Ordering My Golden Child 2019 Season's Greetings and Switching from Ktown4u to Kpoptown

Here's another post about my ordering experience, this time with Ktown4u and Kpoptown. As a summary, I had mainly ordered from Kpoptown from 2013 to 2015, but switched to Ktown4u in 2015 and stayed loyal because Ktown was cheaper and provided free posters, while Kpoptown had asked me to pay additional shipping fees and my Infinite That Summer 2 DVD set I ordered from them arrived damaged. Ktown4u had asked me for additional shipping fees before and even sent me the wrong magazine that I ordered along with my Sung Kyu Shine Live CD just a few months ago, but because they fixed the situation by sending me the correct magazine (worth about $2 USD) and they covered the shipping, I even told them that I would stay a faithful customer. Actually for Golden Child's 2018 Season's Greetings, I had pre-ordered from Ktown and it wasn't until they began shipping out orders that they asked me to pay additional shipping fees. This obviously delayed my order, so I asked for a refund and ordered from Kpoptown instead, receiving my set after the new year. I simply overlooked these issues and continued ordering from Ktown.

Pre-orders for Golden Child's 2019 Season's Greetings began on November 9th. I pre-ordered on November 14th from Ktown4u. My friend and I decided to combine shipping, so our purchase of 2 Golden Child's 2019 Season's Greetings with a poster tube and DHL shipping came out to just over $115 USD. As a note, selecting this DHL service to the US is only for packages up to 5kg (11lbs). DHL's information on my package showed it was 3.3lbs (this should have been the first sign that something was wrong). Purchasing just 1 with a folded poster and registered mail cost about $53 USD, but by combining shipping, I'm able to have an unfolded poster and a faster delivery time of 2-5 business days for just about $5 more. Furthermore, Ktown capped the pre-order for this product at 20 sales, so I was glad to have placed my order on November 14th before their pre-order closed.

On December 13th, I received an email from DHL with my tracking information and that my package would arrive on the 17th, just 3 days after its release! My package most certainly did arrive on the 17th, all in one large cardboard box. My package was unexpectedly rather narrow and light, and to my even greater disappointment, my package only contained 2 Exo Love Shot albums and a poster tube. Exo's latest album was releasd on the 13th, one day before Golden Child's Season's Greetings.

My heart completely sank. I was so excited to splurge on shipping for the first time and receive an item so quickly after release (especially so that I could be one of the first to blog about it), but Ktown completely screwed up my order. The item description they submitted to DHL even said "SEASONS GREETINGS" and the itemized receipt even states 2 Golden Child Season's Greetings. Literally Ktown's only job is to fulfill customers' orders by delivering the exact items they ordered, but how does one mix up a CD with a season's greetings?

As a side note, this is my first time ordering an unfolded poster from Ktown. The poster tube came inside the cardboard box, but weirdly enough they don't put a lid on one end.

I immediately used Ktown's 1:1 Service on their website to explain my situation. Because they messed up my magazine order before, I knew the procedure well. Their 1:1 Service is lacking as I'm unable to attach photo proof, so I also emailed their b2b_help@dvdheaven.com with photos of what I received and in my 1:1 message informed them to check their email for my photo proof.

Within a few hours, Ktown replied to my 1:1 message asking for photo proof. I replied again for them to check their email. They replied with the following:

Dear customer, 

Firstly, we are sorry for causing this issue. 

Because of now the season greeting is out of stock now .

Do you mind we refund you the item fee? You can keep those EXO albums for free. 

I replied right away questioning their lack of doing business properly and confirmed that I wanted a refund. Exo albums are certainly no consolation to this mess and if someone else ended up receiving Golden Child Season's Greetings, I hope they become a Goldenness from this fiasco.

Immediately I ordered from Kpoptown; 2 Golden Child 2019 Season's Greetings with the Unfolded Poster option and DHL cost $138.70.

Almost 24 hours after Ktown4u stated they're out of stock, on the evening of the 18th, they emailed me again with the following:

Hi, we checked but we have them, as they were not sent to you. 

We will ship to you again. please wait xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx this is your new order no. thank you!

I went into my account and saw that this new order didn't even state any product info; at least when they created a new order for my replacement magazine previously, they included the correct product info. 

At this point I was more than fed up with Ktown. I couldn't trust them, so I replied to their email soon after asking again for a refund and stating that I ordered from another company since they already declared that the item is out of stock. A few hours later they sent me a full refund.

The following day I also went on Ktown'sGolden Child 2019 Season's Greetings page and saw that it was still out of stock. I'm not sure where my two season's greetings ended up, but certainly it wasn't in my hands.

Kpoptown sent me a shipping confirmation email on the evening of the 19th and DHL sent me the tracking information the following morning, with an estimated delivery on Monday the 24th. It also stated that my package was 7.9 lbs, which is much more reasonable for the items I ordered.

My package did arrive on the 24th, and to my relief, it is the two correct season's greetings along with the two posters. The two season's greetings were stacked on top of each other with a thin layer of bubblewrap covering underneath and the sides. Large bubblewrap filled up the rest of the box.

The posters came rolled up inside a poster tube, but with no lids. I guess this is fine since the tube was included inside the box.

Overall, I'm quite disappointed with Ktown4u and moving forward need to figure out alternative places to order. I'm still weary about Kpoptown because of their packaging from my past orders. But for now, I'm just happy to have Golden Child's 2019 Season's Greetings and will be blogging about it soon.