Major Problem with Demon Garden

what does this have to do with Demon Garden? DDE does not sell DG dolls nor do they have any connection to AOD.

 

I think you posted in the wrong thread?

 

I think they were trying to give Strawberry other places to shop for dolls?

 

Ah! I bet you're right. I failed to make the connection.

 

I just read through this entire thread..

...Strawberry - I sincerely hope everything works out for you that you can get your money back and that while this is a horrible experience, it does not defer you from ordering a doll from a different company in the future. I am so sorry this has happened to you!

...and count me as yet another who will not buy from this company. The original emails from them were not *horrible* but the latter ones were absolutely appalling!

 

...like many others, I'm shocked this happened, and for your first doll...!

strawberrysodaz, you have handled this so well, despite all the horribleness! I hope the outcome for you will be good! You deserve it!

I really think customer service makes or breaks a company, regardless of what their actual products are like. This whole fiasco is a real shame.

 

Nope, just in case she wants to look to other doll shopes. Unfortunately I did a quick reply running out the door and neglected to elaborate.

 

Someone commented that there were many other nice shops, I neglected to quote them on my run out the door.

 

customer service is very important in business...it either make or break the company in longterm.... expecially when involving such an expensive niche product...
or when the goods is been marketed mainly in the internet....

 

Okay so i realize that DG really dropped the ball on being an ass with this, but the more I look at this the more i kinda sympathize with the company. I mean...They are a brand new company. They probably have little experience with a lot of doll/shipping related (western) customer service and I also feel like I need to point out that Chinese business seems to goe along the lines of:

I CAN YELL LOUDER THAN YOU YOU WILL PAY THIS MUCH.

NO I WILL NOT PAY THAT MUCH.

FINE THEN YOU WILL PAY THIS MUCH.

(and so on.)

I realize that many people feel that the companies should appeal to a more western (or specifically US) "the customer is always right" approach, but we should also be fair in understanding that they do not have a lot of experience with western business or customs. (not excusing their behavior just the general idea of the thing)

I mean there is NO obvious damage to the neck at ALL. If a doll head was forcibly SHOVED down the neck, not ONLY would the doll head be split in TWO but there would be really obvious scrape marks/ GOUGES down the neck. I mean there would be flakes of resin and powder everywhere. (not that I am saying to was this girls fault cause it very well could have been a neck hole flaw) but they have EVERY reason to be suspicious. I mean i see absolutely NO damage to that neck at all OR to the neck hole on the doll head. there is only a minuscule split by the EYE. WHY? why would there be a split by the eye? it physically doesn't make sense.

ALSO. I know you guys may not feel this way, but 7 hours between getting a REALLY messed up doll and then reporting damage is a LONG time (relatively). There are many things a person (not specifically this one) COULD use to sabotage a doll in that span of time. There is ample time to mess around with a doll especially if one had power tools. (Once again I am NOT accusing Strawberrysodaz OF anything just stating why the company would be paranoid) I mean this probably is not ONLY shocking to the customer but also the company. I mean...that is THEIR product and it SHOULDN'T do that.

ALSO (and still keeping in mind the company dropped the ball with all the drama and revealing of her real name and name calling which i don't find excusable in any light) they company ACTUALLY sacrificed a doll to attempt to recreate the damage even after the customer refused to send the doll back to them for inspection. I mean...that's pretty hardcore guys. That's a lot of money to throw out for customer service...

I'm a little sorry to say this but I feel like both sides dropped the ball a little here (one significantly more than the other considering who behaved more like an ADULT *cough* demongarden grow up a little plz *cough cough*). It takes two to tango as they say.

D:

once again (I will beat this to death) stawberrysodaz I am NOT blaming you for anything, and DG definitely has been exceptionally rude to you (to the umpteenth power). It just seems like people are getting a little too into the...emotion side of things and aren't really seeing that the damage is iffy. The company had every right to question the damage here. I have a DG doll I have seen the neck and all that jazz. They didn't have the right to be an asshole, but they had the right to be suspicious.

Also they REALLY should have valued it higher than 10 bucks (I mean SRSLY WTF???)

 

Hear hear. Sounds like a COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN to me. I mean, I get being angry at them for how they treated her towards the end, they WERE rude. But getting angry for suspecting her is a little much. There is very oddly mismatched evidence there. They had every right to want more evidence and to see the doll themselves.

Really... how on earth are there no scratches/GIANT GOUGES in the neck? Even with VERY THIN resin around the neck hole there would still be scratches. I am also not saying you did this yourself strawberrysodaz, not at all. I'm just saying they had good reason to be just as confused as you were, it's a really confusing situation! And they probably wanted the doll sent back more to see if it really WAS a design flaw. If that were a product from my company I'd want it back too, to know what on earth happened, and to make sure if it was a design flaw it wouldn't happen again x_x Everyone keeps saying they should have fixed it, but they have to know what happened first to know how to fix it...


Honestly, this doesn't hinder me from wanting things from demon garden. It's awful that it's happening, but this is one bad transaction out of plenty that went fine that I haven't heard about. It happens to every company once in a while, it's just too bad for them this whole thing is so out and public. And with just one transaction that spun out of control. Bigger companies have had several bad transactions and maybe worse than this, and have continued selling dolls with little problem.

Demon Garden has always been nice to me when I've contacted them, and when other people I know have dealt with them and bought their dolls. I think this is a pretty upsetting problem for BOTH sides =/

I also think it will take a lot more transactions like this before I'm convinced it's not just a one time thing.


Oh yea and $10 WHA? BAD idea x_x

 

Yes and no. I think they should try and be aware of their customer base, that's part of doing business. But, I don't expect everything to translate perfectly nor do I actually believe the customer is always right. When this thread first began, I wasn't really shocked that they asked for more pictures. I figured they just needed to confirm what the issue was, and yes, companies do try and rightfully protect themselves. However, when the company throws a fit because a customer asked for advise on DoA and starts refusing to work with them over it, then there's something really wrong. That last letter was also inexcusably rude.

There can be legit cultural and language issues, but it is also very possible for companies to still cross the line between simple misunderstanding and serious customer service issues, and as I see it, DG did cross the line. As a customer this does make me leery about dealing with the company, because I can never know for sure if something might go wrong and if it does I'm dependent on the company to fix the problem. I personally wouldn't want to go through something like Strawberry did. There are so many companies out there producing really nice dolls, that I have the luxury of being able to take customer service into account. All companies have their occasional foul-ups, because they're run by human beings and try as we might, no human is perfect. How companies deal with and fix issues is what is most telling.

It maybe that DG will get better about dealing with customers as they gain more experience and perhaps learn something from this whole fiasco. I sincerely hope that they do, but only time will tell.

Perhaps, but I think you maybe reading too much into it. Not once did they mention wanting to examine it to look for design flaws. The case they made was that they needed to examine it to make sure that Strawberry hadn't damaged the doll herself. That seemed to be the main concern in all of their responses.

 

You are assuming the entire seven hours between the package's signature and the actual reporting of the problem was available for messing with the doll. As the buyer has repeatedly explained in this thread, the package was delivered to the address but she did not have it in her hands. I believe she was at work, wasn't she? God help us all if we have to start coming home from work to examine parcels right away just to avoid being accused of intentionally damaging goods.

I realize we live in a world that believes in instant gratification, but some people are not able to live that dream. I know I can recall one occasion in which a doll was delivered to me yet went unopened for three days due to work, a funeral, and other obligations. To imply to people that waiting a whole seven hours to report an issue is suspicious is the height of impatience and impracticality. DG should be ashamed for using it as an excuse to accuse her of anything.

 

Of course Demon Garden have a right to attempt to ascertain they weren't being taken for a ride, but that does not excuse their behavior. There is not camera in current existence that would produce a picture blurry enough for you to not be able to tell that the head was practically on the shoulders! Also, people forget, the pressure put on the neck hole affects the whole head, which can lead to unpredictable forces: hence the odd placement of the crack. Physics can be confusing and unintuitive. Often damage does not occur at the source of the force, like when you crush a coke can and the middle screws up. (Maybe bad example).
I agree it is ridiculous for you to base suspicions on a 7 hour delay: There are thousands of reasons she would be unable to report the damage the exact millisecond the parcel arrived and she inspected it with her x-ray goggles. DG where plain silly to even mention that.

 

Not to mention that most company policies give you a number of days in which you can report any damage. Giving someone only a few hours is not standard practice by any means.

 

She wasn't assuming at all. She wasn't being accusatory, as she said several times in her response. She was only explaining her confusion as to why some people thought it was ridiculous DG thought she could do something to the doll in this time, because she could have if she had received the doll immediately. Purely hypothetical.
Most companies give you several days yes, and in several days they probably would have been even more suspicious. No it is not common practice to only give someone a couple hours, but it didn't sound like that's what they were saying. "We cannot say for sure what happened within the 7 hours." doesn't translate to you should have reported it earlier. Just because a company gives you several days to report damage doesn't mean you have a grace period where they don't assume you could do something to the doll. It just means if there is damage that they can determine is a company error, and you DON'T report it in a said amount of time, then they won't do anything about it. It just sounded like they were explaining that it could have happened in that time. So I'm not sure why it's being stated in comparison that other companies give you days to report things, as it doesn't really have much to do with that.

Again, I wasn't excusing demon garden's behavior, and I'm pretty positive amelonbread isn't either, as she said a couple times in her reply. They WERE extremely rude to her, and they DID cross the line. Nobody is saying they didn't. In fact, we both said they DID.

But at the beginning I thought, and it sounds like she did too, there were a lot of things that weren't considered before jumping right into anger, which is understandable, but definitely could not have helped what was already an awful situation.



Taco- I could be, but they did say they wanted to determine if the doll has a defect, so maybe not.

 

I appreciate you pointing out the poster's frequent protests that she was not accusing the buyer of anything, but I saw them the first time. I never said the poster was accusing the buyer of damaging the doll, I was merely countering that her assessment of seven hours as "a LONG time" was unrealistic.

I should note that while, yes, it is possible for someone to damage a doll within seven hours, it's also possible to do it within 5 minutes. Should that be declared "a LONG time" too? What is the magical cutoff before which a customer is safe from being accused of damaging a doll on purpose? Two minutes? 30 seconds?

The bottom line? I fail to see what is so confusing about the inappropriateness of DG's accusation that she damaged the doll on purpose based on a seven hour ownership period. No matter what nation the company is from, an attempt to shift blame is still an attempt to shift blame.

 

People like to cover their asses...That's exactly what they tried/are trying to do, ungracefully yes, but its a pretty consistent mode of behavior that people display all over the world. I mean strawberrysodaz is also trying to make sure she's in the clear. I would certainly try to cover my ass if i was one either side. These situations are so blurry there are so many things that make it difficult to see who is right and who is wrong. Language barrier (which she catered GREATLY to, considering she took the time to write in Chinese), time zones, the fact that there is ONLY letter writing (and we all know that even when two people who speak in the same language perfectly there are many times things are lost in emails and IM'ing) and not to mention there is a third party that is also involved and very difficult to get to do ANYTHING aka: the shipping service. D:

It's a mess a big big mess.

Man if anything I would just take the doll body, get the doll head off, and get a new head at some point. This thread has probably cost these DG people their livelihood and their art, which sucks seeing as how we're in a worldwide recession. So they've lost thousands of dollars and hundreds of sales and probably a new business and she lost a doll head =\ it sucks no matter how you see it.

 

Okay ^^ I only meant to point out it was a hypothetical and purely factual statement. Just because someone says something, doesn't mean it's true and it sounded like in a lot of posts (not you necessarily), people were angry at them for not trusting her word. If she really WERE scamming them (which I am not saying she is at all), then they would lose a lot of money on a customer who got away with it. Which, I'll point out like amelonbread did, they did just experimenting to see if the damage could be done forcibly at all, since they did not have the doll in their possession to see.

I thought she was only pointing out it was a long time in which you could do something to a doll. And I don't really agree seven hours is not a long time in relation to this point. Most people could do a lot of things in seven hours. Maybe in relation to how long she could have kept the doll it is not a long time, but that isn't really relevant to the point.

Honestly, I don't think there is a magical cutoff time. I think what matters is what kind of damage is done.

No matter how long the person had it, it seems to me with oddly mismatched damage like that, any company would get suspicious even if the person had it for five minutes.

It wasn't the shifting the blame being inappropriate part that was confusing. That, I agree, was absolutely inappropriate >.< I just think there is a little dissidence when determining where exactly the accusations started and why. Because to me, they were very decent in the beginning of this mess, and responded like any company would. I feel it was a mess of confusion and lack of understanding english (that they really should have had a better translator for before getting upset =_=) that accelerated the problems, not just the company being all huffy all of a sudden.

And that is why I feel sympathy for both sides. =/

 

I totally missed this. When did they do this and what was their explanation on their process and findings?

 

Well according to one of the emails they said that they attempted to replicate the damage to see if it was their fault or something like that. The never said exactly what they did or exactly what came from it. I'm not sure if they would actually break a doll though. How would that be cheaper then sending a new head?

 

It seems like putting DG's customer losses on StrawberrySodaz is kind of unfair. Yes, she did just lose a doll head, but that also was not her fault. The whole situation could have been tidily concluded with DG keeping their reputation (and probably getting glowing feedback) and StrawberrySodaz getting a complete, unbroken doll. The ball was really in DG's court. While you may have just dealt with it and not expected a replacement, it's not really the customer's job to just accept a faulty product at full price. Expecting them to do so is poor business.

One thing about recessions is they most strongly affect companies that are already dealing with fundamental problems.

(I am saying this as a member, not as a moderator - again, the forum has no official stance on this transaction.)

 

I'm not blaming Strawberry for them losing my business, it's them who caused themselves to lose my business. They blamed her for what happened likely in shipping. If they gave her another head, then all would have been well.

 

I work for a very small company (we're so small most federal regulations don't even apply to us, because we're under the 50-employee limit), and we have several "big ticket" items that cost $250 or more. I know that when one of our customers reports that a $250 or even a $450 item has arrived damage or has simply not arrived at all, even in a suspicious situation, we don't blink at sending out a replacement. Even when we're 99% sure that the customer caused the damage, we send out a replacement because we want to keep our reputation in good condition. Because in the end, it's way more economical for us to send out a replacement than to have to fight with bad PR later on. Good PR is REALLY expensive, it takes a lot of man-hours and marketing! And most products sell for at least 3x what they cost to manufacture (i.e., a product that sells for $300 usually costs us $100 or less to make), so our loss isn't even that big. I can't believe DG didn't do the same thing. It's very irresponsible and they deserve their bad reputation.

 

Just to clarify: D&G did not state in any of the e-mail that they actually broke a doll.

In the sixth letter, they stated: "under normal circumstances, this (referring to the neck/head situation) does not happen; we have done many experiments; along ours Chinese and international sales (thus far), you are the second case of this kind of claim....."

In the last letter: "Our technician has determined that the damages (you are claiming) is not related to the quality of our dolls......"

They have never stated nor claimed that they have broken any doll - nor did they claim they were or WERE NOT able to replicate the problem shown by OP. I have read the letters 5 times over and I do not get the impression nor I think anyone should interpret their statement as saying that they actually "sacrificed" a doll to "replicate" the problem. I am pretty sure they did NOT

I also want to state that for the sake of getting my parcel safely (since I work long hours); all of my packages doll or not, are being shipped to my office. I usually signed for the item as they arrived, but I cannot open them until late in the evening after getting off work. It is not really professional to be opening doll packages in the office (I think.) Thus, it is not realistic to assume that everyone can open and inspect a package immediately upon arrival. I also had tried to mess with opening a neck opening (trying to get my minimee onto a suitable body) and I can tell you unless she has electric sanding equipment, that kind of opening is NOT really achievable by hands. It is hard for me to believe that someone would want intentionally sand the neck opening to her first doll upon opening the box so that they can make a claim for a replacement doll (the same doll !!!)

I did not open the box to my first doll, DOT, until at least 9 hours after he arrived. I did nothing but to be very careful put his clothes up and wig on. He was "so big" at that time. I did not even keep him out because I did not want to damage him.

I just cannot see the rationale of it all.

 

I hope this all works out for you! That they are not willing to inspect it anymore is ridiculous. Just replace the head! Obviously there was something wrong. I got a Souldoll body and one the pinky fingers was broken. I sent them an e-mail and they are sending me a replacement. I offered to provide pictures if they wanted but they just sent them too me anyway. So.. Not all companies are like that. D: Good luck

 

As this thread is getting heated, we've decided to lock this thread for now. strawberrysodaz can PM a Moderator to have the thread reopened if she wishes to add any updates regarding this transaction.