Brett.Tolino said...
BUYER BEWARE on this product! I just bought one from a seller on ebay, paid over $500.00 for it too. It comes packaged VERY well, there's even a plastic taped seal around the figure box (which is boxed inside the Hall of Armor box). Clearly, it was sealed at the manufacturing plant. When I opened the figure box, the shoulder pieces were completely detached and sitting at the bottom of the box, exposing the ball joints. The shoulder pieces have pins in them to attach to the shoulder but nothing on the shoulder to attach them to. Needless to say, the die-cast figure came defective, as if someone did not want to assemble the figure at the plant and just tossed the metal shoulders into the box and sealed it up. I was PISSED -- paying over $500 for this piece of garbage. Instructions state to contact Play Imaginative for any issues regarding the purchase but all emails (and the Play Imaginative website only provides email addresses) to the company go ignored. Wasted $500.00 on this garbage and Play Imaginative DOES NOT RESPOND to complaints about their defective merchandise. BEWARE before you buy ANY Super Alloy product from Play Imaginative. You are not dealing with a professional company like Hot Toys or Sideshow Collectibles where if you receive damaged or defective merchandise, you can return it for an exchange. Buy a Play Imaginative product, risk getting a defective item that Play Imaginative will do NOTHING about -- not even reply to your emails. Check their facebook page -- I'm not the only one having issues with their products. Many people complaining about their Super Alloy Superman where the feet come with missing screws and all sorts of nonsense -- and Super Alloy Superman wasn't nearly as expensive as Super Alloy Iron Man. If you buy one, beware, Don't say you weren't warned.
It's most upsetting to read about how companies take us collectors for a ride. They charge us an arm and a leg for their product (USD$500 is no small amount!) and then not only do they NOT deliver on their promise of a high end good quality product, they do not bother to solve their poor product quality issues when it arises, leaving us completely helpless without any recourse and no way to get our money back or at lease rectify the problem which is all due to their poor handling in the first place. Something ought to be done about this, don't you think?
From day one, I was NOT impressed with Play Imaginative's product, Super Alloy Batman being the first that I saw. The finished work looked shoddy and far from the quality I would expect for the price they were asking which was crazy and ridiculous. It was doomed to fail from the get-go. Then PI tried to market Super Alloy Superman and followed that up with the Iron Man figures. I wouldn't touch the company with a ten foot pole and I'm glad I stayed away. This incident just proves how right I was about the company's products.
This brings to mind another bad experience somebody had with EnterBay which I also shared earlier in my toy blog HERE. Lots of people venting and adding their own bad experiences there as well (26 comments thus far).
On that note, some tips to offer regarding toy / figure collecting:
September 8, 2011 – Hot Toy Collecting Tip #1: Remove ALL Batteries! posted HERE
September 14, 2011 – Regarding Cracking Rubber and Disintegrating Suits in my toy blog HERE
July 28, 2013 – The two kinds of model kit and figure collectors (based on attitude): Happy and Passionate Collectors vs Competitive and Too Proud collectors posted HERE
just wondering why did you buy it from ebay while the store is still within your reach? and the last time I went there to the both CSC and Bugis shop earlier this year they are still opening the preorder
ReplyDeleteHi there, as I mentioned in my blog post above, I didn't buy the figure but a fellow collector (Brett.Tolino) did and got burned real bad. He came to me and asked me to warn other would-be buyers to beware of Play Imaginative which I feel is fair warning. From day one, I was NOT impressed with Play Imaginative's product, Super Alloy Batman being the first that I saw. The finished work looked shoddy and far from the quality I would expect for the price they were asking which was crazy and ridiculous. It was doomed to fail from day one. Then PI tried to market Super Alloy Superman and followed that up with the Iron Man figures. I wouldn't touch the company with a ten foot pole and I'm glad I stayed away. This incident just proves how right I was about the company's products. Cheers :) I hope you didn't pre-order their product.
ReplyDeleteHillary Yeo also commented on facebook:
ReplyDeleteI am surprised Play Imaginative is still around. After all the qc issues of the 1st alloy metal batman, it just gotten worse. Spread the news of your defective figures to different blogs and sites. Do not pre-order any of their figures. (i do not think they will even have any new ones...) Hit them where it hurts, the publicity will force them to act..hopefully.
PI, with that sort of customer service, they won't be around for long.
ReplyDeleteI've stopped buying Enterbay and even try and avoid Hot Toys whenever I can.
Of the 1/6th figure companies I've dealt with over the years, ThreeA has had the best customer service, but my last ThreeA issue with my 1/6th Badbot didn't go as smoothly as hoped.
Medicom apparently has great customer service as well, but I have never bothered dealing with them.
Same problem happened to me. Shoulder armour got snapped during transport. Damn angry. It was very hard to fix.
ReplyDeleteJust as a follow up to this blog post:
ReplyDeleteTo the last person to post about the shoulder armor getting snapped during transport, that is EXACTLY what happened to me only mine snapped right off and was not fixable. I sent the defective item back to the ebay seller and they sent me a replacement. When the replacement arrived, it arrived with the same exact defect only this time, the Hall of Armor did not work.
Pls be advised, my name is Brett Tolino and I am the one who bought the 1:6th scale Super Alloy Iron Man. As to why I did not buy it from a store? Because the 1:6th Scale Super Alloy Iron Man /With Light Up Hall of Armor is 'supposedly' not for sale outside Singapore, something I did not know originally.
After I received the 2nd replacement also defective, I was so angry, I contacted Marvel Consumer Products and filed a complaint with them. They in turn contacted Play Imaginative and Play Imaginative agreed to replace my replacement. Long story short, I finally received a new replacement this past Friday and it works fine, no defects.
Additionally, the company treated me with courtesy and respect (as opposed to originally ignoring my emails).
My final word on the 1:6th Scale Super Alloy Iron Man is that it is a great collectible, providing the buyer can get one that works. I see many, many complaints on their facebook page about the same issues I had and the same complaints about PI not replying to emails. Maybe I was lucky because I went straight to Marvel to complain because there was no way I was going to lie down and take a $500 loss. I feel very bad for all the customers stuck with the defective products and to anyone who is looking to buy one, I would seriously advise them to open and inspect it before paying any money for it.