Disappointments with Volks

I've had a few dissapointemnts with some of my limited girls.

 

Sakura Matou's wig was badly done imo as I could never get the tied portion of it to lie flat. It would always stick out regardless of what I tried. I eventually got sick of it and cut it out completely and I've been fine with it since.

 

Rin's default stockings are extemely tight on her. So much so that I split the seem on one eventhough I was being careful. Was able to fix it with my novice sewing skills.

 

One of my Kud's stockings also split at the seem for no reason at all. It's fixable but still annoying.

 

My Sakuya Maxima has one side of a fastner on her default outfit unstitched. Thanfully it was just the one side so it's easily fixable.

 

I had parts of the paint on the grip of Saber Lily's sword come off and stain her white gloves. While I was able to remove the stain from her gloves, the sword has small spots of missing paint on it.

 

Most of the above are really minor issues but still annoying after you pay a lot for these girls. Over all though, I have been most pleased with what I have gotten from Volks.

For example, Cirno's blue dress... I don't see how in blue blazes they were able to mass produce that when there are so many mini ruffles on all those pleats... mean while I can't even sew a pair of socks right! XD

 

run the trim thru the ruffle-foot on the sewing machine. The machine does the hard work for you!

 

Personally, I was pissed on the fancy beads falling off ice-fairy's dress! Those tiny beads were too damn small for my normal sewing needle to fit thru the holes, so now one side of the dress is lacking beads... (which are safely stowed away somewhere for hopeful future reattachments)

The quality of some outfits is what gets me. That and the fact that they're priced so high!!!!! I love the November Collection outfits that were just released here in the US, but there's absolutely no way I'm paying $80+ for a dang doll outfit. Don't forget the $50+ shoes.

 

Maybe if these outfit sets came with more pieces and a pair of shoes they'd be worth the price, but no. It's no wonder there are extra outfits left over from this past collection.

Is it just me or the price of Volks new release outfits are getting higher and higher?

I never buy Volks shoes, the price is just ridiculous, and when it comes to quality Leekeworld or Luts shoes are way better made for half the price!

Is it just me or the price of Volks new release outfits are getting higher and higher?

I never buy Volks shoes, the price is just ridiculous, and when it comes to quality Leekeworld or Luts shoes are way better made for half the price!

 

Volks USA changed their pricing system a few months ago, and everything got more expensive through them. Their yen prices don't seem to have altered at all, but there's a massive price gap now thanks to the yen's sudden depreciation lately. It's probably cheaper to by from Volks International now, weird though that is.

 

It's been a while since I bought anything made by Volks (not since the September 2011 stuff hit the USA store), so anything regarding spotty quality control for me is just anecdotal rather than experience. ^^;

 

However, I will say, I wish they'd do some preorders for outfits once in a while, without them being tied to a license. Volks has some really nice designs, and I do realize that with higher production numbers the harder quality control gets, but some of their outfit production numbers are *ridiculously* low. I can't be the only one who wishes that we didn't have to resort to a click war on every freakin' non-lottery outfit.

I think part of the price increase is related to salary increase. I know many of the la personnel collection are supposed to be hand sewn, that adds in a lot to the price.

 

I guess I've just been lucky overall with my interactions with volks and less with some other companies. For example, I've had to fix manufacturing errors on leeke shoes and most of the luts shoes I have fall off.

Sometimes i mourn Volks complicated buying system, like the lotteries. A bit difficult to access.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Guest

I'm gonna throw this up here b/c while cleaning out my Flickr photos it made me think of one big recent disappointment with Volks.

 

Was anyone else *Very* disappointed with their prepainted DDH-05 head? She's a pretty mold don't get me wrong... but the paintjob they did on the sample photos looked *NOTHING* like the actual item... and I fell in love with the photos they had up of her and had a tinge of buyers remorse when I saw the girl didn't look the way I expected.

 

I wouldn't have minded it so much if they hadn't chosen coral pink and hot pink for the lips. From all the photos it looked like she was going to have very very soft lips. Even the two other photos from the ameblo blog - they showed her with a more realistic/natural lip color

 

I was able to find someone that loved her as she was (thankfully, b/c i'd hate to have her sitting in a box never being loved or spending 130+ on a head just to wipe and put a new face on), but I dunno.. that really rubbed me the wrong way and it doesn't really make me too confident in buying a prepainted head from them in the future...

^ Unfortunately, I think it's largely the fact that Volks takes terrible pictures. The colors of everything are always a little bit different in reality than how they are on the doll. Or maybe you can't tell some certain aspect about something in the pics. As an example, before the Alice Maid outfit came out (the one that's considered a standard outfit), I was really excited about it. But once I got it in person, I hated it. The fabric for that dress is kinda shiny, and IMO makes the dress look kinda cheap. You can't see that it's shiny in the Volks pictures. You can only see it in person.

well... I can see that to some extent but the faceup they did on the advertised model... that's straight up airbrushed lips.. the ones that came with the 05 head were just stencil spray painted with solid lines all around. They lightly airbrush the cheeks, why couldn't they do that with the lips like they did on the original photos?

 

I mean i understand they're going to make whatever product they put out look like its the most beautiful thing on the planet b/c it's just good advertising, but with the 05 head they must have made some design change after the fact b/c it just didn't look at all like their original advert photos..

 

now the 07 on the other hand. looks just like it was advertised, and I was pleased as punch with that one : )

Terrible quality of inner frame and customer service.

I hate how most of the DDs are limited... and I hate even more how they seem to double (or even triple) their initial selling price on the secondhand market. I am having so many regrets after buying my Beato... I've never spent that much on a doll before. And the worst thing is since I had to pay shipping and Paypal fees to piece her together (body from Y!JA, head seller charged PP fees, etc.) her price got even more inflated in my hands and I don't feel right marking her up even further to resell her. *sigh* So I either lose money in selling her or feel bad for keeping her.

 

I guess that I'll just have to enter the lotteries for the dolls I like when they come out, even if I don't have the money to buy them at the time, because if I don't I'll probably be paying double the price later. :/

I'm STILL waiting for a reply from them about a message I sent on the 1st of February and again on the 7th. It was an issue I had with an order and now that it's well over two weeks I'm worried they won't bother getting back to me at all even though I sent the first mail right after it arrived. >_<

 

I also agree about the terrible quality of the inner frames, figmas seem less likely to crack than a DD.

have you tried calling them and ask?

Well they don't have a phone number listed in their 'contact us' page, also even if you forget about the 9 hour time difference calls cost quite a bit to Japan from Ireland and I'm not sure they'd have a fluent English speaker on hand anyway.

 

They really don't care about after sale customer service, they answered very promptly when I asked if Cirno was going to be in the international lottery.

number: +81 0753251171 . they do has english speaking people there. and after i yelled at them they were very helpful