago, I contacted someone about buying a head, she told me she also planned to list a variant of that head, so I bought it too. Communication was wonderful, and within a month or so, I ended up trading for five more heads! Between friendly communication, no wait times, very clean dolls in excellent condition, and the safest packaging I've ever seen on a doll/part, it was just all around the best transaction ever.

Worst: it's a toss up between two companies. The first was advertising a 5 week wait time. It ended up being 5 months, with zero communication, and when my order arrived, it was missing a pair of shoes and the doll's head and body were such a bad resin match, even a bad hybrid would have been better. They refused to respond or fix anything. The second was guaranteeing a 10 day wait time. After three weeks, I asked about my doll and they told me she was ready to ship. Then nothing. I asked again, got a tracking number that turned out to be a fake tracking number (confirmed by my local PO). When I confronted them about that, they blamed the warehouse. Then they said there was a problem casting her (even though she'd supposedly shipped two weeks prior??) and that it was my fault for ordering brown resin (which was an option on the site, not a special request, and I paid $200 extra for it...). The doll did eventually arrive to me, and the color was a very dark brown, almost black, not the warm soft brown on the site. Which meant I couldn't even use her as planned because it was impossible to do the faceup style I wanted.

 

Best Experience: Honestly most of my experiences have been great! From companies direct, through dealers, and from other users on DoA, I've had few issues. My favorites are the ones that felt like some kind of destiny lol. When I went to buy my first doll, I had wanted one that was long since discontinued. I was about to order a different doll when, on a whim, I checked ebay for my original goal doll. And wouldn't you know it, there he was. Legit, with extras, and within my price range. I was determined to win that auction, and ecstatic when I did. When he showed up, he was even in his original box. Similarly, I put up a longshot WTB thread here on the forum, for a doll that was also long discontinued and had been very limited to begin with. Within a day I was offered the head. Sometimes dreams do come true, or something like that.

Worst Experience: Prefacing by saying this was in no way the fault of the seller, they did everything to prevent this from happening and were extremely cooperative when it did. A fairly expensive doll body went missing between the seller's house and mine, and after a very long and frustrating search through the American mail system (and customs), I eventually just had to give up and eat the loss. I was beginning to move on when suddenly the body arrived without any warning. The box was in Rough shape, so I was worried, but the doll was packed well enough that there were no issues. So all's well that ends well, but it was still a very harrowing experience.

 

Best: every single weird custom I've gotten from Resinsoul. Weird color combos, weird head and body pairs, and custom colors. All delivered exactly how I wanted it, all within three months max including shipping. They are a delightful company.

Worst: Dollshe. I'm on a 3.5 year wait for my order. It's unacceptable. I'm hoping he'll eventually make my order.

 

@Thymeseer
I've been looking at ordering a pair of jointed hands from Resinsoul. Have you ordered any before? I'm mainly wondering how accurate their hand measurements on the site are.

I'm sorry you've been waiting so long for your Dollshe. I hope you get them soon!

 

Best: My first trade. I was only a few months into the hobby and making friends. I desperately wanted a Digidolls ponta and the artist had tan the last preorder right when I joined and it was discontinued. I was super sad because I loved the lil corgi Anthro. The person wanted to trade my Lillycat chibi newt for their digidolls ponta and the transaction was smooth and so very pleasant.

Worst: luckily I haven’t encountered this situation yet, but when inquiring to purchase a doll head, I had asked very knowledgeable friends about the value of the Puyoo doll egg heads (so I wouldn’t send an unfair price, as the seller didn’t list one) I submitted my offer and the person laughed at me and belittled me through message’s because they wanted a higher price tag. I was hurt and blocked them because they continued to message me mean things.

 

Best: Purchasing my Feeple60 Scarlett secondhand. It was only after I expressed interest in the doll that I came to learn that it was the exact Scarlett that made me fall in love with the sculpt. The person was so kind and even sent me a ton of goodies along with the doll. I was flabbergasted. The doll has become a bit of a jewel in my collection because of that amazing experience too.

Worst: I did a trade with someone (let's call them person A) and the doll I received was not what I was told it was. Person A had gotten the doll (the one I received), in another trade with Person B. When I discovered the truth about the doll, Person A was beyond shocked and disappointed in Person B. There ended up being a 3-way trade with me sending the doll back to Person A, who then traded it for their doll back from Person B (at least that's what I understood). Person A then sent me another doll they were selling and I was actually very happy with it for a while. Things turned out okay in the end, but my gosh that was stressful.

 

My best experience was getting my first doll. Just finding a doll for a good price in the first place is good, but with a handful of clothing, eyes, a pair of shoes, and a wig altogether, and some amazing extras, it was a really lucky find and I'm so happy I went for it! If not for that whole lot, I'd probably have been really disappointed in what I expected the doll hobby to be like jumping into it for the first time. If I ended up with a nude doll or only one of each piece of clothing and such in my first lot, I would have had a much different experience and feelings about it all. So I'm very grateful for the experience.


The worst experience I've had was actually on my end, in part. At a doll con I bought a pair of used jointed hands that I thought were very old and very yellowed, a pretty close shade to the yellowing on my only doll of the same size, so before buying them I asked the seller what color they originally were because they looked super yellowed to me...... She said they are simply just the yellow resin color! I felt like such a heartless rude fool! I felt like I insulted her in some way and while she probably forgot about the comment by the next day, I STILL THINK ABOUT HOW RUDELY I ASKED THAT! I felt so pretentious after that interaction......but I still have those hands and never plan on getting rid of them!
I laugh about it to myself now but I can't help wondering if that had an impact on her at all. It was a small localish con, so I wonder and hope that it didn't make her wanna stop doing any con tables!
And hey, over all the years, those hands don't seem to have yellowed at all!

 

Best experience so far I would say is getting Peakswoods Gumiho Miro. She is almost everything I want in a doll for now. Worst part would be getting banned from one doll shop because I asked too many questions due to there not being much info on the website, and there was no info I could find online to research. The person was really busy and kept pushing the sales date further and further back, so I asked something along the lines of if I missed the sale and when will the next deadline be because I checked everyday on the month it was suppose to go on sale and it never was on the site. I got banned after that. I checked everyday afterwards i think for about a year and the items never were posted on the site.


I have one more that was almost as bad. Recently, I've been selling some dolls to create more space, and I had a really bad experience with this one person. It made me feel guilty, but I learned a lot from that experience. So I guess it was okay.