OF

No seriously I think they did, it took me while to realize that they really cut their ties to me. That is unless the unexplained cancellation of my last two orders and ignoring my attempts to contact them for an entire month are coincidences. I’m pretty surprised at how easily they cast aside me as a customer, especially since I don’t know how to close my wallet when it comes to anime merchandise. I think I’ve spent at least $300 there in the last month or two on my hauls and far more in the past year. I bought the majority of my FREEing Bunnies from there too and those are some serious cash. When Otakufuel ban people they cut off communication COMPLETELY so there is absolutely no way to clear up any misunderstandings, or in my case…figure out why I was banned to begin with, that’s right, absolutely no reason was given to me for why they won’t do business with me.

decbunny1

There are only a few things that were going on with me regarding Otakufuel at the time communication was stopped. The first is my blog post where I mentioned one of the wall scrolls they sent me had bent rods and I said I was working with them to get a replacement. I was looking at their policy and they go out of their way to state that they take great care to examine everything before it goes out, and maybe they thought I was trying to imply that they sent them to me broken from the beginning? That seems a bit of a stretch but it’s the only listed policy that it might look like I “violated”, even though I actually wasn’t implying anything at all and didn’t think that was the case.

Naruto pin

There was another part of that post where I talked about the pin that was their free gift in that order. I really was jokingly ribbing though and have made no secret about how much I admired their service in the past, I mean look at my Review of Otakufuel. I also positively gushed about them when they found me the volumes I needed of Basara…but now that I think about it, they wouldn’t have had to help me find those volumes to begin with had their inventories been correct when I purchased the entire set at once from them. And if they didn’t get me these last two volumes they were facing me returning about $200 in merchandise. Well it was validly pointed out that I may not have conveyed the joking part about the pin well. When I communicate through writing I write the way I speak and sometimes I write without fully realizing that certain tones are obviously not being carried over in my written words (as I’ve mentioned to Mimi before). BUT I still maintain that I think this free gift is humorous and not suited to my tastes at all, no regrets on what I said, just maybe how I said it? I mean just because someone gives me something that is “free” and “extra” doesn’t mean I need to cherish it. Being sent items for free that are completely against my tastes inconveniences me because I then need to feel wasteful when throwing them out. And I’m not just going to throw it in a drawer somewhere, being a pack rat like that is how houses become cluttered. If this is truely why I was banned I think they’re far too sensitive. But like I said I can only speculate as to the cause of being banned.

basara-19-and-20

The other reason might be that RIGHT AFTER I placed a large manga order with them my credit information was stolen and I had to turn off that card and wait for a new one. I asked them what I should do and they just said to re-do the order with the new card, so I did. One of the reasons I thought maybe they were accidentally ignoring me was because a large portion of what was in my cancelled order was suddenly snatched off their web site and was no longer being available to be ordered. I thought maybe they were trying to escape explaining to me (again) that their manga inventories were incorrect so I called assuring them that wasn’t an issue for me and that I just wanted answers. Plus also I knew they banned customers that cancel orders too often, there could have been a misunderstanding as to why my large manga order suddenly had to be cancelled (had to change the credit card info) if there was miscommunication among the staff.

P1040178

They go as far as to screen my phone calls even, I realize now that I was like a guy who was trying to be politely dumped by a girl who didn’t want to actually say the words out loud to him. I’d leave messages like “I’m not sure why but none of my calls/messages are being returned but when you get a chance would you give me a call?”, “I think my e-mails might be accidentally going into your SPAM folder because suddenly no one is responding to my e-mails”…etc etc (you get the pathetic naive picture). I’m surprised by all this, I know I’m not a perfect customer, but I think this is a bit much considering I pay for everything I order.

Pot Luck Haul

In the end though I’m not desperately sad at the loss, there are other places I’d lament the loss of more. As much as I liked Otakufuel they weren’t my 1st choice store for figures or manga (due to their smaller selection of items and questionable inventory numbers). Now I just need to keep my fingers crossed that I’m not so evil that Amazon (manga) and Toyslogic (figures) will ban me too. Hopefully if I keep throwing money at them they’ll be so distracted by the income that they won’t see my evilness…MWAHAHAHA!

Wall Scrolls

But when all is said and done if someone asked me if I recommend Otakufuel as a store I’d probably still say they’re decent, although I won’t go out of my way to promote them anymore. I FIRMLY call into question their banishment system that doesn’t allow for any further communication. I think it’s flawed and leaves room for errors to go uncorrected! Because they haven’t told me why I was banned I can’t say with 100% confidence that “I’ve been wronged!”, but to my knowledge I haven’t violated any of their listed policies.