Dollshe Discussion - Part Seventeen

Yes indeed, it was a Volks group first- got great info from Aimee when I first started in bjd.

Regarding Dollshe, I don’t see him redeeming himself until he halts everything to prioritize outstanding orders. But even then? I don’t know…he needs something comparable to ‘chef Gordon Ramsey’, to kick his business into gear & if possible, save it.

 

He needs to have someone who knows how to run a business to do that for him. Given the number of suspected orders that are outstanding, there's probably no way financially they could all be completed. It would also take quite a bit of time to cast all those dolls, too. Same probably goes for refunding the money for all the orders that are outstanding. I'm guessing the money is long gone, spent on who knows what. Or, possibly, taken from Peter to Paul (who is angrily demanding a refund for a doll they paid for 4 years ago and have never received). Or a hellish combination of both those things.

Said person would also need to keep him on a creative leash because he's constantly running off to make something new because ohhh! shiny! (which I completely understand as a creative person *guilty look at all my WIP's on my computer*) yet how often do those new projects see production/get to the prototype stage? If you want to do something new, fine. By all means. Go for it. Just don't take money for said project and then never deliver.

It's not even that it's only once that he's done that either. The 55cm doll has never been made although the first pre-order was opened 5.5 years ago. And he even opened subsequent pre-orders for it! Some of the other sculpts he opened a pre-order for were also never made (Tom Cruise, I think?). There's probably others I'm unaware of because they didn't interest me.

 

Actually it was a first for me when entering dollshe site for the first time. It was honestly pretty weird just seeing the newer sculpts pics being still in the digital sculpt phase like no cast model yet for at least the promo images. Not to mention the natalie and Tom cruise ones featured on the site just use reference images of the actors. I thought at the time maybe he’s still casting them and that he’ll put up physical casted ones eventually like his old sculpts just checked last night nope it’s still there. Honestly I don’t think I’ve encountered or seen anything like this.

 

He's become so unhinged I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. Praying for a positive outcome for those of you still waiting in dolly-limbo.

 

I am just catching up with the latest Dollshe drama. Not shocked at him trying to start new businesses or upset over bans. I just looked at his website. And he now claims he is only selling "in stock" dolls with a two week delivery. Lol. Instructions are to send email order inquiry's and send payment immediately after an reply for orders. I hope no one gives him anymore interest free money.

 

Anyone else see this in PayPal's latest policy update and immediately think of Dollshe?

"Amendments to PayPal’s Seller Protection Program
Effective January 16, 2024:

• We are revising PayPal’s Seller Protection Program to exclude from eligibility Item Not Received claims filed by buyers as chargeback claims with their card issuers for card-funded transactions."

 

Tbh I can't really understand what they mean with that Do they mean if the buyer files through their card that they'll get in trouble with PayPal?

 

No, unless I'm misunderstanding something myself, it means that the seller is no longer covered if a buyer makes an "item not received" claim with their credit card company.

 

I think there was a lot of scammers that would just file chargebacks with their bank, skipping the whole paypal process.

 

That's not good then either... Because in that way if I sell something then the buyer could chargeback through their card and I'd be out of the money and the item I sold? Or am I still misunderstanding? (English isn't my first language, sorry)

 

No apologies necessary! What I understand is you get a chance to prove to their credit company that you did in fact send the item. If you can't do that, then yes, you'd be out both the money and the item. Here's a link to some info I found if that helps. Apparently this sort of fraud is rather common, so I'm not surprised PayPal doesn't want to cover it anymore. This is also why I would never sell anything of value through a site where you don't have a way to check your buyer's reputation.

Of course in the case of Dollshe, he'd have a difficult time proving he sent items that were never even made.

 

Agreed, whatever the reasons making him act this way, they're not our business, but more importantly, mental health conditions are also not an acceptable reason for anyone to treat other people the way he has treated his customers for several years, so their existence or non-existence doesn't matter in this case. Having read his latest posts, I'm definitely not saying he has all the noodles left in the soup, but trying to make speculatory mental health issues into something that makes his behavior "understandable" could shine a bad light on those who live with said conditions and would never use their condition as an excuse to scam other people. (At this point, I dare say scamming is what Dollshe is doing, because with his latest in-stock sale, people recognized him double-selling multiple of their undelivered preorder dolls from up to four years ago.)

I myself am diagnosed with a disorder that causes occasional grand delusions, and I too am unhinged at times, but that is exactly why I know better than to try running a business.

 

Dollshe is now selling a Club Coco doll via Dollstown...and the sculptor is mysteriously listed as "DK Studio" with Dollstown as their "sponsor", plus a different headplate.
Apparently dolls are in stock but I severely doubt so.
Not fooling anyone, Dollshe
I'd just hate to see Dollstown get dragged down in the continuing Dollshe debacle

 

If you're interested in seeing what Dollshe has to say for himself, check this instagram post's comments. He doesn't own the Dollstown account so he can't delete negative comments like he does on his own accounts, and instead he argues with them. He is "sculptor_dk".

 

He's really doubling down on the story about Mori9 being the cause of all his problems (because, of course, it could never be his fault and none of the problems with massive delays were existing ones for years before that, right? /sarcasm). I think he believes his own BS and that's just sad.

 

He can't delete comments because it's not his Insta, but he's blocking all the people who disagree with him. I too need to dig out my stalker account to enjoy his logic now because I tagged Mori in one of Dollshe's comments that went along the lines of "All of this is Mori's fault for severing the business ties with my awesome totally legit business". I got the boot-end, lol.

 

Dollstown has removed the IG post.
Glad I grabbed some screenshots this morning

 

Sorry for removing the IG post.
I was asked to take down the post by Dollshe.
I guess he was uncomfortable with the controversy surrounding him on my Instagram.

 

I have had three dolls on order from him since 2019. I guess it is quite logical that any person in a similar situation feels a little bit annoyed… Earning that money was such an effort (I am not rich) and trusted Dollshe as I never had a trouble and got the dolls I purchased from him in a super reasonable time. But, honestly, now I feel quite dumb… to say the less. I ordered a magnificent Khan directly from Dollshe and two more dolls through BJDivas and actually got none of them. Anyway, I have always trusted him and trusted that I would receive my dolls, as I understand that pandemic put the world upside down. I have never but once asked for my order and got replied that it would be sent in a couple months (if my memory isn’t failing, as it was… three years ago?). Probably I am stupid, but I am the kind of person that likes to trust people and give second and even third opportunities as we all may fail someday.

I guess he must act like an adult and responsible one and deal with the “more than legit” (in my humble opinion) criticism of his deceived and -more than probably- angry customers.

Will I ever receive my dolls? (Ordered and payed FOUR years ago) Hard to say, to be honest…

PS: I hope I expressed correctly myself, as English is not my native language…

Edit: Of course, I am not blaming you nor Dollstown. I adore your work ♥️

 

I can understand why you removed it and do not blame you. I do not understand why you risk your credibility and trustworthiness with customers by supporting Dollshe through use of your website and PayPal.

Regardless, Dollshe needs to understand that he has broken the trust of many customers (me included) and they have the right to express their frustration. He deletes such comments on his own IG accounts and the Dollshe Craft one. I understand he may be uncomfortable with the controversy, but he brought it on himself and not taking responsibility for it (like a business owner should) makes his customers even more frustrated.

I adore Dollshe's work, and the whole situation is upsetting, he has dolls I would have loved to have. But, I will never order a Dollshe created doll brand new ever again, even if all of the current problems are fixed. I lost my trust in him after waiting over 3 years for dolls that were existing sculpts and not even 3D prototypes.

Now, some people have been waiting 5+ years. His reputation has been ruined by his own making, please don't let him drag Dollstown down the same path.

 

I had a long working relationship with him, but I hadn't seen him for about 10 years, and then I met him again a few months ago.
I heard about his current situation and we talked a lot.
I gave him a lot of advice about his management problems and the direction he should take to solve them, and promised to provide help.

This spring, his PayPal account was blocked, he struggled to resolve the competition difficulties.
During that time, his employees couldn't come out and he worked alone.
Without even having time to answer customers’ questions.
I think I should have responded to the customer in any situation. I told him that was wrong too.

I also like his works and get a lot of inspiration from his passion for work. I don't want him to quit his job.
And I hope that he send the delayed dolls as soon as possible and get back on track.

Thank you for worrying about Dollstown. If a problem arises from supporting him, I will handle it as much as I can. For items paid through Dollstown paypal, if there is a delay in delivery, I will run to him to get dolls instead customers or will refund.

 

I understand. I would feel the same way if I didn't get my doll for a long time.
I asked him often, but he said he would definitely send dolls to his customers.
I heard that CS staff will be back to begin responding tomorrow and they will start to send a doll again from January.

 

Thanks for taking your time to reply ♥️

I hope he can find a way to fix all the problems and some day all the pending orders are fixed and sent. It would be an awesome New Year’s present.

All this situation makes me really sad as I love Dollshe dolls and he is an amazing sculptor. I hope some day (in a near future if possible) things start to move and he recovers, somehow, his reputation.

Thanks again

 

I've not been on DoA for a long time, and when I came back I was so shocked to hear about all of the issues surrounding Dollshe. I can't believe how long some people have been waiting for their dolls. I bought a couple of the old-style heads (Saint and Bernard) many years ago when he was discontinuing them and there was no issue way back then. It's sad to see all of this frustration and dissapointment. The Bernard is easily my favourite sculpt that I own (speaking purely from an aesthetics point of view) but I feel it would be unfair to post pictures here given the current problems, even though he's been grandfathered as a doll I bought in 2015/16 (can't remember which!).

 

My Orijean head was purchased around then, too, and was in-stock so I got it very quickly. I bought him a body directly from Dollshe several years later during a special sale where the promised turn around time was 3 months. It came a bit more than 6 months after the order period. My Hound was a more recent purchase (2020 I think?) but he was 2nd hand so totally unrelated to the death spiral currently going on.

For me, it was the 55cm size pre-order that soured me on purchasing from Dollshe again. I can abide many things but lying is my giant hot button and I was lied to about production/delivery of that order for nearly 18 months before I cancelled and demanded a refund (which I received... minus the PP fees, which I'm still salty over). I'm perfectly willing to purchase pre-loved dolls but I'm never again going to cast my money into the black hole that ordering from Dollshe has become even if he was to finally fulfill all outstanding orders and get his work re-instated here.

I still love the Saint sculpt but I don't know if I'd be able to have him in my collection as that's the sculpt I was supposed to get get in the 55cm size that has never materialized. it may now be one of those sculpts that I need to admire from afar. On the bright side, one of my friends has a Saint (2nd hand) and I can play with him whenever we see each other.

 

Notice:Mori9 did not give Dollshe permission to create new orders using her doll molds for Luke and Doma..please don't order them.

 

So he's adding thievery from other artists to his trunk of terrible behaviours now? Wow. Not the good wow.

 

He's trying to force her hand it seems like by misrepresenting what she said which was very clear. It's all on her IG. Dollstown said they already asked him to return her sculpts.

 

Mori9 IG statement Mori 9's Doll on Instagram: "Sorry for the screenshots. They are hard to read. I don't know how to post mails here. I'll find out that after my health gettin better."

 

Just saw a notice on their website, he claimed there are 600 outstanding BJD orders and 300 of them are casted. He even posted pictures to "prove" that he's not lying. If people are willing to "pay additional shipping fee", their BJDs can be shipped right away. Here you go, MONEY again. People have paid in full including shipping fee in advance so he should have money to ship the dolls, if there's no money left then the only reason is that he has spent all the money so it's all his fault. Plus he claimed 300 BJDs can be casted if fully staffed, if that's true, he could have cleared all outstanding orders in several months, not pending for years. At this stage, I guess no one wants his dolls anymore, people just want to get their money back, in full.

 

Given the number of years that people have been waiting on orders and the number of people that are waiting on refunds, I think 600 outstanding doll orders is massively low-balled by Dollshe. He's desperately trying to get money because he's pooched his reputation so badly that almost nobody with any knowledge in the hobby will buy from him under whatever name he tries to pass himself off as.

 

I went to the website to check and couldn't find a notice about the outstanding orders. Did he delete it already!? lol.

However I did see a notice about him selling the rights to Club CoCo. Wasn't he insisting that he didn't own Club CoCo, but merely "working with them"? It was literally just him selling his dolls under a different name through Dollstown (which we all knew). He really thinks we are so stupid!
He also blames Mori9 for his problems again, and claims that all Dollshe employees have resigned.

Here is the notice full text, dated February 17, 2024, for posterity:

 

Wow. I'm doubtful that it was Dollshe's idea to cease the partnership with Dolls Town for selling of Club Coco dolls. Who in their right mind would purchase the Club Coco brand knowing that it is banned from DoA and that there's a good bit of knowledge about this whole issue... Yeah, I don't see that happening soon (but I could be wrong). It's also laughable in the conditions he's set on purchasing. Even if you purchase the brand outright as the sole owner you still have to have the dolls cast by Dollshe and can't do any mods to the prototypes unless you have Dollshe do it (for a fee, I'm sure)?

The man is so far out of touch it's just boggling.

 

I think he's trying to forcefully claim himself as much wiggle space as he can in terms of milking the money but keeping the rights to his creations, because he is, surprise surprise, afraid of someone treating him the way he treats people. You know, someone who has no problem taking the goods but vanishes when it comes to paying him the commission fees, and alters his sculpts at will and sells them without his trademark. He's desperate for cash for reason X (we know that production of outstanding orders ain't it), and I gotta credit his creativity for these "solutions" that he comes up with, but with the amount of people he's angered, he's rightfully anxious about someone doing the good ol' fashion dirty on him.

 

I think this is the one from last month: If you pay an additional shipping fee, the in-stock BJD will be delivered. - DollShe craft
There are hundreds (supposedly) of dolls here in a pile. He is trying to bait the customers who have been waiting so long without a refund, to give up more money, by showing them that the dolls exist. Please don't take the bait, those who have already paid for cast and shipped dolls!

I will not put the full copy, but some interesting things of note:

If it takes 6 months, take 6 months and do it already. Why the customers should pay again?? What exactly did they pay for in the first place if not for the labor and materials of cast and shipped dolls?

I wonder who will buy the rights of Club CoCo... maybe a mysterious new bjd entrepreneur called...
XIXXO
BUBOWA
OCTOYA
noocoo
L7P
MASKAZ
have I left any aliases off?

Addressing the most pressing questions, Mr. Kim is unbothered and maintaining a healthy lifestyle thanks to the generous donations, um, I mean, sales!

 

Every time I think he can't get any scummier, I am unpleasantly surprised. Still blaming Mori after never returning her molds...I'm glad I supported her by buying a head directly

 

As if on cue, Mr. Kim is now trying to double dip by selling the casted dolls posted in January, which were supposed to be half of the outstanding orders.....
Inventory for sale - DollShe craft

 

This makes me so upset that he's doing this again. Those papers with the dolls are the invoices. You can partially see the names and addresses. They belong to someone! He has no right...

 

There aren't even hundreds of dolls, I counted 8 fashion dolls and roughly 30 SD dolls in all of those photos in total. The photos could be from any day years back. Also, judging by how daylight gets in, if this is how he stores the late orders, they're all gonna be yellowed.

 

You are right, I thought about editing my previous post because I realized that was wrong... I was taking his word for it but it doesn't seem the supposed 300 orders he says he finished are actually represented in the pictures.

And the new plan is, tldr, if he can sell one in stock doll, which is someone's order they have already paid for, that sale will pay for the shipping cost for two other unfulfilled orders. What kind of twisted doll roulette
And claims that this is necessary because he just can't hold onto the inventory any longer... I'm at a loss for words.

 

So in order to fulfill (finally ship) outstanding orders paid in full (doll+shipping) from literally years ago he needs to sell someone's order to another person. But he's offering that new order at 30% off (but with an increase in shipping fees to cover that increased cost?) in order to make the sale to generate funds to ship dolls out to people who've already paid for shipping? So then what happens to the person who's likely been waiting years for their doll now that it's been sold to someone else? How much longer do they need to wait to get what they paid for? What kind of wacky Ponzi scheme is this?

 

Someone mentioned that the photos could have come from any time point, which is entirely true as there's nothing in the photos that I can see that would indicate a recent/now date. But... there are several dolls I see in the photos that are in the colours that have been discontinued several years ago. Like the blue, green and espresso resin (which were also the honey resins, which were also discontinued a few years ago due to "difficulty sourcing and casting the resin").

I could 100% be wrong but given Dollshe's love of spinning a wild tale purely for his financial gain, I'm gonna say this series of photos is from that time period a few years back when those colours were still being offered and not recent as he claims in his effort to continue to scam people for money for product he doesn't have.

 

It's not foolproof but, the file names of the photos seem to be automatically generated by the phone/camera that took them, and the file names contain "2024-01-24", so I'm guessing that's when they were taken.

 

If the file names/dates are correct, then I'm even more disappointed in his latest scheme. He's trying to dangle completed orders in front of those forever waiting, low-key threatening to sell someone's order out from under them so that other orders can finally be shipped to their rightful owners.

 

I can't imagine anybody outside of Korea will buy them (and maybe not even people in Korea), since he's accepting payment via bank transfer only, so I really don't think there's a risk of anybody on DOA actually purchasing.

 

From what I heard, he has a pretty bad rep in East Asia too. At least according to some weibo BJD collectors and Korean twitter.

 

He doesn't keep his dirty dealing and disrespect for clients just to the non-Asian market then. He's an equal opportunity scammer.

 

Exactly. I honestly think he should just be ignored and moved on from. He's never going to fix the problems - which frankly I'm not sure he even can at this point. There's only so far you can go into debt before there's no chance of you ever paying it back. Regardless of the fact that this sucks and it's unfair, should be retribution, etc, there's no changing history. What's done is done.

Besides, I'd say that he mostly has his just desserts; his career and reputation is completely shot and even Dollstown is no longer helping him. He sold off the ridiculous stuff like the Ferrari (According to Dollstown on insta), so he doesn't get to keep his nice toys either.

Even a breath of his name brings droves of comments about him being a scammer on any social media, so there's virtually zero chance of any new people being taken in. Maybe his DOA ban could have come sooner, but it came all the same. Even if he somehow made everything right tomorrow, got every single doll sent out and refunded everyone, hell even chucked in a bonus free doll with every order as a gesture of goodwill, he wouldn't be unbanned and not a single soul will ever trust him again. He's absolutely done in the BJD space forever.

 

Heheh, @nattherat I think you're giving "everyone" too much credit. It's true that he is reaching new levels of ridiculousness every day, but he's been untrustworthy for years and people continued to order from him. People would comment here on the discussion thread admitting that they read everything and ordered anyway. People who were already waiting years for dolls ordered more dolls.

I think restricted payment options are the only thing that will get rid of him. Like if he gets his Paypal account reinstated, people are GONNA keep ordering from him.

 

Maybe, but again, not people on DOA! Not anymore. When was the last time somebody admitted to that? Surely not recently? And I'd still be surprised, since at this point most people who own Dollshe dolls don't even post them anymore through a combination of survivor's guilt and harassment. There's the huge unmissable notice on the front page of DOA, and hundreds of people online who are always immediately ready to warn anybody off him, I don't think we can really do more than that.

I was more making a point that I can't see the value in continuing to encircle the same things over and over. It makes absolutely nobody happy, it doesn't change anything about the situation, and it actually make things suck for people who have Dollshe dolls too. I went and checked; the last time somebody posted a picture of their own doll was back on page 12, when we're now on page 18. That's depressing!

 

I totally understand what you mean. I'm one of the lucky ones who got their order (well, more or less) in 2021 and i'm certainly a little traumatised about the experience and sure i do enjoy my dolls but i'm not sure people want to see doll posts here
but i think it's also important that everyone keeps talking about it so everyone stays updated about what's going and have a place to vent about the guy... he really shouldn't get away with what he's doing :/

but on the other hand, cheers!

Spoiler: have a little pic of my boy!amanda