[OK] Jesse Bluefox the Fox Lynx Hybrid by Pyrope Costumes

Completion/Ship Date: August 2023

Shipping Origin: Mexico

Type: Fullsuit

Style: Toony

Padding: Digitigrade

Specialties: None

Found in: Canidae, Felidae^(?)

Features: None

My biggest issue with Pyrope was being robbed of $150 of customizations that weren't made into the final product, despite me asking several times for updates on them. When I paid for the Fursuit, I specifically asked for a head fan and pockets to be installed. Both these items were on my Trello card and I paid an additional $150 for these 2 items. However, upon receiving my Fursuit, neither of these items were there and Pyrope is simply not responding to my messages any more. I don't want to ship the suit back to you for these items, heck I don't even necessarily expect a refund, just own up to it and apologize. "Sorry that we missed these items, we'll make changes to ensure this doesn't happen again" is a good enough response instead of leaving me on 'read' and ghosting me. I now do not have a method of communication with my maker for any questions as I've left my last message as a question regarding the missing items and don't want to delete the message and push it under the rug. I've resorted to asking other Pyrope costumers for questions about my Fursuit instead of the maker themselves.

Our initial communication with them was speedy, but future communication with them is very inconsistent. I would expect it to take 2-3 business days to respond, but this was rarely the case. More often, responses were weeks and months apart. The longest I had to wait for a response to one of my messages was a month and 4 days, which is simply unacceptable. How can I be confident in the timely and quality completion of my Fursuit if they don't update me in that long?

Pyrope utilizes a Trello board for updates and most the time this simply was not helpful. Often times items would be set to "Complete" however no messages or pictures were sent to us and it turns out these were simply incorrect. For the longest time, my tail's status was set to "Complete", however upon further inspection this was not the case and Pyrope was only in the design phase. I feel like they set the statuses on here as a means to deceive us into work being done on our suits. The Trello board's individual Fursuit statuses are not accurate and should not followed.

There was also a Telegram channel that Pyrope would use to post updates to their clients. This was a fairly active channel with regular updates early on in my commission process, but really ended up slowing down this year. The scariest thing was, this year, there were often cryptic (And often in Spanish) messages about the maker losing motivation to work on suits anymore, and when asked about this they seemed to push it under the rug. These messages don't do a good job of instilling confidence in our maker. We often worried that we wouldn't even receive our Fursuit. Life happens, I get it and I appreciate the updates on those situations and it's normal to feel burnt out, but please try and give us some confidence that work will continue to happen. If you want to take some time off, that's totally an acceptable recourse but tell us that. Something like "Sorry everyone, I've experienced some burnout lately and will be taking some time off to recover. My colleagues will continue working on Fursuits in the meantime. I expect to return in 2 weeks. Thanks for your understanding".

My advice to Pyrope would be to:
-Dedicate time every week to update every client on their status. Even if there aren't any updates to provide, at least provide a rough estimate on when we can expect to receive an update. Something as simple as "Hey! Just letting you know we're still actively working on your suit and you should have an update for you in 2-3 weeks.". Instead of leaving us in silence and having us wonder when we can expect to hear.
-They also need to work on their response to constructive criticism from clients and own up to their mistakes instead of pushing them under the rug.
-If you're lacking the staff to properly update clients and address criticisms, then raise your prices and hire another member. Your prices are already quite cheap in the realm of Fursuits and I'd be willing to pay more for the quality of the suit, especially if we received better service.

I want nothing more than to praise Pyrope for the love they put into my Fursuit, but I can't do that with how poor the customer service part was.

My advice to Pyrope would be to underpromise and overdeliver. Way over estimate on the delivery of the Fursuit and exceed our expectation by completing it either on time or before that date. Be realistic with your timelines and expect there to be unexpected delays and plan for that. I'd rather have an accurate ETA than one that is very inaccurate, even if it's 2 years in the future.