WORST Doll Experience EVER

Well here I am, back with something really bad that has finally happened to me. It is not the fault of any bjd company or person in the doll community, though. Just a bad situation. The house I am currently renting was up for sale for quite a while, and my leasing agent had a million people come through to look at it, but nobody seemed to want to buy it. I had people showing up at all hours, giving me little to no notice, and since I work odd hours, sometimes even showing up when I was in bed sleeping! After that whole debacle, my leasing agent told me they had just decided to take the house off the market for a while, what a huge relief! I got a new year-long lease drawn up and I signed it, and while I was on my way to go fax it to her, she calls me and tells me that someone has put an offer on the house and that they are selling it. UGH. I would have just walked out right then and there, but she informs me that I need 60 days written notice to leave the house, even though I don't even feel like I'm living there anymore since they're sending so many damn people to tromp through my life. So, after a bunch more people come through on behalf of the new buyers (architects and inspectors and such) the activity suddenly waned for a little while, and I didn't hear anything for a long period of time. Whatever, fine, I just appreciated some time to not be dealing with a bunch of crap. Some time later, my leasing agent contacted me and told me the house was not for sale anymore, and I could definitely DEFINITELY stay here as long as I liked. After I found this out, I was super relieved, and I decided to put in an order for an IOS 80 cm body and a couple heads and some accessories from spiritdoll. I had been wanting to make this order for a very long time, and was super excited that I was finally able to wrap up all this house crap and order my stuff! As everyone knows, anything resin takes quite a while to be produced and shipped, so I would need to have a stable housing situation in order for this to work out.

And here's where shit hits the rotating blade:

Yesterday, I get a call from my leasing agent (who has been super wishy washy about the sale of this house, and I've had to put up with endless crap since it went on the market) telling me that they sold the house after all! After WTFing for a moment, I asked how much time I am going to have to stay here. She sort of flippantly told me ''Oh, they can give you thirty days or so before they make you move out, but I don't really know." Since I ordered a bunch of stuff that could take months to get here, I am now super worried. I know a lot of doll companies do not like to switch the address they are sending stuff out to after the fact, and the language barrier makes it all the more difficult to explain my situation. I am so insanely pissed off at my leasing company for assuring me I'd be living here for as long as I wanted, and then calling me completely switching it up all of the sudden. I had even already signed on for another year on the lease about a month ago! I guess they didn't even file it.

So at this very moment, I have no idea what is going on. I was at work on friday when she sent me the texts informing me of this new "development", and have been calling her since yesterday. Still haven't heard back. I am just so worried about my doll stuff. If they can't send it to a different address, I swear I am going to stake out here until I get every last thing in my hands. It's not cheap either, with shipping it's close to $1000 of stuff! I almost hope something catastrophic and terrible happens to this house the moment I move out. My maniacal cackle would be heard worldwide.

Moral of the story: I need a damn P.O. Box

 

I suppose my worst experience has been less with the dolls or dealers but more with people outside the hobby. My whole family hates my doll and I am afraid to tell anybody that I'm ordering my second one soon. My friends acted polite about my hobby for awhile but recently told me that they though it was "downright creepy". My boyfriend is probably the only one who puts up with it :P. I can't imagine what it must be like to drop your doll, though. I've certainly had nightmares about chipping or even scratching Aya.

 

My worst experience with BJD was with Soom Obsidius.
First - I didn't expect that the promo picture has a beast head & the human head's eyes have a different style. I fell in love with the promo, and as soon as I didn't need the beast ears, I've granted my friend a chance to have the special head. When the parcel arrived & I understood it... it broke my heart.
I've been one those who paid the complete sum for the order in one payment. But my doll has been sent in the last batch. I believe this is not really fair to send the layaway orders first, and I've been tracking this shippings with the thread at local forum, as people usually wrote when they ordered the same doll, when the last payment has been made & when the doll has been shipped.
The wig the company sent was loose - it was for a bigger head, so I hardly could make it stay on doll's head. It also had lots of bold spots, so I eventually sent a note to the company & they sent me a replacement (which was just a bit better, but still too big).

So - nothing but a big disappointment for over a $1000. Possibly the only reason I consider it 'the worst experience' is that I've spent huge amount of money. I'd cope with it if the cost would be 3-4 times less maybe

 

I guess my worst doll experience so far (i'm still quite a newbie to BJDs...) but my Dollclans Kien customs notice came in today. I had to pay roughly $200....

 

Well well well, getting kicked out of my current house is even causing me issue where faceups are concerned! Starting 3 days ago, there are a zillion construction guys working on my (not for long) house... more specifically, they are jack hammering and removing a large expanse of concrete surrounding the shed where I do my MSC sealing... Starting at roughly 7am... And I work nights. -_-
So, now there is way too much dust and debris to even think about sealing resin, and it's so nice outside! Also, it is INSANELY LOUD. I want to go to a local doll meet, but I don't even know if I'll have time since it's 10 days before I'm supposed to be officially out of my house. Frustration is surely mounting... At least spiritdoll agreed to switch my shipping address after the fact (I love you, spiritdoll!). Still haven't heard from IOS, which worries me because I spent over $700 with them. I will try emailing them again and praying to the doll gods!

 

[MENTION=68759]LoudOwl[/MENTION]

I have good news for you! :-)
When you do your forwarding address it will be active for 18 months (USPS).
I just had a shipping snafu and had to check.
Thankfully my was sorted out by the wonderful DoA member. However, just so you know. BTW my was international also, it will be included with your forwarding at no additional cost to you!

 

Oh my god that's horrifying. 3 of my 4 dolls cost less than that, lol!

 

Yeah, I cried. TT_TT"

 

Oh awesome, what a relief! It's just such a nerve racking experience waiting for something so expensive and that you care so much about to get to you in the mail! When one little step is added it just piles on the anxiety.

 

Don't worry I had the same thing happen to me :l paid 200 euro for customs on my angell studio honglee they also took him hostage when he got to the customs office. Asking for a receipt when it was marked as gift ( my mother shipped him from the us because I moved) . But yeah I agree customs are horrible.

 

I had one today/yesterday (Friday and Saturday.) My doll was mailed out Wednesday, was suppose to be home Friday. Ok, left the town an hour away Friday morning...I'm thinking great! I'll get the notice and pick him up Saturday. (I am at work when the mail comes and with my mom in the hospital, no one is home to sign for stuff right now.) Well, kept checking tracking...it never said it arrived at my PO. All day...

Well, this morning, Saturday, I woke at 6 to go potty. Checked the tracking, nothing new. At 8:30, the cat is banging on the door. I wake up, and decide to check. UPDATE! But not at MY PO! It's at another one! Thankfully I know where it is, and call them. They were about to drive it back to the main PO! But they told me to come over and get it if I wanted too. So hopped up, dressed, and out the door! Funny thing, my neighbor works there, and wanted to bring it to me, but they wouldn't let her do that.

 

Fortunately, I have only one very bad experience to this day. I bought one limited doll, and I wanted her in Rosy Brown skin so tan skin. I was waiting for 10 weeks and 2 weeks, when she was on the way to me. But, when she arrived I found, that she has bad type of skin. The skin was completely GREY!! This doll is my first human doll and she arrived with bad type of skin. I was dissapointed, but now the doll has new owner and company will send me new doll in the right skin for money, which I got from new owner. I got lucky for problems like this

 

I never had any bad experience with my dolls. Until today...
First of, I've participated in many transactions in which all of them arrived safely and were also sent safely to their new owners.
About a month ago, I sold a dolls head to a very nice girl in another country~
It was a rare and limited sculpt, she thanked me so much for selling it to her and we actually became friends after chatting for a while.
Since she wanted a boy and the head is with a girls make up, she had to remove it and send to another make up artist.
And she told me just today that the head got stained by the acrylic paints... it was pretty severe and she was quite disappointed.
I felt so bad for selling that to her even though she knew it was not my fault.
Also, I offered her a full price refund + shipping fee on me , but she still loved the head and wanted to keep it... so I gave her a discount for compensation.
: ( I am so disappointed in the resin and Mr. Super... I've never painted a head and found it to be stained when removed the make up.
Just super upset about giving a discount, free international shipping AND having to give a discount again for compensation!

 

MSC is nasty stuff. Sorry to hear it made you so sick. If you ever decide to try again I would recommend reading this post regarding respiratory protection. Very informative and critical information people need to know to protect themselves from harmful chemicals.

 

I won't say which doll company this is but the story goes... I had an order from this company and it's a company that only orders via emailing, you cannot place an order on there website. So after emailing a few times back and forth they tell me the price of my order in Australian dollars, as I live in Aus, and they give me there paypal info. I proceed to make the payment then a week later receive an email that they will not accept Aus dollars despite them having told me the price in Aus dollars lol. I also noticed some confusion when emailing with them stemming from poor English skills, I grew up with an Asian mum that was born overseas so trust me, I have a high tolerance level for poor English.. But this lady was on next level Engrish.

So apparently they couldn't accept Australian dollars and almost a month had gone by and I hadn't received the money back and it went under the status of unclaimed, at this time they asked me to pay in US dollars. I paid the amount again in US dollars and the order was soon shipped out. A few days later I got my money back, in Australian dollars lol.

So the shipping time I was told may range from... I forget but it was quite long so I didn't even bother tracking it, then a few days ago I remembered I had an order and went to track the package... So apparently it was shipped to the US from Asia! I then found out at after the US it made its way to Australia and at one point was in my state but by the time I found out it was in another state, Australian states are huge not like the US, so I cannot just drive there and flying there is ridiculous, apparently at this point the package was on its way back to the sender. I never received any card in my mail and there was no delivery attempt made! I contacted the postal service and was told the address was incomplete or incorrect so a delivery could not be made and that the sender has to lodge an enquiry with ems to find my package. I then emailed the doll company again, which they then sort of blamed me and they told me it had made its way to the US as ordered... So now they're telling me I gave them a US address which I never did... furthermore this company takes on average 4 days - 1 week to respond to emails which further frustrates me.

Any suggestions? I am hoping they won't make me pay for shipping again as it seems it was their fault for getting my address wrong, thought I want my order so I probably would pay for it if they refuse to send it out. I am still waiting for a reply since their last email did not give me any answers as to whether they would be lodging an enquiry with ems or if they will be sending me the package when and if they receive it. According to the postal service as of right now the sender has the rights to the package so I am not sure what their plan is.

 

LoudOwl, you should at least report that leasing agent to the BBB. You may even want to talk to an attorney who does landlord/tenant law about getting damages for the stress and inconvenience you have been put through.

 

Oh, I do plan on it. This has gotten totally ridiculous and out of hand. I'm just waiting until I move to my next house so I can actually list this past leasing agent as a reference (since it's required in my state) without having any trouble renting a new place. I am afraid that if I report now before I move, she'll get vindictive and lie about my renting history in regards to this place (which I took great care of for almost 3 years and always had paid rent on time). The last thing I need right now is trouble finding a new place. Seems like it'd be wiser to not report her before I have to use her as a reference on my leasing application, which I am actually filling out right now. I'm in my right mind to report the new buyer as well, since his construction company has been so wildly unprofessional and sketchy. The construction guys even went through my toolshed (my doll MSC shed) and used all my tools, even stealing one in the process, which I had to threaten a police report to retrieve. They were done jackhamering the concrete (at ridiculous hours) days ago, but the giant dumpster filled with debris is still in my driveway, making impossible to park 2 cars. The temptation to paint something obscene on that dumpster has been growing stronger and stronger every day...

 

I think I commented on this before but I now have a new worst experience. I sent one of my dolls off to be modded, this is the first and probably the last time I will do so. People might think I'm being a bit unfair but the modder went past two of the estimates they gave (with the first one they said they were giving themselves an extra week just in case life gets in the way) and each time didn't give me any explanation why they had gone over (I can understand life gets busy at times but you should keep your customers updated), The first estimate was 2 weeks they did part of it the first week and made it seem like they were going to crack on with the rest. Then I heard nothing back from them at all and in the middle of the second of week I asked for an update. After a day of no response they said wed-thurs of the coming week, I waited it was Monday of the next week and I had no updates again so I bugged them and after a day and having to bug them yet again they said were sending pictures later that day. When they sent the pictures I could tell they had literally done the mod that day the epoxy was still wet because I could see the residue that hadn't been cleaned up yet. They sanded it the next day and waited for me to ask them for their email to pay for the work. And now they haven't told me if she was shipped or not, I asked for recorded first class (so it was quite obvious I wanted her back ASAP). I don't want to bug them again I really don't.

Just as a reference they got her on the 16th of March and the work was completed on the 9th of April. It was more the lack of communication that really made me nervous and frustrated.

 

Yikes... That sounds horrible. I wish you luck in getting her back.

 

My last reply to this thread was in 2013 when I ran into trouble with Soom, buuut I've finally got another experience that tops it.

Which is saying something considering some of the wackiness I've since come across on the marketplace here, but the thing is--I expect a little wackiness from individual sellers. It's when companies and corporations can't follow through on their promises that I get really stressed, and like the time I detailed before on here where Soom "lost" my layaway payments, there's nothing worse than sending money to a company and... it just disappears.

To preface this, everything I am about to talk about is the fault of one corporation: Paypal. I'm going to mention Volks USA a lot too, but they were absolute sweethearts who worked with me (and my wife Sephyelysian) through this entire mess and I don't want anyone getting confused skimming my paragraphs. For those of you not in the know, Paypal was recently sued by the US government for allowing payments to go through involving suspicious persons and countries we have sanctions against, and apparently some worry about terror groups using the service. I knew none of this before any of this ridiculousness began, but it's good to be aware of it because it may affect any of us who live in the US and use the service now at any time.

They've responded to this by creating some kind of computer system that monitors all payments more closely and automatically flags them as "suspicious" when it trips on certain words, then it freezes the transaction in place until an actual human in the fraud department can take a look at them. I found this out the hard way when Volks USA recently restocked their SDG standards, and my wife and I decided to buy a Saki. This is the first restock of the standards since last year, and by the time we realized they were in (like an hour after they were posted), the other standard girl had already sold out, so we were at dinner on a Friday night and figured we'd put in the order really quick and hope we got lucky.

We did! Yay! Except... the payment froze. I got an automated message saying that my payment was suspicious and the US government required Paypal to investigate so until then my payment was on hold for the next 72 hours. Then my wife (who is the one with the Volks USA account) got an email from Volks that we'd entered a lottery for Saki and were not guaranteed a doll. WHAT?

There are three things wrong with that:

1) Saki was absolutely in stock. Apparently the lottery thing is what their system does if the payment is on hold for some reason.
2) 72 hours on a Friday might actually mean 72 business hours, which means our time wouldn't actually even start until Monday.
3) Paypal still took the money from our bank account immediately.

Understandably, this stressed us both right out. I called Paypal, who graciously assured me that it was nothing I or the company had done and our money would be released soon, no worries! My wife called Volks USA who were really sweet and assured us that this just happened sometimes and it usually cleared by the next day, but maybe Paypal was just confused because my wife's name was on the order and my name was the primary on the Paypal account?

We hung up and tried to be patient, but the situation made no sense. We order from Volks USA all the time for little things like painting supplies and outfits, and I'd bought two MSDs from them in the past six months with no problems.

The next day, nothing moved. Nor the next, nor the next, so by Monday morning I was really unhappy. $700+ dollars just suddenly disappearing into the digital ether is not great on its own, but I really wasn't sure how long Volks was going to hold the doll while Paypal dithered around and that was only adding to the stress. So I called Paypal again. And again. And again when the 72 hour deadline was missed. They finally started giving me answers, which trial and error and my continuing notes as the days dragged on sort of boxed them into providing. There are actually two kind of Paypal service reps, I discovered, the ones who are "preferred customer" reps for people like us who spend lots of money through their service every year (*cough*) and normal reps, who get different levels of training and sometimes getting a normal service rep means getting a different answer.

It turned out that the computer "didn't like" something in the Volks invoice, so it refused to pay them the money. In an ideal world, the fraud department was supposed to look it over, decide I wasn't actually buying uranium from Iran, and then send my payment off to Volks all neat and tidy. What actually happened was that around phone call numbers 5 and 6, when the 72 hour deadline had gone and passed, I got a sales rep who unlike all the others told me the problem was my own fault because I'd "paid with an echeck" (I hadn't) and somehow got in touch with the fraud department finally.

So they reversed my payment, citing that they "hadn't gotten enough information from the seller or buyer" (6 phone calls worth wasn't enough?!), or "hadn't had enough time to investigate."

W.T.F.

Reversing a payment like that when the money has already been taken from your bank means that your money is now in limbo for the next five days. They cancelled my transaction with Volks and let me know they were going to return my money, but they couldn't actually do so for a while. They blamed it on not yet having the money from the bank, which I can't understand because it'd been out of my account for days at that point, but I chalked it up to more corporate nonsense. Phone call #6's rep blamed the whole thing on Volks for being "foreign" and said that I should just resend them the money when it returned to my Paypal account directly so their invoice didn't confuse Paypal's computers. I kept pointing out that I did business with them all the time, but all she could say was that "something" in the invoice was messing things up.

My wife called Volks to let them know that Paypal was laying it at their feet, and to thank them for waiting so patiently. They were really sweet, and after some deliberation let us know that if we wanted to resend the money when it arrived they would hold the doll for us until Paypal let us do so. We were floored, and really happy because this was the last Saki they had in stock and there was no reason for them to keep putting up with all the hassle of deliberating with Paypal for us.

So we waited. I called Paypal again to make absolutely sure of the exact procedure to send the money so that it would hopefully not be caught up. The money came into our account again a couple of days later, and after a jittery ride home from work my wife called Volks and we prepared to send the money a second time...

...and Paypal froze the payment. Again. :/

We thanked the Volks rep, and I banged my head on the desk for a moment. Then I called Paypal, and politely but firmly told them that after ten years of using Paypal for every online transaction because it made me feel safer, I couldn't use their service if they were going to pull this nonsense just because I did business with companies in Asia. "Oh, don't worry," the rep said, "Your money isn't 'in the ether,' we've got it! So it's safe!'" But I didn't have it, and neither did the people I intended for it to go to, and when that was pointed out, she took a look and realized that the only thing the original invoice had in common with my thank you note to Volks on the second payment was the word "Saki."

The computer was freezing my payments as possible terror activity because of the name of a little girl!

I said those actual words to the rep in utter disbelief, and she told me that while she and I knew that, the computer didn't know that. But after some more pressing, she called the actual humans in the fraud department and after telling them the story, they released my payment to Volks immediately. We were really lucky and were able to call Volks back before they relisted the Saki, and she was sent out that day. The representative was very kind about the whole thing and said she'd been about to call my wife back because her manager wanted us to know that they would help us get our money back if the ridiculousness with Paypal continued.

So in the end, we got our Saki thanks to the kindness of Volks holding the doll for over a week and dealing with our frequent phone calls, and my utter bull-headed determination to pester Paypal until they made it right. Volks has pretty much cemented their place as our favorite company and we are using credit cards for online purchases instead of letting them be withdrawn from our bank account directly just in case. But this was such a random problem to run afoul of and we spent almost a full week not getting any sleep because of it. Sheesh.