Complaint Review: Riker Creatures

Heidi Riker, who goes by several different alternative names/alias (Holly Autumns, and Heidi Jochim are the two that I know of), sells handmade pose-able realistic animal art dolls on etsy.com. She also has a deviant art and facebook account. Because the pictures of her art dolls on her various accounts are very nice and her creations appear to be very life-like and because she has been featured in a few small art magazine and other publications, this seller rose to popularity fairly quickly in the Art Doll community, between 2014-2015. However, be VERY CAREFUL when buying from this artist. Her creations are very high priced, and you are not guaranteed to get what you ordered. Some people have reported that they have received their orders, many others, however, have paid copious amounts of money, and are still waiting for their order. There is a facebook page filled with collectors who have been scammed by this person, filled with people who have paid in full for custom orders and still have not received their orders after nearly a year. One customer entered a giveaway Heidi Riker held last Spring and was told she "won" but after months of waiting still has not yet received her prize. Heidi is also known for listing items for sale on her etsy page, which a customer will then order (her listings usually are sold within in 24 hours or less), and then after waiting for months for the order to arrive, Heidi will reveal that the order was never completed to begin with and is still a work in progress (apparently all the fur was only pinned together to make it look finished in the listing photo). She'll also never respond to emails, or messages on her etsy, DA and Facebook account periodically she'll disable her etsy account, even with customers still waiting on her orders. 

One person contacted this seller in the Spring of 2015 requesting a custom order from Heidi. The customer asked to send Heidi Riker her late grandmother's old mink stoles to be repurposed as a memorial art doll, which Heidi agreed to. The customer promptly sent Heidi the stoles, as well as $200 USD worth of other fabrics to be used in her custom order and also a full payment of $350 USD for her order. It's been a year, and Heidi still has not completed the order. Throughout the year, the customer has tried repeatedly to get in contact with Heidi. The first time was three months after sending in the money, and mailing the fur. The tracking for the shipping confirmed that Heidi received the fur, but Heidi never got in touch with the customer, so the customer reached on to Heidi for an update, which Heidi never responded to. The customer soon discovered that she was not the only jilted customer looking for Heidi. Her friend even went on facebook on her behalf trying to track Heidi down. During that time, the customer contacted paypal to have her payment to Heidi returned to her, which she got back automatically from paypal, however, Heidi is still in possession of the priceless family heirloom that belongs to the customer. After months of people searching for Heidi and being left in the dark about the status of their orders, Heidi finally reappeared, and got in touch with the customer in question. In the email to the customer, Heidi claimed that her absence was due to her being severely ill, she assured the customer that she's now back in business and that the priceless mink stoles has been received and were in safe hands and that she's looking forward to getting started on the customer's order. The customer was given hope that she'll finally be seeing the completion of her order, and all was forgiven (this was in September, 2015).  Then months passed, and on December 31, 2015 the customer contacted Heidi again to request a status update on her order and received no response. She began the same process again: asked her friend to help post in various art doll pages on Facebook to try and track down Heidi, and got in touch with other customers who once again, informed her that just like her, they were still waiting for Heidi to sort their orders out. Basically, despite Heidi's assurance the last time, no real change was made, and the same thing was happening all over again. Finally, in Feb, 2016 Heidi reappeared once more, this time with an even more outrageous story, this time on top of being sick, she fell into financial ruin, how to move away from her home, had her art supplies  and work in progress destroyed, etc. etc. Once again, Heidi assured her customers in a facebook post that she's back in business and all will be made right. However, despite this, the customer who contacted Heidi at the end of December, still has not received a response to her message. Knowing Heidi was back, she waited for another month or so to hear from Heidi personally. During that time Heidi disabled her etsy account again, and then reopened several weeks later. Heidi began listing new pieces for sale on her etsy page, but still has not responded to the customer. A week ago, the customer sent Heidi another message requesting the status of her order and to check up on her grandmother's mink, Heidi ignored the message. The message was sent over etsy's messaging system, and despite not responding to the message, Heidi put up a new listing on her etsy shop, proving that she has been on etsy since. The customer's friend left a message on Heidi's facebook wall, asking her to reach out to her customer. Heidi has not done so. As of right now, it has been a year since the customer was promised a custom order from Heidi Riker made from a priceless family heirloom and she has received no communication, what so ever from this "seller." Regardless of the reasons behind Heidi Riker's actions, Riker's Creatures is a bad, unreliable business being run by a very unprofessional (to say the least) seller. It's much better to stay away, you'll save yourself a lot of stress and disappointment.