Regular readers may know that I have had various Maru and Friends dolls, (Especially Savannah), on my Christmas list for the last two years.
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| Savannah |
I love the faces on the Maru dolls.All of the dolls except one are sculpted by Dianna Effner, so they have those beautiful children's faces.
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| Maru |
The one doll not sculpted by Effner is Valentina.
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| Valentina.She's supposed to be Maru's little sister, but she looks older and unrelated. |
I still don't own one of these dolls though, and now I may not. But I came very close recently.
This SHOULD have been a review of a Maru and Friends doll. I recently decided to try to help keep the blog up to date and interesting by asking a variety of doll companies if they would be interested in providing products for review on the blog. One of the companies I contacted was Maru and Friends. I messaged them on their Facebook page.Less than 2 hours after messaging them I received this reply:
Welcome to the world of Maru. Yes... we would love to obtain a review from you. Send me all your contact information and I will get a doll right out to you. Thanks so much! maritza
I was excited, So I immediately sent them my mailing address, offered to send them links to previous reviews, and told them that, if they were checking out the blog, my most recent post was not about dolls,due to my bird's death. And I waited for the doll to arrive.
And I waited.By February 22 I still hadn't received anything.Did they need my blog stats? They hadn't asked for them, but when I had contacted A Girl For All Time for the same purpose I was asked for my blog stats.To make sure, I sent them this Facebook message:
Hi, Just following up on our last messages to see if there is anything else you need from me. If there is, please let me know. I'm looking forward to receiving your doll! Thanks again. Tammy
I know that at some point I sent them an email through their website asking them to let me know when the doll had been shipped so I could watch for it's delivery, because we often get mail delivered to our side steps where we don't look for it. The steps are basically on the sidewalk, so anybody walking by could just carry a package off. In addition,if things get delivered there on a rainy day and we don't notice it,they can be damaged.(Like today when our photo book from Shutterfly got delivered out there in the rain.) No response to that either.
By March 16th I had received neither a doll, nor a message from Maru and Friends on Facebook or by email. So I sent them one more Facebook message and one more message on their web page, both telling them that if I hadn't heard from them by March 30th, (A full two weeks after my previous message.), I would assume they were not sending a doll and I would post what should have been my review without the doll to review.
At this point you may be thinking, 'they have every right not to send a doll', which is true.If they had never answered me at all, or if they had answered and declined to provide anything for review, I would have been fine with that.Even if they had contacted me and said they had checked out the blog and had changed their minds about sending a doll,I would have been a bit hurt and offended, but that would be their prerogative. But they committed to sending a doll. Then they reneged on their offer, and didn't even respond to messages. If this is what their communication is like,and if they don't carry through on their word, I'm not sure I'd even want to order a doll from them now, How are they on responding to customer problems or complaints? Do they ignore the messages, or do their message links just not work? Either way they aren't going to have very good customer service.
And that's my story.Pretty disappointing, isn't it?
Squeeze's PR team did a similar thing to me. I asked for a review copy, they said sure, asked for my address, and then they never sent it.
ReplyDeleteDid you remind them you existed?I tried not to be a nag, so I left about a month after the first message, and another month after the second.I suppose it's so far after the fact with albums that that would be too late and they aren't sending them out any more.
DeleteThat is too bad. My only guess is the person who responded to you "spoke too soon." Or she's not working there any more. I've always felt I don't have good enough stats to merit getting a doll to review. At least you were brave enough to try. :)
ReplyDeleteI wasn't sure I had good enough stats either. How much is good enough? But I thought there was no harm in trying. If either of the situations you described are true it would still have been polite of them to let me know that and not just leave me hanging.
DeleteI can see a company not wanting to admit that one of their employees acted outside his or her authority. Plus if they admit to fault, you would have a stronger case for still getting a doll to review.
DeleteAs far as stats, I just checked at Never Grow Up's page, because I think she has gotten things to review before. She has over 450 blog followers, although I don't know what her stats look like. She also has an established record of blogging very often about American Girl and 18" dolls, which may contribute. I don't really know what is needed to become a reviewer, though.
I don't know. I think it's probably a combination of reader numbers, followers,etc.
DeleteI accidentally deleted someone's comment instead of publishing. Can whoever left a comment recently send it again if it isn't on this post? I would like to read what you had to say better,since some of it came over as html or whatever.Sorry I can't remember who you were!
ReplyDelete