InArt: The Lord of the Rings - Gandalf 1:6

Mogli said:

Maybe I missed it, but what inconsistencies has Gandalf had between batches that I keep seeing mentioned? Just that strange case in the one post above?

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The only issue mine had was the left grip hand doesn’t fit in the peg correctly. It just falls right off.

I posted about a month ago that there were 2 magnets in the hand and maybe it didn’t mold properly. I had a hell of a time getting the 2nd magnet out thinking it would help but it didn’t. Still doesn’t stay on.

All the other hands work properly. I did buy through a Malaysian vendor who still had POs but they don’t offer any after care services for international customers So I was **** out of luck on that one.

he-man said:

Mine finally came in and sorry to say I’m a bit disappointed. Few qc issues just like with joker. But especially the hair got butchered. This seems to be a trend with Inart very inconsistent in quality on batches.

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That would never leave a factory like that. The two pics have different length hair, ones been cut uneven and the other appears straight. Why would the beard be so perfect but the hair sooo bad lol.
I agree thats been sabotaged on purpose.

You have been a member for 9 years but have only 6 posts!?!

JackRusselTs said:

The only issue mine had was the left grip hand doesn’t fit in the peg correctly. It just falls right off.

I posted about a month ago that there were 2 magnets in the hand and maybe it didn’t mold properly. I had a hell of a time getting the 2nd magnet out thinking it would help but it didn’t. Still doesn’t stay on.

All the other hands work properly. I did buy through a Malaysian vendor who still had POs but they don’t offer any after care services for international customers So I was **** out of luck on that one.
View attachment 693629

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That sucks you got a defective one, I still hate the whole magnet thing. And I admit that when I have a choice I consider after care services from vendors a lot when ordering InArt, I hope by next year we don't have to worry as much about it.

JackRusselTs said:

The only issue mine had was the left grip hand doesn’t fit in the peg correctly. It just falls right off.

I posted about a month ago that there were 2 magnets in the hand and maybe it didn’t mold properly. I had a hell of a time getting the 2nd magnet out thinking it would help but it didn’t. Still doesn’t stay on.

All the other hands work properly. I did buy through a Malaysian vendor who still had POs but they don’t offer any after care services for international customers So I was **** out of luck on that one.

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Just realized mine is like this too. It fell off when I inspected it, but didn't get to a more thorough overview until now.

I heated it up, to soften the plastic, as that usually fixes these kinds of fitting issues, but no dice.

Earth 616 Collector said:

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying that is how that hair arrived. Only way possible would to be is they have a rogue disgruntled factory employee that was inspecting and took it upon themselves to do that to the hair.

Otherwise, do I believe someone is crazy enough to actually order one and butcher the hair to try and tarnish InArt’s reputation? Absolutely I believe someone would. If they bought from a reputable seller, then I'm sure they were just planning to send it back and get their money back.

InArt has its shares of QC problems to work on, and I have mentioned some myself on here that I've had. This short hair is so far off the wall and doesn't add up. Maybe I'm wrong though since so many of you seem to be buying into it.

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Okay, I’m pretty slow at responding etc. Not a very active board member. But why would I destroy a figure I have waited on for months and cost me €700.
Definitely not sending it back for money. Would someone be crazy enough to do this. Probably! But not me.
I swear this is how I got it. Box was still in shrinkwrap when I got it so my seller definitely has not touched it. Also it’s a reputable store out of singapore, toysremz, they even helped out when my first shipment of gandalf got lost. And they are contacting inart as we speak, concerning my situation.
I hope this is an anomaly, I really do. But some people mentioned theirs wasn’t all that great either. Haven’t seen one as bad as mine, but I’ve seen one with shorter hair and some with longer. Maybe I need to do more futzing I don’t know, but just wanted to share mine and discuss.

skullboy said:

That would never leave a factory like that. The two pics have different length hair, ones been cut uneven and the other appears straight. Why would the beard be so perfect but the hair sooo bad lol.
I agree thats been sabotaged on purpose.

You have been a member for 9 years but have only 6 posts!?!

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Nah one is still on the peg from the container at a different angle and I believe what you think is a different length at right side of the picture second picture is his beard on the other side.
It’s definitely cut straight all the way at the back. The front is a little better. Def not sabotaging my €700 figure.

And yeah mostly lurk on here and been inactive in the hobby for a while.

he-man said:

Okay, I’m pretty slow at responding etc. Not a very active board member. But why would I destroy a figure I have waited on for months and cost me €700.
Definitely not sending it back for money. Would someone be crazy enough to do this. Probably! But not me.
I swear this is how I got it. Box was still in shrinkwrap when I got it so my seller definitely has not touched it. Also it’s a reputable store out of singapore, toysremz, they even helped out when my first shipment of gandalf got lost. And they are contacting inart as we speak, concerning my situation.
I hope this is an anomaly, I really do. But some people mentioned theirs wasn’t all that great either. Haven’t seen one as bad as mine, but I’ve seen one with shorter hair and some with longer. Maybe I need to do more futzing I don’t know, but just wanted to share mine and discuss.

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he-man said:

Nah one is still on the peg from the container at a different angle and I believe what you think is a different length at right side of the picture second picture is his beard on the other side.
It’s definitely cut straight all the way at the back. The front is a little better. Def not sabotaging my €700 figure.

And yeah mostly lurk on here and been inactive in the hobby for a while.

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You been inactive on here for 9 years and now all of a sudden you get something that looks like its been hacked at by a blind man with rusty scissors and you cant keep off, smells a little fishy to me.
Maybe show us the communication between you and the seller to help us see this is not bulls**t?

SwedishHeat said:

Just realized mine is like this too. It fell off when I inspected it, but didn't get to a more thorough overview until now.

I heated it up, to soften the plastic, as that usually fixes these kinds of fitting issues, but no dice.

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Same thing here on my right hand. None of the hands “click” on even after heating up. My left relaxed hand that should come shipped on the body was missing completely. Maybe that wasn’t a secure fit and it fell out while being packed at the factory.

I posted this earlier, but the eyes on my figure were messed up as well. One eye moved fine the other was fixed in place.

I know there is always some level of quality issues with any factory production, but at this price (which I consider premium), I would expect defects that could have been detected at packaging (in my case anyway) to have been caught and rejected back to production.

he-man said:

Okay, I’m pretty slow at responding etc. Not a very active board member. But why would I destroy a figure I have waited on for months and cost me €700.
Definitely not sending it back for money. Would someone be crazy enough to do this. Probably! But not me.
I swear this is how I got it. Box was still in shrinkwrap when I got it so my seller definitely has not touched it. Also it’s a reputable store out of singapore, toysremz, they even helped out when my first shipment of gandalf got lost. And they are contacting inart as we speak, concerning my situation.
I hope this is an anomaly, I really do. But some people mentioned theirs wasn’t all that great either. Haven’t seen one as bad as mine, but I’ve seen one with shorter hair and some with longer. Maybe I need to do more futzing I don’t know, but just wanted to share mine and discuss.

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Fair enough. You probably had a disgruntled quality control person that last touched it. Extremely odd for it to be that chopped up.

DRTHV8R said:

Same thing here on my right hand. None of the hands “click” on even after heating up. My left relaxed hand that should come shipped on the body was missing completely. Maybe that wasn’t a secure fit and it fell out while being packed at the factory.

I posted this earlier, but the eyes on my figure were messed up as well. One eye moved fine the other was fixed in place.

I know there is always some level of quality issues with any factory production, but at this price (which I consider premium), I would expect defects that could have been detected at packaging (in my case anyway) to have been caught and rejected back to production.

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Update: I can’t believe InArt’s response to my quality problems stated previously. It’s “Fix it yourself”!

They provided a video on how to disassemble the eye mechanism and try to realign the eyes as in their words “the eyeballs fall out of the track”. I can’t believe that for an expensive high end figure this is the level of Customer Service.

Furthermore, I was told that if following the video instructions I could not can’t fix it, I can return the head for them to repair and they will send it back! AGAIN, not provided a new replacement head, but one that has been “refurbished” with all the mechanism stress and mess up to the hair shape/styling in manhandling the headsculpt.

Am I being unreasonable here to expect better customer service and resolution for what I believe is a very expensive figure? I am seriously considering seeing if I can return the figure for a full refund and cancelling my pre-order for Aragorn. I don’t feel like giving my money to a company that doesn’t seem to value their customers or even offer the kind of service that inexpensive 3rd party companies offer with new Replacements at minimum inconvenience.

DRTHV8R said:

Update: I can’t believe InArt’s response to my quality problems stated previously. It’s “Fix it yourself”!

They provided a video on how to disassemble the eye mechanism and try to realign the eyes as in their words “the eyeballs fall out of the track”. I can’t believe that for an expensive high end figure this is the level of Customer Service.

Furthermore, I was told that if following the video instructions I could not can’t fix it, I can return the head for them to repair and they will send it back! AGAIN, not provided a new replacement head, but one that has been “refurbished” with all the mechanism stress and mess up to the hair shape/styling in manhandling the headsculpt.

Am I being unreasonable here to expect better customer service and resolution for what I believe is a very expensive figure? I am seriously considering seeing if I can return the figure for a full refund and cancelling my pre-order for Aragorn. I don’t feel like giving my money to a company that doesn’t seem to value their customers or even offer the kind of service that inexpensive 3rd party companies offer with new Replacements at minimum inconvenience.

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Doesn’t seem so bad to me. They’re giving you options. Either attempt the fix yourself, if you’re comfortable with it or send it in for repair. Or, you could argue with them some more and see if they’ll replace it.

Chronos1919 said:

Doesn’t seem so bad to me. They’re giving you options. Either attempt the fix yourself, if you’re comfortable with it or send it in for repair. Or, you could argue with them some more and see if they’ll replace it.

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Appreciate the input. So your approach is to repair the figure myself or have them do it and let it go that I paid full price for what I expected to be a brand new figure.
I can understand that approach if I can get past my expectation of quality and reconcile the expense of a figure against my expected level of Customer Service for such expense. At this time I am not sure I can.

I had planned on purchasing every fellowship figure they were planning to make, and possibly expanding into other franchises they cover, but with the risk that I might have to go through something like this with each figure (based on collector comments it seems quality is diminishing as production goes on) the idea is souring. I guess I probably have a “Karen” attitude right now after just receiving the InArt response, based upon your objective comments. Maybe that will lesson for me, but I think I feel this way because the cost of this figure was very impactful to me.

Anyway, I really do appreciate your take on the situation and it gives me something to think about regarding my expectations.

I understand it's stinks when something goes wrong with something you paid a lot of money for, but these aren't appliances or even HT figures with minimal manual input. They don't have a warehouse full of these head sculpts sitting around. They take people a long time to make and I doubt they can afford to have extras to just swap/send out to people.

Of course it is your right as a consumer to try and return and get your money back (hope they let you, if that's your choice) and not purchase anymore. But for rooted hair pieces, you can't really expect a brand new one if something fixable is wrong. The fact that this is hand crafted, which is expensive to do, is exactly why they can't just send a replacement.

DRTHV8R said:

Appreciate the input. So your approach is to repair the figure myself or have them do it and let it go that I paid full price for what I expected to be a brand new figure.
I can understand that approach if I can get past my expectation of quality and reconcile the expense of a figure against my expected level of Customer Service for such expense. At this time I am not sure I can.

I had planned on purchasing every fellowship figure they were planning to make, and possibly expanding into other franchises they cover, but with the risk that I might have to go through something like this with each figure (based on collector comments it seems quality is diminishing as production goes on) the idea is souring. I guess I probably have a “Karen” attitude right now after just receiving the InArt response, based upon your objective comments. Maybe that will lesson for me, but I think I feel this way because the cost of this figure was very impactful to me.

Anyway, I really do appreciate your take on the situation and it gives me something to think about regarding my expectations.

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I would reconsider having them repair it.

I think it's actually pretty cool that you can send it back to them and have them fix it. It's sort of like having a master artisan fix up your old shoes. I see it as a very valuable customer service feature to be able to send it back like that, with the caveat of them covering shipping costs. If that's not the case, then that's an issue to be discussed.

Secondarily, it's not like they just have replacement heads available. They'd have to take your replacement off the production line, and that would mean someone else's figure is delayed. I think the logistics of you getting a replacement head is more problems than it's worth, from InArt's perspective. The head is a very valuable item, and to them, what needs to happen is an easy fix. So, it's weighing a 5-minute fix, vs. maybe a week of production time to send you a new head. The scale of what you are asking for vs what they are proposing is miles apart.

I don't think it's practical for InArt to be able to offer head replacements for things that are fixable. They have to draw the line somewhere as to what justifies a replacement. As we know, people are incredibly picky in this hobby, so if they don't draw a firm line, they'll be making replacement heads endlessly for people.

Also, keep in mind, what you read as a 'fix it yourself' attitude is probably them just trying to speak your language, translating. For example, Kit has already spoken about how his tone reads as abrupt, but otherwise, a courteous person willing to solve problems.

DRTHV8R said:

Update: I can’t believe InArt’s response to my quality problems stated previously. It’s “Fix it yourself”!

They provided a video on how to disassemble the eye mechanism and try to realign the eyes as in their words “the eyeballs fall out of the track”. I can’t believe that for an expensive high end figure this is the level of Customer Service.

Furthermore, I was told that if following the video instructions I could not can’t fix it, I can return the head for them to repair and they will send it back! AGAIN, not provided a new replacement head, but one that has been “refurbished” with all the mechanism stress and mess up to the hair shape/styling in manhandling the headsculpt.

Am I being unreasonable here to expect better customer service and resolution for what I believe is a very expensive figure? I am seriously considering seeing if I can return the figure for a full refund and cancelling my pre-order for Aragorn. I don’t feel like giving my money to a company that doesn’t seem to value their customers or even offer the kind of service that inexpensive 3rd party companies offer with new Replacements at minimum inconvenience.

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Did they offer any solutions for that hands? If you bought from a 3rd party I would just return it. Queen studios in their support page says they will only support the first owner.

If you bought from eBay you need to refund asap.

agonistes86 said:

Kit ships Gandalf (and all his product) in order of when people ordered them. If you look up your order confirmation, it will say an order number. That tells you your position in the queue.

On Feb 21st, Kit posted that all orders up until #96152 were invoiced. If your number is lower, you should have got an email to pay the remaining balance. If you're higher, you'll have to wait till he receives the next batch.

He also posted this overview recently:

• Order from #80xxx - 82xxx within original preorder window
• Order from #89xx - 90xxx placed in Oct 2022
• Order from #95xxx - 97xxx placed in Jan 2023
• Order from #10xxxx - 11xxx placed in March - August 2023

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Update by kit:


So we're still in January 2023 orders.
I was hoping the next wave would already include 11xxxx orders. Unfortunately it looks like these might continue to trickle out slowly.

agonistes86 said:

Update by kit:
View attachment 693966

So we're still in January 2023 orders.
I was hoping the next wave would already include 11xxxx orders. Unfortunately it looks like these might continue to trickle out slowly.

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Yea I’m in the 110s.

agonistes86 said:

Update by kit:
View attachment 693966

So we're still in January 2023 orders.
I was hoping the next wave would already include 11xxxx orders. Unfortunately it looks like these might continue to trickle out slowly.

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Dang. Now that’s a glacial pace. I hope the new artists up their production significantly

WOO! My order is *just* inside the window for this batch!

DRTHV8R said:

Appreciate the input. So your approach is to repair the figure myself or have them do it and let it go that I paid full price for what I expected to be a brand new figure.
I can understand that approach if I can get past my expectation of quality and reconcile the expense of a figure against my expected level of Customer Service for such expense. At this time I am not sure I can.

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Unless a figure is seriously damaged or missing a part, I’m usually fine doing a little tinkering. I expect it in this hobby and it can sometimes add to the enjoyment of unboxing something- getting to know the piece more intimately.

I typically completely redress, water-treat, and restyle figures.
The InArt eye mechanism does seem a little unrefined atm and is clearly something they need to work on.
SERS would be better- but many on the boards have disassembled and reset InArt eyes without causing any problems.
Doing this doesn’t stop your figure from being brand new.

As this is an issue with a simple solution which you could rectify yourself using their guidance, I think attempting it would actually be far less hassle than trying to get a replacement or sending it back to them for repair.