ANOVOS just canceled my order!

If I was on the receiving end of that little temper tantrum in the chat, or your constant complaints (or "bitching them out" as you so eloquently put it) I would have cancelled your order too...

Despite their many shortcomings, which I am quick to criticize myself, I don't find Anovos a terrible company. Based on your short time here, I find you a terrible customer.

kyaldo said:

since when was it the responsibility of the customer to behave "professionally"?
those working for a company should be trained to do so and would be required to hone their people skills before engaging the public. i am a labourer and lack people skills. therefore i wouldnt expect a company to hire me in a customer interfacing capacity .i do have money to spend though. that qualifies me to be a customer.manners are expected from all parties, professionalism only from the "professional".manners can sometimes dwindle when u are constantly given the "runaround" from someone that has your money. professionalism should never dwindle if you want good customer feedback.

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It's not his responsibility to act professionally, sure. Just don't be surprised when said company refunds his money and basically tells him not to do business with them anymore.

I'll offer an outsider's perspective - while I agree Anovos's could use improvement in their customer service department and work on getting out their backlog of preorders, I've always shared that opinion in a respectful and constructive manner.

You troll them on Facebook and are repeatedly rude to their customer service department, but then get upset that they cancel your order.

As a privately owned company, Anovos is within their rights to refuse service to you based on your behavior.

Just my two cents...

Sean

Egon Spengler said:

It shouldn't take nearly 2 years for a company mass producing a product to get the product out to the customer. Plain and simple.

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Here's the thing....SHOULD it take two years? No. It should not. CAN it take take years? The answer is yes. Go back to icons. LONG wait times. MR, not so much, but i think things slid at the end. EFx....WORSE. Look at some of the big 'sellers' online Laws, RS, etc. They're not companies, they're people with lots of orders and they're backed up a good ways as well. Some in the 2 year vicinity.

All that said, I'd still agree, 2 years is too long to wait. But you also have to figure the factory space and time. You may contract with company X to produce 1000 stormtrooper suits with clauses they make more upon request. When you place that additional order, what do you do when 3 major companies are in front of you to get their stuff produced first? It's easy to say move it to Company Y, but then you're re-tooling and re-approving, etc, etc. Not to mention that once they 're all boxed up for shipping to Anovos, They're put on a BOAT and sailed to Long Beach or wherever then put on a truck to drive to their final destination. I've been told the sailing voyage can take upwards of 2 months.

So, yeah, it's hard to get accurate times from them because they can't get accurate times from their suppliers in most cases.

"When is that Mattel order going to finish?"
"Oh, 2-3 weeks as long as all goes well"
"Then you can start ours?"
"As long as there are no issues prolonging the Mattel order. Oh, and we'll need a couple weeks or so to clear out their stuff and bring and set up your stuff"
"So, you're saying you'll be able to start in sometime between 2-6 weeks from now?"
"We hope so"

With info like that, how do you give anyone a good response? And, they did realize that, which is why they've changed the way they're doing things. I think the only thing that's fallen a bit since then in the FO Premium trooper which they were 'hoping' to get by xmas but I don't believe they were swearing to.

It's unfortunate everyone hasn't gotten their OT trooper stuff yet. They do understand you're frustrated. I guarantee you they're just as frustrated if not more so. Taking sarcastic and unprofessional shots right from the opening statement and throughout the chat is not the way to get your point across and make yourself heard. Anyone who thinks that wasn't unprofessional needs to re-educate themselves on professional conduct.

kyaldo said:

since when was it the responsibility of the customer to behave "professionally"?

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Since always.

You don't walk into the grocery store, go up to a clerk and slam a 20 down and say 'get me a box of Corn Flakes, now!' and expect to get anything but tossed out of the store. Or, go get drunk at a restaurant and act like an a-hole and see if they let you back in the next day. Just because the retailer is on line doesn't give anyone the right to just go off on them.

I totally understand your frustration as well. It sucks. I also appreciate you taking the time to show both sides of the story. Everyone should always look at both sides of the story. As much as possible. In this case, I would have done the same as Anovos.

Mara Jade's Father said:

GotMaul was getting so irritated with my posts of their crappy practices, he tried to bribe me to cancel my order (said he would give me a free droid caller). :lol

It's going on three years now and they have yet to complete mine and everyone else's order of the Solo rig. They still owe us our belt tools. :facepalm

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which is why i have no problem ragging on people constantly if their shady practices cause people to wait three years or more. that's not what most signed up for, especially since it's a brand new company with no track record.

Now, people should know better. I avoided their proton pack kitt because of it. and that, and i know there are better fan made molds out there if i ever wanted to upgrade one day.

sigh. i had such high hopes for anovos. but, it's more playground collectible tactics...with wait times even longer than my year and month of 3P0 waiting.

cboath said:

Since always.

You don't walk into the grocery store, go up to a clerk and slam a 20 down and say 'get me a box of Corn Flakes, now!' and expect to get anything but tossed out of the store. Or, go get drunk at a restaurant and act like an a-hole and see if they let you back in the next day. Just because the retailer is on line doesn't give anyone the right to just go off on them.

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i think that you are perhaps mistaking having good manners and acting professionally. they are two different things that are not mutually exclusive. both of the examples that you site are simple good manners. i would expect (and actively encourage) my nephew to act in such a manner, however i wouldnt think to ever expect a child to behave professionally. to behave in a professional manner is so much more than just being polite and also has major variances when comparing different professions.

As a Star Trek fan, my question is: Is there any other licensed prop replica company, whose Star Trek costumes have a similar or even better quality and screen accuracy than Anovos's costumes?

I feel that a lot of people in this hobby make excuses of why long wait times are acceptable with a production company because they really really want "X" item.

Having personally worked with tooling, production times and testing, etc for companies it shouldn't take anywhere near this long to make say a helmet. If my team is able to get a toaster out to market in less than a year with all the UL safety requirements, refining tooling specs, building PC cards, etc. and Anovos can't do that with a Star Wars toy something is really wrong there and all the communication just reads as stringing people along no matter how good it is.

Concerning the OP's rant at Anovos; it's easy to judge and criticize him when your money isn't on the line as most people get upset when companies screw with your money.

Aovos is going to go down hill they are biting off waaaaaaaay more than they can chew they think they are at the top of the food chain and take absolitely any order from any poor soul who comes there way and treat it as highest payer= fist served(even if someones been waiting a year)as a result they are going to end up with a TON of stories like this and they wont be able to support them selves and it seems like they are taking pre orders and using them as investments to expand and make more outfits and props but then they get orders for those and end up unable to honor all the preorders in a timely fashion and it will just go on till it all blows up in there face.... the quality is inferior when compared to the things you can get on here for a fraction of the price as well, i wouldnt place anovos to high above rubies in terms of quality especially when you factor in the customer service and the waiting and the fact you just might not ever get your item from them, only way id buy an anovos piece today is if it was on ebay or in the junkyard for less than from anovos themselves, the "liscence" to sell sw propsis not the liscence to make it as inconvinient, expensive and as exclusive as immaginably possible

Call it being professional, call it being polite, call it having some manners, or call it being decent. Whatever.

I can say definitively that in my many dealings with Customer Service people (as things do occasionally go wrong), I've ended up with a satisfactory resolution in nearly all instances where I kept a cool head and approached them with the mindset of "I'm having this problem, let's figure out how to solve it together." The one or two times where I let my frustrations get the better of me, I found the resolution to be lacking.

Most CS folks will be totally willing to bend over backwards, jump through hoops and work with you to figure out how to solve your issue, provided you don't immediately come at them with "I hate this, your company sucks, you must be incompetent" right off the bat. Can't tell you how many free upgrades, free stuff, and serious discounts I've gotten by staying calm instead.

Jagjaguwar said:

Unfortunately, I'm unaware of any licensed prop replica companies that are more timely in delivering their products than Anovos. And most of the fan-made sellers I've dealt with have also either had poor communication, long wait times, or both.

That doesn't make it ok, it makes it frustration everywhere you turn. It's one of the biggest reasons (aside from space, to a lesser degree) why I feel like I'm almost done with acquiring new stuff.

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yep.

that, and out of space.

I'm thinking of getting a refund for my kitt electronics order. I ordered a set from lectric enterprises and we are going on year three of wait this year. For $1400 that's an expensive wait.

If I can't get a refund through the guy, I'll see what paypal or the CC company can do, but it's probably too long a wait.

Jagjaguwar said:

Call it being professional, call it being polite, call it having some manners, or call it being decent. Whatever.

I can say definitively that in my many dealings with Customer Service people (as things do occasionally go wrong), I've ended up with a satisfactory resolution in nearly all instances where I kept a cool head and approached them with the mindset of "I'm having this problem, let's figure out how to solve it together." The one or two times where I let my frustrations get the better of me, I found the resolution to be lacking.

Most CS folks will be totally willing to bend over backwards, jump through hoops and work with you to figure out how to solve your issue, provided you don't immediately come at them with "I hate this, your company sucks, you must be incompetent" right off the bat. Can't tell you how many free upgrades, free stuff, and serious discounts I've gotten by staying calm instead.

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Having worked customer service for years. This.

You catch more flies with honey.

Yeah you showed them all right and they showed you....the door.

I totally get you were incensed, and rightly so, but from what I read of your little diatribe, it comes as no surprise they refunded your money.

Hopefully this will be a lesson to you on how NOT to address a problem you have with a Company.

Utter nonsense. :rolleyes

Their Star Trek third season TOS Tunics for a Licensed offering in the correct fabric as well as color was the same as what was being charged by the two who were doing them before and they were NOT lincensed

Froflo said:

. the quality is inferior when compared to the things you can get on here for a fraction of the price as well,

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Froflo said:

i wouldnt place anovos to high above rubies in terms of quality especially when you factor in the customer service and the waiting

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HAHA that's literally the funniest thing I've read on the internet this week. To compare quality of Rubies to Anovos is an absolute joke.

You can certainly tell he is a neophyte with that remark! :lol

rnbuda said:

HAHA that's literally the funniest thing I've read on the internet this week. To compare quality of Rubies to Anovos is an absolute joke.

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I'm sorry but a company should have the items they are selling available and at the very least it should be a few months, not a year or two years for items that they make available, to arrive. There's no excuse for it. Stop taking orders and fill in the orders you have already, from people who already gave you their cash. First come, first served. 1 year is bad enough, 2 years is ridiculous. In the past on the RPF I've seen people go after independent sellers that have done the same thing. Taking too many orders, not fulfilling them, then making other items and selling those while everyone was still out of luck. Why the double standard when it's an company?

rnbuda said:

HAHA that's literally the funniest thing I've read on the internet this week. To compare quality of Rubies to Anovos is an absolute joke.

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Well im not dumb, i of course understand rubies is garbage, my point is that anovos is also garbage and does not recieve much more respect from me than rubies does

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Apollo said:

Utter nonsense. :rolleyes

Their Star Trek third season TOS Tunics for a Licensed offering in the correct fabric as well as color was the same as what was being charged by the two who were doing them before and they were NOT lincensed

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Well im clearly talking about star wars right now, if they do a good job with star trek things right on they should stick to that