Warning: Beware of Scammers offering Volks FCS services.

Hi everyone,

After discussions with many people, including with Volks staff members, and after several bad situations that have occured both on and off Den of Angels that I have been privvy to, I feel it is necessary to put this warning up for those of you considering ordering FCS through shopping services in the future.

Please, choose your FCS service with the utmost of care, and please make sure that you keep in close contact with them and are certain that they have indeed placed your order and are following through.

Due to the timespan involved with ordering a FCS and having it be completed, there is a lot of leeway for scammers to take advantage of people who want FCS. Often people are so eager to order their dream doll that they don't investigate their FCS service thoroughly. Scammers are also very good at coming up with legitimate sounding excuses to string customers along so that it is far too late to do anything about receiving recompense by the time a customer realises that they have been taken advantage of.

Choosing a FCS Ordering Service

There are several services that offer FCS on DoA. While we act on any reports that come to us about scammers, and scamming customers is grounds for banning on DoA, we can only be aware of incidents that are actually brought to our attention; thusly, even if your service is on DoA, be sure to research them first. Check with past customers of your FCS service, and make sure that you hear good stories, and then you can order with confidence.

If your FCS service is not on DoA, please be sure to ask around to be certain that you hear good stories from prior customers before ordering. Even though the service is not offered on DoA, do not hesitate to ask for references here, as you will be more than likely to be able to find prior customers of theirs on the forum.

There are also some Japanese shopping services that offer FCS via Y!JA. If you take up an order with these shopping services, either directly or via friends, please take as many precautions as possible; check their prior feedback on Y!JA, and ask them to provide things such as photographic proof of their identity. (There are some Y!JA FCS services who offer this in their auctions already.) Volks have noted that they have Japanese customers who have been scammed via Y!JA FCS services, and we have heard from DoA members who have also been scammed, so please, take precautions.

Proof of Your Order

One thing that I must highly recommend when placing a FCS order via a shopping service is asking your service to take a photo of your completed FCS order form and send it to you once your order has been placed. Any FCS order placed results in a unique order form that is kept until the FCS is ready, and as such, if your service cannot provide you with a photo of it, then you have good grounds to be suspicious.
Ask them for a photo that is of a high resolution, so that you can clearly see the correct details of the FCS choices you have made, such as headmold, wig, eyes, etc. You should also look for your unique FCS order number, in the upper left hand corner of the form. I recommend that you ask for a photo, and not a scan, because scanned order forms are much easier to 'doctor' or 'fake' than photographed ones.

I have included some photos of sample forms here so you can see what your form should look like. Please note that these are the Japanese forms; I do not have access to LA forms, but they should look very similar. Even though the form is written in Japanese, you can still see the numbers and letters that correspond to the parts you ordered, as well as some basic English to see what is what. I have written in red text on the pictures some important things you will want to note.

http://www.crysania.com/cassiel/fcs-msdform.jpg
http://www.crysania.com/cassiel/fcs-sd10form.jpg
http://www.crysania.com/cassiel/fcs-sd13girlform.jpg
http://www.crysania.com/cassiel/fcs-sd13boyform.jpg

Things to note:

• The form is a carbon copy of the original Volks keeps, so can sometimes be hard to read. The details of your order will be written in by the Volks staff member with pen; they are not printed on.
• The SD10 form has a picture of a girl on it whether you order a girl or a boy. (Note: we have heard of SD10 forms with boy pictures, but it's usually a girl, so basically, don't fret if you order a boy but get a girl picture.)
• The Sato order form is different to the others in that it does not need a "location" section in the upper left. To compare, the MSD form above is a Sato form; the other three are Sumika forms.
• Japan uses a different numbering system for years, so the dates may look strange to you. It will be written in the format "year/month/day" but the year is based on the reigning emperor, not the Western calendar. For the record, "2006" equals year "18".
• Tenshi no Sato order forms often do not have the order number written in the upper left hand corner. Although Sumika order forms always do, Tenshi no Sato takes so many orders in a given day by multiple staff, and are so busy taking orders that they usually do not have time to find out what your order number is to write on your form.

Waiting for Your FCS

Even if you have your photo in hand of your order form, please keep in touch with your ordering service and keep up to date of your order arriving to be sure that things are going well. Volks will have given them an approximate arrival date for the FCS when the order was placed, and Volks will stick to this arrival date no matter what.

If your ordering services gives you any kind of excuse about delays to your FCS order, please be on the alert and press them for details. It has come to our attention that many FCS shopping services will give excuses about delays and cite reasons such as:

• Volks taking time to prepare for Dolpa
• Volks taking time to prepare for After Events
• Public holidays delaying production
• Order being delayed due to difficulties perfecting the faceup
• Order taking longer due to sanding and coating
• Order taking longer due to being a Sato order

Or any number of similar excuses. The fact is, this gives them more time to run off with your money.

If your FCS shopping service gives you any of these excuses, it is highly likely that they are lying to you. Volks do not delay FCS orders for any of these reasons. In Japan, FCS takes roughly one month from the date ordered. In LA, it takes roughly two months. Although I am unaware of the LA system, I can assure you that Volks does NOT delay FCS in Japan for any reason. I have placed many FCS orders during excessively busy periods, including Dolpa times, After Event times, the time leading up to the opening of the LA store, times of special Sato events with LE Tenshi SD being prepared, and even over the New Year public holiday period. None of these busy periods have had any effect on the arrival date of the FCS that I have ordered -- every FCS has arrived almost exactly one month after it was ordered. Volks do not delay FCS orders.
Also, despite what your shopping service may tell you, sanding and coating does not make your order take longer -- it will still take one month. Also, Sato FCS does not take longer than regular Sumika FCS. Sato FCS orders take one month, just like Sumika FCS, and your shopping service is lying if they tell you otherwise. If the Sato FCS is being delivered to your shopping service's home (as is usually standard, since it is difficult to go to Kyoto) it will take one day longer, but that's it.

Update: Please note that recently (July 2006 or earlier) Volks have stated that all FCS ordered within Japan will now take 50 days to complete, instead of 30 days (1 month). This information comes from a reliable source within Japan.

Tenshi No Sato

Also, be aware that Tenshi no Sato FCS orders should be treated with additional care. Tenshi no Sato is located in Kyoto, which is difficult and expensive to get to for many people. In addition, it is only open on weekends and occasional holidays. As a result, Sato orders often involve shopping services relying on a third party, which can make the issue even more dicey. Please make certain to check the references of your Sato service in advance, and when you receive proof of your order, check to make sure that the date of the order coincides with a date that Tenshi no Sato was indeed open.


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Other FCS Scams

There is also a different type of FCS scam that buyers need to be wary of, one that does not simply involve a seller running off with a buyers money. This type of scam is where a seller states that they are placing a FCS order for a buyer, but then buys parts cheaply on the 2nd hand market, puts the doll together themselves, and presents it as a FCS doll.

These scammers often buy old resin dolls and present them as pure skin dolls, insert very cheap glass eyes in the doll's head and present then as expensive Zoukeimura eyes, and/or subsitute the wigs with cheaper versions. As such, this scam cheats the buyer out of a lot more than just the brand new pureskin doll and special Volks faceup that they are expecting.

"Full Choice System" is a name trademarked by Volks referring specifically to dolls ordered directly at their Sumika or Sato locations and prepared exactly to their customers specifications. A doll assembled by a seller from 2nd hand parts is not a FCS doll, and anyone offering you one as such is acting in a very dishonest and questionable fashion.

Telling features of this sort of scam involve the seller trying to talk you into things - them doing their own custom face-up because your requests are "hard to translate", or trying to talk you into body parts, eye colours or wig styles that you might not originally have wanted. (Because some parts are easier to buy second hand than others.) They will also sometimes accept your order as is, but then when your doll 'arrives', tell you that Volks "made a mistake" with your order and gave you the wrong wig, or the wrong eyes. (When in fact Volks do not make these sort of mistakes.)

The best defense against this sort of scam is to be informed; be aware of the tell-tale differences between old resin and pureskin bodies, learn and understand how the FCS system works, ask detailed questions before placing any order, be sure to get proof of your order, and always ask for good, clear photos of your doll and their FCS box and extras before allowing your FCS shopping service to send you your doll.


Final Note

I really don't want to scare people about ordering FCS, as there are many legitimate FCS ordering services, and I believe that ordering a FCS is a wonderfully fulfilling thing to do and that your resultant FCS doll will be very special and worth all the effort involved. However, due to the large amount of money involved, and the long timeframe that allows scammers to take advantage of customers, I urge you to think carefully before you choose your shopping service, and be sure that you research their past history of FCS ordering with the utmost of care before you make your final decision. Ordering your dream doll is a very special event, and it is most definitely something that you do not want to go wrong!

Thank you for your attention, and good luck with your FCS ordering! ^o^

 

I cannot speak for the LA store but I can say that I placed something in the range of 15 or more FCS orders in my last 5 month sojourn in Japan (the most recent as late as February 19th) and Volks did not have a problem with me placing orders for other people. They knew at all times that the orders were for other people -- I was quite upfront about that, and was allowed to write the names of the owners on the forms, and often got to discuss what country the SDs were headed to when picking them up. This includes orders at Sato, as I would often go in and place 3 orders at a time for friends, and ask for their names to be used. I know I'm not the only one who places orders with other people's names on the forms at the various Japan stores, and so I think I can say with some fair certainty that they are okay with it in Japan.

However, I placed all my orders entirely in Japanese, and hashed out the makeup details in Japanese. I have never placed any orders in English. (Or Korean, heh!)

While I cannot speak for Volks and cannot be sure of their concerns with the LA store, I can hazard a guess that the extra steps involved with the translations of a faceup request into Japanese may be of primary concern with them, particularly when the faceup descriptions are first coming through a shopping service and then getting translated and then going to the artists in Kyoto, etc. Volks like to get things perfect for the customers. When I discussed FCS with some of the higher level Volks staff last year, one of their primary concerns about international FCS (we were discussing the idea of online FCS, as the LA store was still something of a 'dream' at the time) was the problems involved in interpreting faceup requests that are in another language. It's hard enough for them to get it right when the customer comes in themselves and requests it in English.. I can imagine that the added step of a shopping service makes them very uneasy in that situation.

 

Hi guys,

If you want to discuss which shopping service to order through, or the merits (or drawbacks) of how Volks wishes to run the FCS system offered at the LA store, please start a new thread. I appreciate your concerns which are all valid, but I would really like to keep this thread to the issues involved with FCS scamming and scammers.

Thanks!

 

Please reread what I said. I wasn't refering to your post. If you'll notice, I replied directly to your post with the information that I am aware of.

All I said was, discussion about who is a good service to recommend, and the merits and drawbacks of whether Volks wishes to allow shopping services to do FCS at the LA store or not, is not relevant to the discussion of FCS scammers in and of themselves. If people want to discuss Volks' decision, or want to ask who they should order through, it would be best done in another thread.

Thank you~