Fellow Steemians and Cosplayers,
If any of you follow me on Instagram or even here on Steemit, you may already know that I’m a HUGE fan of cosplay! To this end, I have high standards for my suits and whatnot. I bought my two current suits from an online site called ProCosplay, based out of Guangzhou (Canton), China. I’ve been really happy with both suits as well as the service, up until last November (2017).
I ordered Wonder Woman armour as a Christmas present for my Sister-in-law. She’s been a huge fan of the Themysciran Princess for as long as I’ve known her, so I thought it would be a nice surprise. However, what should have taken a few weeks, and very little stress, turned into going on 5 months with a shit ton of anxiety.
The delivery company here in Canada, lost the shipment and refused to be of much assistance in tracking down the package. I changed the final delivery address before the package was to be delivered, as my boyfriend and I were going to my family’s place for Christmas Eve.
Said company sent a text message to provide a code to authorize the address change that I made. All was good. That is, until… four days later, the package was showing as delivered – twice! Once on the day I changed the address, to a nearby address on a street we’d never heard of, but that’s not all. After the initial delivery… the package reappeared on the shipment tracker, and showed as delivered, AGAIN, to a second address, four doors down from my parent’s house.
I asked my boyfriend to contact the courier (due to my speech impairment) to find out the heck was going on. The company instructed us to open a claim and provide as much detail as we could. Jay (my boyfriend), provided a slew of supporting documentation.
The claims representative asked for a few days to get GPS information from the delivery trucks, and access the photos that drivers normally take of a shipment if they leave it at the door. It turns out, that BOTH days that the package was delivered (to two addresses, neither of which I provided or authorized), the GPS was turned off on the delivery vehicle, and there were no pictures taken of the delivery and where it was left.
The claims representative said this wasn’t an issue, that they would provide a full refund of the value of the package. I provided receipts from the purchase (almost $500, and a relatively large portion of that for shipping and duties). The representative said they would provide $20. Only $20.
So I was like, FTW?? Long story short; we left it for a couple weeks. Then, the day before yesterday, Jay emailed ProCosplay on my behalf to ask if they had a solution. They responded quite promptly and asked if I would like either a full refund or replacement armour. So my Sister-In-Law is going to get to suit up after all!
I wasn’t ever going to give ProCosplay more business, until now, because this whole situation just really soured things for me. This really sucked because I do love my suits!
However, I’m pleasantly surprised at their response, and I would have to say that I would recommend them to fellow cosplayers, but just be wary of the delivery company, and don’t just write it off as a loss if something happens.
I give full kudos to ProCosplay for stepping up.
‘Til next time!