There are so many problems with Stardoll.com it's hard to know where to start. If you haven't read the post here titled Stardoll.com Scam, Rip off Stockholm Sweden Internet, I recommend it for just one example of the shady ways Stardoll does business. They are wholly consumed with greed to the detriment of their treatment of paying members who put cash in their pockets. I personally had never been exposed to such negligence and mercenary business practices before becoming a member, and I am newly shocked on a regular basis at Stardoll's lack of ethics.
The game is flawed in a multitude of ways, and these flaws cost members real money. For instance, when you sign up for a paid membership you are promised many things, including the opportunity to design and sell doll clothes. The design program on the site is called StarDesign. This program likes to skew the designs you may have spent hours creating and perfecting. But it doesn't ruin your designs until after you pay for them. Once you buy them, often you will begin to see your designs moving around wildly on the pattern (clothing item), only to have it finally settle (perhaps weeks later!) somewhere off to the edge of your item, or at the very least, way off-center. This problem means —
1 - That you don't get what you pay for.
2 - That the things you've made and bought from StarDesign are useless. They are unwearable and unsellable.
3 - That Stardoll limits the possibility of any designing member to compete with them.in other words, since your designs get messed up, people won't buy them, instead they'll buy clothes from Starplaza from which all the proceeds go to Stardoll.
In order to purchase your own designs you need Stardollars (Stardoll currency) which cost real money. So when you buy one of your perfect designs and then it gets ruined, you have just given Stardoll.com your Stardollars for absolutely nothing but the bad experience you just had.
Stardoll knows about the problem. I have been on the site since July (7 months) and there has been no correction whatsoever. I was told that they were working on it, but when I saw that the same form letter they sent me about this was their reply to all of my complaints, I realized what I was dealing with. As briefly as possible I will just mention some of the things I have written to them about (they don't take phone calls or provide an email address, you have to use their webform to write to them).
-Written communications and search functions on the site are next to impossible to deal with. This is a multifaceted problem, but for the sake of brevity just think Facebook circa 1980.
-Stardoll states that members can have access to all of their clothing and interior items for use in their albums - this is a lie. You're lucky if you have 50% of your stuff available for your album.
-Sceneries become jacked after you publish them - yet another problem of your work becoming skewed by Stardoll's cheapness.
-Items in your closets and Starbazaar folders are randomly dis-organized, making it impossible to find things, not to mention wrecking your organizational work.
- There is no option to turn chat off or appear to be offline when you are on the site. This means that if you are busy designing, or decorating your suite or working on your scenery or album, you will be interrupted every 5 seconds by some spammer on chat begging you to vote for her.
-Member's accounts are randomly deleted for no known reason, often based on the hearsay of other members (there are a lot of haters on the site). They are too lazy and uncaring to do the proper research needed to prove a member worthy of deletion so they just delete and wash their hands of it. Many of these members have spent hundreds if not thousands of real dollars and many many hours on their accounts. It's a substantial investment financially, but also creatively - beloved projects just go poof into thin air. Yet Stardoll chooses to have ZERO accountability to these members. This has to be the worst of all their crimes against their members. It's just unimaginable how they can justify this to themselves. But then, a business with mercenary business practices is the institutional equivalent to a sociopath, and sociopaths don't make justifications that can be fathomed by normal human beings.
These are just a few of the things I have written to them about, which brings me to their biggest flaw. And it's a gaping one —
-Customer service. 90% of my messages to them have been either outright ignored, or replied to with the lamest form letter I have ever seen. This form letter is a combination of lies and truth (all the best con artists know this trick). My comments are bolded. Here it is -
"Hi dissolvedgirl,
Thanks for your mail. We are experiencing some difficulties with this item/function. We are aware of the problem ALL TRUE SO FAR and will fix it as soon as possible. Huge lie. We are sorry for the inconvenience! LIE. They don't give a crap.
Kind regards, BARF
The Stardoll Staff"
And notice that they are so lazy they won't even delete either the word "item" or the word "function" from their useless message.
Sometimes they shock me even more by actually writing a reply instead of copying and pasting one. But even with this - they are NEVER helpful. I have never gotten a sliver of assistance or useful information, or compensation for all the things that have failed me on the site They just hide behind their computers and ditch paying members or feed them useless nonsense.
So it's a complete waste of time and energy trying to get answers from these deadbeats, and I'm done with contacting Stardoll for any issues I have. From now on I will be going directly to the BBB and econsumer.com to file a new report every time I get ripped off by these charlatans.
I agree with the person who wrote the post I mentioned above when she says that Stardoll has been able to take advantage of their members — ignoring their concerns and neglecting to fix their broken site — simply because most of their members are minors and don't know enough to see the wrong that's being done.
So if you're looking for a cool game to escape reality for a little while sometimes, look elsewhere. This game forces you to deal with their insane reality everywhere you go on the site. They steal your money and don't deliver on their promises. Needless to say I won't be renewing my membership or buying any more stardollars. Not another cent of mine goes to these unethical douchebags.
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