Soom Waiting Room V6

My Cheshire kitten has shipped?!

 

fish and chips / Aslan / Tawny Skin / FA / LA

^ welp it happened. I couldn't resist that face

 

My birthday gift to myself was paying off my Ling! Here's hoping the wait is fairly short!

 

My kitten is home! I can't decide which head I like more. They're both so cute!

 

Forgot to update my items. xD;;
My serin boy arrived a little over 2 weeks ago, but arrived with CW heads despite ordering Grey skin. xD Soom was super awesome and I received the correct heads yesterday~! >w<

My ID72 SO Siesta Gluino also shipped the other day~! Which is awesome because I only paid him off like 10 days ago~! >w<

 

My lil mermaid boy shipped!

 

Ordered Wolf: Gentle Homme with some extras (aka elastic string and a stringing tool) today. Payment confirmed.

 

I can't believe my Ling shipped already!

 

Whoa, congrats Shiyaria!

My Cheshires are finally here, yaaaaaaaaay!

 

My gray Beryl arrived and she's so pretty! Now if only her dress would get here as it shipped first!

 

Yaay! I ordered a Wolf x-mas kit!

 

My Ling is home~

 

First time ever ordering from Soom! So excited!

 

Sophia shipped!

 

I caved and ordered one of the new bunnies! First doll I've purchased directly from a company in over 3 years.

 

I had planned to just admire these adorable little bunnies from afar, until I checked my account and realized I had enough points saved up to cover basically everything but shipping! So I caved. They're too cute!

 

Didn't get a shipping notice (again - I didn't when they shipped my Dorothy either) but I checked my order today on Soom's website and my Erland has shipped

 

I forgot to ever add my Soom order in here but I got my shipping notice for Dia Lord of Jotunheim last night!

I tried to add it in, but the message appears to be too big if I do and I didn't want to screw stuff up, so if someone else wants to, here is the info: Ravenwolf/ Dia-Lord of Jotunheim /Cream White /Elf head / Ex Body Type LA Jan 26 PIF Apr 5 Apr 19

 

So excited that Dias have started to ship! I have one more part to pay on my layaway, wonder if I could manage to do it early!

 

Thank you @SteamWitch !!!! Yes @Chibi Kitsune I'm excited too! I thought I'd have to wait longer, but got some sales that went through ^_^

 

Hoping that means mine will be shipping soon as well

 

Congratulations! I stopped in the room to see if any have shipped so that's good news! I have one more payment on my Lord Dia but I got his clothes and wig today (I decided at the last minute to get the clothes and I never went back to combine orders ). Anyway, the clothes are even more beautiful in person. I can't wait until my Dia comes home. Maybe he'll be ready to ship when I make my final payment in 2 weeks.

 

My Dia arrived yesterday!!! He's blank so no amazing pics yet til he gets his face-up XD plus it was really cloudy yesterday but I will be sure to share when I can! Hope everyone else gets theirs soon!

 

Congrats, I hope ours comes soon after we finish our last payment in May.

 

Congratulations @Ravenwolf! That's so exciting! I'm glad the Lord Dia's are starting to ship

 

Congrats Ravenwolf!! Any box opening pics to tide us over?

 

Hi guys, I need some advice on my Soom order.

Here's the story - I've been waiting on a violet Kivi (Sweet Witch) for 7 months now (paid in full since September last year!). The shipping date has been pushed back every month since January with pretty poor communication from the message boards, and Soom has only given me information on what's going on with significant prodding.

I've finally caved in and asked for a refund under their delivery time guarantee thing (which I think I'm entitled to, if I'm reading it right), even though it breaks my heart to do so. They haven't gotten back to me yet.

The thing is, the last two dolls I've ordered from Soom have been delayed 2-4 months. Is this just commonplace with Soom now? And has anybody had any experience with getting a refund from Soom when the Paypal claim date has passed? I've been fairly inactive in this thread, sorry if obvious questions are obvious.

 

Shien that sucks! They shouldn't keep rolling out new dolls if they're that overdue on past orders, it's not as though they even have regular unlimited orders anymore. It all seems to be well laid out on that page, they don't have any place to refuse you a refund I'd think.

 

@Shien You may not like this, but I believe they issue refunds in store points or not in the full amount. On the other hand, I found Service > Customer Guide talking about their cancellations. I really wish Victoria were still there, she was the bomb and did an excellent job of keeping everyone informed.

My advice would be to continue to wait it out. It sucks, and I agree that 7 months after paying in full is ridiculous. On the other hand, they would rather send you a product without problems, and that skintone may be giving them problems to produce right now.

 

I hadn't posted about ordering on the list but I also got my shipping notice for my Dia today! I'm pretty excited, I hope everyone gets theirs soon

 

rave-andou, wow! So fast! I hope you will sho to us your box opening

 

Yeah I only finished his layaway on the 18th so its a great surprise. I'll try and do a box opening!

 

Oh congratulations
@rave-andou !!! That's really fast delivery after layaway! My layaway is paid off next week so hopefully lord dia will be on his way after!

 

How exciting that the Dia is shipping! I haven't gotten my notification yet - I hope mine ships soon!

 

Layaway paid early!

 

Zephry came home today. This is not his final look just something for him to wear until I figure out exactly what his look will be.

 

@Evenstar1 he is beautiful! This is the first owner pic I've seen and he does not disappoint!!!!! Can't wait to get mine. Congratulations and thanks for sharing his picture!

 

Looking forward to my Dia even more now! He is gorgeous.

 

He looks so beautiful I want my dia to come home oh and hello I ordered my soom dia normal skin with face up I ordered him January 29 finished paying him off February 28 and he hasn't shipped yet boo

 

Ahhhhh I was just thinking "Hey it's already Monday in Korea, maybe my Dia will ship (haha not likely)" and like an hour later I get a shipping notice!

 

your so lucky! I found out Saturday after checking my order I put the address in the wrong spot and forgot to put my state in so I changed it on my account and message them about my puting my address wrong hopefully they will get back to me and hopfully he will be shipped out this week! But congrats on getting your shipping notice!!!

 

@Chibi Kitsune Congratulations! Hoping to see my shipping notice too this week.

 

This will probably be my shortest ever time in a waiting room as the seller shipped my boy the day after I paid for him. I can't wait

 

yay! they shipped mine too *O*

 

Sorry for the impending wall of text!

An update regarding my order (initial post with the story here): after a bit of hemming and hawing, Soom did refund me the full amount via Paypal - so it turns out that according to their own delivery time guarantee, you're entitled to a full refund 100 days (counting weekends) from the date you pay in full. In money, not points. I'm posting this in case anybody has to go through something similar.

I got the refund a whopping 228 days after I placed the order. The story (as much of it as I managed to get from Soom) was that the violet skin tone was difficult to produce, and they had tried to cast the doll 3 times but it didn't meet quality control, so they had to keep trying. That's fine, and I'm normally more than patient to hold out (as should be evident), but I'm also of the opinion that they shouldn't be selling a product they can't reliably produce in the first place.

Soom only told me this was going on about 6 months after I paid the order - before that they would just keep telling me there were "small problems with the doll" and giving me a shipping date that didn't happen. I only got information after I eventually got fed up and told them I'd have to start a Paypal claim if they didn't make it clear exactly what was going on. I basically held out hope for another month after that, then gave up.

The other option they gave me was receiving the doll (whenever they finally managed to produce her) and also have 25% in points (the maximum they can compensate) added. I chose the refund, mostly because - aside from my extreme reservations about ordering from Soom now - it's been so long that my plans for the doll had completely changed, and I doubt I could've bonded with her considering what I've had to put up with to get her.

I did lose about the equivalent of $70ish USD due to currency exchange. This isn't something that's really Soom's fault (and kind of unavoidable given that Paypal takes a chunk more than normal exchange rates), but in conjunction with the 7 month wait plus two weeks waiting for a refund, this is probably one of the worst deals I've had to go through in this hobby.

In terms of take-home messages:

1) This the fourth time I've ordered from Soom. I'm not saying I would never order from them again, but I'd be especially wary of something like this happening if you have an order with a special darker skin colour, particularly around Christmas or events where Soom has to deal with a large volume of orders. (Remember their primary market isn't English-speaking, and even though they're a large BJD company, that still makes them a comparatively small company compared to a lot of other hobbies. Also since they shifted the factory to China, it seems like every doll produced has to get sent to Soom Korea to be accepted or rejected via central quality control. This cycle takes about a month each time.)

2) Also, Soom won't keep you in the loop with your order even if you ask them to or they tell you they will - you have to keep using Q&A. Their customer service usually gets back to you within 2 business days, but they won't answer your questions with regards to what exactly is going on without very heavy prodding (as in, unless you threaten to cancel your order/start a Paypal claim).

3) As aforementioned - if they take more than 100 days, you're entitled to a refund. This is pretty much at Soom's discretion. They will start compensating you in points up to 25% the cost of the doll after the 100 days. You can keep holding out hope for getting the doll, and I don't doubt you will get it eventually. But I would take their shipping dates with several handfuls of salt.

4) It could have been worse; at least I wasn't running a group order this time. Imagine how much more fun this would have been, had I been responsible for multiple other people's orders and money without the option of dropping out! (Now stop imagining, and drink. Heavily. )



That's it! I hope this helps someone. Good luck with all your future waiting! I'll post something about this in Soom's feedback thread, even though that thing is pretty much dead haha.

 

My Dia came home today (By home I mean work) So will try and get some photos up of him tonight ^_^

@Shien Sorry to hear about all of that, they really should have been updating you with the situation so I'm glad you did get a resolution in the end!

 

@Shien Thank you for updating-- this is great information to have! Now that I think about it, the orders I've had from them that took the longest were for dolls with "special" fantasy colors. I think my Isaac came in about 6 months after I had paid him off or something like that. It was very strange and frustrating, because it seemed like everyone else had gotten theirs, and he was only released in snow blue.
Do you know of anyone else that ordered Kivi in the violet skintone? It looks like a NS version was received in November. At this point, it's just ridiculous that they could not be up front with you about it. You should have been given an option of waiting or a refund after a certain time has passed.

 

@Shien thanks for sharing your update. This is very helpful. Hearing about a problem right away is so much better than putting you off for months and you hear about it for the first time after you're already angry. I'm glad you have resolution but it really is too bad you don't get your doll.

 

@rave-andou Haha, thanks, I'm glad to get to close the door on this, if nothing else. And congrats on your Dia!

@Leadora Yeah, this is the first time I've ordered anything but WS from Soom, and I'm not impressed. I think the frustration is that we're used to long waits in this hobby, and long waits for Soom in particular, because we know these dolls are handmade/hand-cast/artisan/etc. But everybody and their uncle is offering fantasy skintones nowadays and Soom's been doing this for years longer than most; they should all know to account for longer production from the start.

I can find two other people on flickr that ordered her in violet - both of them got their Kivi in January, and one of them ordered an extra body as well. So I'm really not sure why mine was the only one they had trouble with. (WITCHCRAFT.)

@ashcat-desu Oh, definitely! Having to chase after status updates myself was frustrating. I'm still thinking about sending some constructive feedback to Soom about how they should deal with this if it ever happens again, because that'll probably do more good in the long run than stewing about it.

Ideally it would have been nice to have gotten an email at the 100 day mark saying, "hey, we're sorry your doll is delayed because of [insert reasons here], we're going to start refunding you points now, your shipping date is estimated to be ____", then another at the 125 day mark saying "we've reached the limit of what we're willing to refund with points, do you want to keep waiting for the doll or take a money refund?" ...buuuut if they then kept stringing me along for another 3-4 months after that, I probably would have reacted the same way regardless of how good their customer service was. So.

(And obviously they'd lose money on that if they did it for everyone, but maybe it would be an incentive to not delay a doll for four months after what your OWN POLICY deems acceptable.)

 

I think feedback to Soom is a great idea. The way you worded in your post is perfect and maybe hearing it from the customer's side would help. I hope. Lol- well maybe they'll at least clarify their guarantee a little better. Until I read your post I still wasn't sure after I read it if they gave refunds or points for late dolls.

 

So disappointed my Dias didn't arrive for the weekend, it's perfect faceup weather! Back to endlessly refreshing the tracking I guess...

 

@Shien Gosh, sorry to hear about your situation! I guess I better be wary of abnormally long wait times when buying fantasy-coloured soom sculpts...

My ID72 Hyperion xmas kit just got shipped today! (Finally paid finished the layaway heh) Looking forward to modding and face-upping him :>

 

Congrats everyone on getting your orders!! I think I'll email Soom tonight... I seem to have been skipped over.

 

I feel the same @ashcat-desu it seems everyone is getting there Dias shipped but me I emailed them about a week or so ago they told me he would be shipped out before June 3 but let me know what they tell you

 

I definitely will @miku72 ... I didn't realize they hadn't finished January orders! I was just looking around at February stuff. I was kind of hoping that it went out without a shipping notice but they'll probably tell me the 3rd or later too.

 

Thanks and yea lol I was thinking the same thing maybe they didn't tell me they shipped him but no on my order status it still says preparing and I don't know what order system soom has with shipping dolls since people who order after me and finished paying after me still got their dolls first @ashcat-desu I just want my doll to come home already the wait is killing me

 

I just payed off my Honey Heart Elf today. Would someone mind updating for me. It's hard for me on my phone. Thanks for your help.

 

I got my Dia today and he is stunning! I love the new white resin and his vamp head and hands are amazing. I put up a box opening thread here for those that are interested. Here is a pic of what to expect anyway