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Showing results for tags 'kocha gobiton'.
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Summary: I commissioned Kocha for a fursuit. This took over a year longer than the promised build time after they became increasingly hard to contact, once the suit was finished, they just didn't send it out for several months with no explanation, then, when it finally arrived, it arrived with broken and unfinished parts, parts that weren't what we agreed on and were flimsy and difficult to wear, and some parts that were just outright missing. On trying to talk to them about this, they ignored my comments about the many negative parts, refused to speak to me again for months, told someone else to tell me to e-mail my issues to Kocha, then responded to that e-mail by blocking me. I originally reached out to Kocha on March 2nd 2023 to ask about making a full fursuit of my spider sona. They were initially very excited to do this and opened a spot for me so that we could do that. After some discussion about designs, the invoice and agreement were sent on May 2nd 2023 and I signed/paid them on May 3rd 2023. Start date was May 1st 2023, with an estimated completion time of 3-6 months Through this time, they were very nice to me and very easy to talk to and work with. This continued for a few months with regular updates about materials arriving, build milestones, etc. On September 28th 2023, Kocha told me that they would be sharing photos of the body suit soon. This was the last time that I heard from them for two months, and, from this point on, contacting them became increasingly difficult. After trying to ask for updates during that time, they eventually replied on November 20th, apologising for being so busy, offering to cover a portion of shipping costs and add some extra props, and a new completion date of November 31st to December 7th, which was fair enough. We then spent some time picking a pattern for a bandana as one of the extra props. This is the only one ended up being included in the finished product, and the others were never mentioned again. After this, another 1.5 months passed with no contact, and the new completion date was missed. They then contacted me on January 26th 2024 to say that they were dealing with a lot of personal issues at the time. I didn't want to add extra stress to them during that, so I decided to be lenient and lay off while giving them some extra time to get things in order. After a few months of waiting, I decided to reach out again to ask how things were going. I didn't hear from them again until three months later on April 20th 2024, to apologise for being so absent and promising to give a full update with photos on April 28th. This date was missed again. They did promise to completely comp shipping costs, though, which is a gesture that I really appreciated. A few days later, they messaged me again, admitting that they had just left my suit in a corner because they hadn't been able to get one of the promised parts right and apologising for hiding that from me. I agreed for them to try it with a different material because I wasn't too picky about it, but was upset that it was stalled for so long because of something simple that they just didn't tell me. I finally received a photo of the mostly finished body suit on May 3rd 2024 (now six months after the original completion date), and explaining what was left and that they'd get it finished up over that weekend. Another ten days passed with no contact, at which point they replied to say that they'd need another week to finish it. I heard from them again two weeks later (May 27th 2024), at which point it was still not finished but they sent me a video of the head and body suit being worn and that they'd get more photos "tomorrow". I will say that the suit looked amazing, at this point, and I was very happy with how it looked in the video. They then messaged me again on May 30th to say that the photos had to be pushed back "a couple days". I then didn't hear from them again for over a month. After I sent a few more messages asking if I could please have an update, they sent me a photo of the suit in a box on July 3rd and saying that it would be "shipping this week". We then had some brief conversations about the photos and updates over the next few days, until they stopped responding again on July 9th. Kocha finally responded again on July 21st - the suit had still not been sent out, but they sent a couple of photos of it, and asking for confirmation of my shipping details to get the label finally printed off. I then didn't hear from them again for another couple of weeks. Another quick message on August 4th after I asked for an update, explaining why and that I would receive the tracking information by Tuesday (August 6th) (they also asked if I'm a Pokémon fan, and to this day I still don't know why because it was never mentioned again). Tuesday passed with no tracking information and I sent some more messages asking for an update over the following weeks. Finally, they messaged me on August 22nd, apologising and finally giving me the tracking information. As it was finally sent out, I considered this probably finally over. We had some discussions over the next week about suit maintenence so that I could prepare, and some other general conversations. The delivery was separated into two. boxes. The first finally arrived on September 3rd. The head was (and still is) very good and I'm very happy with it. The hands seemed strange but I didn't know what to think of it because the rest of the suit hadn't arrived. Some extras were included in this box, including the bandana and some keychains and stickers and a very nice card apologising for how long this took. None of the other promised props such as the eyelids were in it, though. The other box containing the suit arrived on October 3rd 2024. I was extremely excited, took some photos with it, and sent some messages about how much I loved it. I was too excited to really think about any negative details at the time, although I asked some questions about some of the things that I noticed at the time. These questions went completely ignored when Kocha responded the following week. I came back to the suit the next day to realise that one of the wires holding the arms together was snapped - it hadn't even lasted for a single day. They responded on October 8th to say that it's fixable if I have a sewing needle, and I replied asking if they could explain how to do that. This is the last time that I ever heard from them. I asked a few times over the following months if they could respond, particularly as our signed agreement said that they would help with repairs and costs of any errors or damage if I told them about it in the first seven days (which I did). Out of desperation, I talked at one point about trying to return the suit and claim my money back, although I never had an opportunity to actually do that and really didn't want it to come to that anyway. By this point, the excitement had waned and I realised that, after all this time, I was stuck with an unusable suit that I'd got to wear exactly once after paying over $4,000 CAD and waiting for twice as long as the promised finish date, with no way to get the maker to help me make it wearable. On February 24th 2025, I reached out to another maker in their group and they contacted Kocha for me. I had a discussion about the details suit with this maker and they agreed that Kocha should be helping with the repairs. The other maker I spoke to was also understandably busy, so, on top of it being difficult to contact Kocha, it took a while to discuss everything. Kocha told them on April 5th 2025 to tell me to send an e-mail to Kocha about the issues with the suit so that we could finally get it sorted out. It took me a while to do this because I was so worn down by everything and very busy with the season leading up to my own convention work, but I got the e-mail sent to them on May 27th. Kocha never responded to this e-mail, despite them requesting that I send it. I sent one more message to Kocha on July 18th to ask if they could respond to the e-mail. They never replied, and I looked a while later to see that they'd actually responded to it by removing me on Telegram and ignoring all contact. (you can see that they have no profile picture if I look at their profile while logged in, but they do if I'm not logged in). I haven't heard from them since. They've been active elsewhere in that time, but now I have no way to even contact them, so I'm completely lost on what to do and upset beyond words that I paid so much and waited for so long just to receive a suit that I can't wear and apparently will never be able to, with no way of recourse. I really didn't want to post this, but I don't know what else I can do, at this point.
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