My Battle with Iplehouse

Maybe you've noticed I've not been making posts here as regularily as usual, and I seem somewhat distracted. And you'd be right.

I've been reluctant to talk about the issues I'm having with my newest doll - KID Peach - here, as no one really wants to hear any bad news about a company everyone holds in such high esteem. I've always loved Iplehouse dolls and own 13 of them, and was always impressed by everyone's claims that they received such excellent customer service when there was an issue with their doll.

Well, that has not been my experience at all this past week. I ordered a blank real skin Peach and she was given a beautiful faceup by Charie Wilson, who is a professional faceup artist who has done hundreds of faceups, including all the dolls in my own collection. During the faceup process, light areas appeared on Peach's face. Charie removed the faceup and tried again, but the spots remained. Charie assured me that she had done nothing different than usual, and she'd not had issues like this before. She felt there was possibly an issue with the resin itself. I took Peach home and dressed her, and took a few photos. The light areas are not that noticeable in real life, but they really show up in photos.

Well, everyone said "ask for a new head", so I contacted Iplehouse, explaining what had been done to the doll, and wondering if there could be an issue with the resin in that area. They immediately brushed me off, and said the spots on my doll's face are from something on the resin under the sealer that the faceup artist had put there.

That was ridiculous, since Charie totally cleaned the head with Magic Eraser, soap and water before spraying with sealer. Twice.  So I pushed back and said the head didn't have anything stuck under the sealer.

Then they said either I or the faceup artist had gotten hot glue on the head, and that Magic Eraser wouldn't remove that. Well, that was absurd! Neither of us even had a glue gun in the same room as Peach. Her body had already been hot-glued months ago when it was still Soa's body. Plus, Charie has lots of experience with hot glue and has removed it successfully from resin many times in the past and there was never a mark, so even if we had gotten hot glue on the head - which we didn't - it would have been easy enough to remove. It was clear IH wasn't going to back down, and I was feeling lost as to what to do next.

So I posted photos on another doll thread and asked if anyone else had ever seen something like the spots in my doll's resin, and there were several people who had. One person who had experience pouring their own resin said that sometimes what looks like a perfect pour has some small area that doesn't cure properly, and no matter how many times it's cleaned and washed, it refuses to take paint or pastels. Someone else sent me a Private Message to tell me they have seen IH refuse to accept any responsibility for issues like mine - that they always blame the
faceup artist for anything that appears during the process of adding a faceup. There were also two people whose IH dolls developed light areas on their faces while applying the sealer, but being beginners doing their own faceups, they just assumed it was their own inexperience with the sealer.

I'm still trying to get through to Iplehouse. I feel like they are trying to bully me into going away, which makes me very angry. So, sometimes it takes a few days for me to calm down enough to write a non-accusatory note back to them.

As much as I have been hesitant to say anything about my Iplehouse issues here, I feel people should know that even though Iplehouse seems to be very helpful in many situations, they do have a dark side - and comes out when one buys a blank doll and a problem manifests itself during the faceup process. These problems, which we believe are in the resin, would not be visible when the doll was checked by their Quality Control, but would appear later with the application of the sealer.

I have been an excellent customer of theirs and show their dolls off to great affect on my website. I really resent their accusations that I or my faceup artist - who is every bit as professional as the people who paint for them - did this to my doll head, when we KNOW we didn't. I've accidentally messed up one of my doll's faceups before, and two dolls have fallen forward in outdoor photo shoots and sustained damage to their faces, but I would never dream of then going to the doll company and try get a replacement. I am an honest person. If
we had done something to my Peach's face we wouldn't be approaching IH about it.

This whole thing is very upsetting and has really put me off of dolls at the moment - hence my distraction here. I'm going to bring my doll back to Charie since she's offered to try again to add a bit more blush to the lighter areas, and then add light freckles to help distract from the problem. In the meantime I've asked IH if I send the head back to them to remove this imaginary substance they insist is there, will I have to pay for their services, and for shipping
both ways. And if they make the spot worse, will I just be sent back my original head or be sent a new replacement.

Like I've said before, getting this second KID of mine to work out has seemed like a "cursed" endeavor right from the beginning. I can't sell her like this, so am stuck with her. If she wasn't so expensive, I'd just give up. So I'll see if Charie can make the spots less noticeable to a point where I can live with it, and see what Iplehouse says next. I definitely don't want to be spending another hundred dollars for shipping both ways only to risk getting back my same head - blank, possibly worse than before - only to have to get her a new faceup for a third time with no hope of hiding the defect. Sometimes it's better to just give up and live with it. 

So for now I'm just keeping busy with sewing myself some new shirts. All eight have been cut out, and two are finished sewing - they just need pressing and buttons. I better get going if I'm going to make my daily quota of finishing one shirt.