The Sailor Moon Pocky Box : Articles
The Bunny Tsukou Saga: Sat's Testimonial
My dealings with what would come be known as "Bunny Tsukou" actually started early this year (2006). My friend Luna (that is her nickname only guys, and only certain people are allowed to call her that because of Bunny...) told me about a girl she met online that has been screwed over by another seamstress out of a Princess Serenity costume. I felt sorry for her but also saw a business opportunity and I approached Bunny per Luna's request.
She immediately didn't give a damn about me as a seamstress but rather wanted me to be in her "cosplay group".... even though I told her I could NOT make it to Anime Expo because I can't afford something like that. I finally agreed to be in her group just to get her to leave me alone about it. Suddenly, she was all over wanting me to make costumes for her.
Bunny, even though she plays the retard card is indeed very smart. She told me how she was planning to go to Setsuna Kou for her costumes since she was afraid of anybody else. I told her that I had enough clients to back my work that she didn't need to worry and that I would rather see that she put her money to some GOOD use instead of going to that sweatshop of a woman. (Sorry but anybody that looks at Setsuna Kou's "work" can see it is crap... there are threads upon threads about her at cosplay.com and how she does craptacular work.)
Well of course Bunny immediately wanted me to make her a Princess Serenity dress. I asked her which type and when she would need it for. She told me that she wanted the manga version and in time for Anime Expo 2006. Knowing that I would be pushed timewise to do it I was hesitant but I took the order because I felt sorry for her. I quoted her a price of $450 since the bodice details would have to all be handstitched. She tried to get that price down by stating "well Setsuna Kou can do it for $200". I told her that if she wanted that price that I couldn't do it and that I wouldn't come down on the price because I would already be taking a ratecut as it was on this order. She agreed and I drew up the contract. Her payments were set to be paid in two installments. The first payment would be sent with the contract for $200 and then another to follow in the amount of $250 two weeks from then.
All payments were made on time and the contract signed and returned just as it was set up. She told me how excited she was when she was sending out the second/last payment. The money order wasn't even cashed yet when she had asked me "so how is my dress coming"....
Alright time out!
Any commissioner will tell you how they generally work on a slot system. Meaning that each person that is booked for a costume is booked for a single slot. Once those slots are full that is it. However it is rare that a slot is worked on ahead of time because most of us book our slots close together. As such some of us that tend to be in higher demand book up rather fast. I currently book on a six to eight month lead time. Meaning that you have to book that far in advance just to secure a slot with me. All of my other customers seem to realize this.... but not Bunny. At the time that her order was placed, I was only booking around three to four months in advance. She booked in February and finished paying in March for her order to be completed by the middle of June. I told her from the get go that her dress would not even be started until sometime around the end of May or early June. This was because I was working on some orders for some people as well as I wanted to make a costume for myself in time for Anime North at the end of May. This never happened because of some unforeseen problems that came up.
However even knowing all of this, she asked me not even a week after sending her payment in March how her dress was coming along?! What the flying fuck is that?
I took it calmly and reminded her when it would be started. All seemed fine until she asked the same question less than a week later.... she did this no less than half a dozen more times before I finally told her that if she asked me again I would cancel her order without a refund as per my contract. She didn't ask again... until the end of May. I told her I was taking a day off from being at a con all weekend and driving four hours back from Toronto before starting her dress and she actually got mad at me! She claimed that I was trying to scam her and that I said I would get to work on it right after getting back from the con!..... if you have ever been to a con you can probably understand why I just closed my notebook and went to bed. I had run around in 90 degree heat all weekend in a long sleeved outfit and no skin uncovered while teaching panels as well as participating in events and a live concert that I attended..... I was TIRED.... but don't tell her that...
Early June was a hard time for me. My father-in-law that lives with me and my husband suffered a major heart attack without any of us knowing it and was literally dying in our living room. We had to rush him to the hospital and were there every day for almost two solid weeks until he was released. The entire time I was still steadily working on her dress. The entire bodice of the dress had to have the details handstitched including the stringing of beads by hand since I couldn't find the right size already prestrung. As such I was limiting myself to three hours per day of handstitching so as not to set off my carpal tunnel and then be rendered useless for an entire day or more.... This happened anyway....
With everything going on and my father-in-law coming home and having to be taken care of day in and day out, I asked Bunny for a time extension but promised that it would be to her in time for Anime Expo. This I did deliver on. She received the dress the night before she was to leave and didn't even try it on before packing it.... I had to BEG her to do so and when she did she said that it fit perfectly and that she was very happy with it.
I went on my merry way and proceeded to take a week off before starting my next order that wasn't due for a bit yet. And then suddenly I got a message on AIM from her friend "Diana". She proceeded to tell me how Bunny's dress hadn't fit her at all and that Bunny had just said that to "get me off her back"...... huh?! Get who of of what?! Yeah ok.... whatever. Except that I make it VERY clear on my site in the measuring section "Most of these measurements are best to be done by somebody else with a tailors tape." That means you don't fucking measure yourself! Which of course Bunny did.... and didn't tell ME this.... Furthermore she knew full well going in that I didn't have a dressform that fit her particular body size and I had to work flat so her measurments needed to be as accurate as possible to fit properly.
Diana proceeded to go off on me about this and that and how I charged her too much for the dress and what not....except that I have seen "Diana's" work and I am not impressed. I didn't even charge Bunny my regular wage on her costume and yet I am charging too much? In Michigan a standard tailor's wage is $25/hour. I made around $6/hour on Bunny's order.... but I charged too much? Yeah I fail to see how this works out considering that isn't even minimum wage according to Michigan's law.....
I got angry and told Bunny that it was bullshit to sick her friend on me like some dog and that I didn't appreciate it. She told me that she didn't sick Diana on me but that her friend had just been concerned and that she didn't have anybody else to measure her and blah blah blah.... excuse after excuse.... I should have known but trying to be a good person I pretty much let it go.... in true Mimette fashion... I posted Diana's conversation on my LJ for the world to see how retarded it all was. If people chose to message her, that wasn't my problem. You shouldn't act like a badass if you can't take the heat.
Peace remained for all of about a day before Bunny was bugging me about another costume. She said she didn't mind the fit of the original dress and that she actually didn't see what was wrong with it.... ok. She wanted me to make another costume for her. This time she said she wanted Usagi's manga wedding dress. If you EVER read my cosplay.com profile you will note that it reads that my dream is to make a wedding dress so I JUMPED on this as quickly as I could. She once again tried the Setsuna Kou tactic.
I was a bit bothered by this as it seemed to be adding up to some sort of pattern as every time she talked to me about a potential costume she quoted what SK was charging.... That didn't make me happy in the least but being in this business that can be quite competitive, I took what I could get. She told me immediately that SK had quoted her $300 (there is more about this later) which included the whole shebang. That was the dress, veil, shoes, bouquet, and jewelry.
You can all imagine how I responded to this.... I laughed myself stupid. There is no way I can afford the bridal satin, shear, the flowers, and the shoes for that price let alone any charge for labor. I knew she was either stupid or thought that I was.... I don't fucking think so. Go into ANY bridal boutique and see how much the dresses go for alone without any of the accessories or the amount of detailing it takes to put that many flowers on a dress....
I told her that there was no way that I could do the dress for that price and that if she wanted a price like that she needed to look elsewhere. She then proceeded to ask me what my price would be on something like that. Initially I quoted her $1200 which would NOT include jewelry. Previously with her princess dress I had hand cast sterling silver jewelry set with cabachone rose quartz and moonstone as accessories. I did these as my final project for my jewelry class and thusly earned myself an A in the course. However I am no longer in that course and I made this very clear.
The pricetag I quoted her would cover the dress, veil, shoes, and bouquet. Shipping to her from me was also factored into the $1200 pricetag. I didn't put in there that the fabric I would be using would cost $30-$40/yard because it would be ACTUAL bridal satin from a specialty sewing shop. With 10 yards of fabric needed, that put the pricetag for fabric alone at over $300. That didn't factor in the roses I would have to buy or any of the other articles in the costume.
She told me that she couldn't afford that price and that she would have to go somewhere else. This being a dream costume for me, I decided to take a cut on labor and dropped her price down to $800 for the setup, once again outlining what was included in that price. She was elated and asked for a contract. I drew up the contract right away and sent it over to her. She said that she would need a payment plan like before and I told her that the original payment plan of $200 every other week was more than fine she agreed happily and soon sent me the contract in the mail.
Two weeks passed and I received no payment. Another week and nothing. The following week I received my first payment.... except it wasn't. It was a money order for $100. Being reasonable I figured that she had a hard week and that she just wanted to secure her slot so I accepted it. I asked her about this and she said that that was indeed the case and that the next payment would be the remaining $100 from the first one on top of the $200 from the next one.
That never happened. Two weeks went by and I never received a payment. I asked about this and she said she sent it... ok.... only for another week to go by and her to tell me that she had it returned to her because she forgot to put a stamp on it and that she would send it out with the other money order right away.
I received an envelope a week later for yet another $100..... NOT WHAT WAS AGREED UPON! See wedding materials are seasonal. There are more weddings in the summer than there are in the winter and as such the fabric price goes up in the winter because they don't order as much.... Bunny didn't grasp this concept.
Three weeks later I received another $110 payment via Paypal.... once again not was agreed upon because Paypal eats almost 3% of every payment to me.... So I took a rather hefty hit on that. I didn't complain because she was at least sending it.... though slowly and not on schedule. I received one more payment for $100 around two weeks later...
I waited almost another month before I saw another payment. The ONLY reason i think I ever received one was because Luna stepped in. Luna seems to be the only person that can get through to Bunny and as such decided to help me out. She took $150 of her own money and Paypaled it over to try to help out both me and Bunny. She also went into Bunny's account and sent another $75 from Bunny's own bank account leaving Bunny with a grand total of $165 left to pay on the order.
Luna had no doubt that Bunny would pay her back so she did this in good faith. Bunny was left with just finishing off the payments and that would be it. Unfortunately in this time a few things went out of season.... like the fabric... so the price almost doubled and hit $50/yard which I couldn't afford so I told her the dress would then be made out of the same fabric as her princess dress. She said that was fine. However the shoes also went out of stock.... so I would have to order those?
Now backing up a bit. Shortly after she asked for the contract and the price she had also inquired about an Eternal Sailor Moon costume as well. I gave her a quote and I received a contract. The plan was for her to pay off the wedding dress and then pay off the Eternal Sailor Moon costume right after.... after having such problems with payment I told her I would no longer make this costume for her and would consider her contract null and void since she couldn't keep to a payment plan to save her life. She said that was fine and that she would just have her "Mina" make it for her.
I JUST received Bunny's last payment around 3 weeks ago (beginning of November) and not even a week after I put it in the bank she literally asked me "so how is my dress coming along?"..... This time I lost it on her. I told her flat out that her slot was set for January of 2007 and that it wouldn't be started until then at the earliest. I also told her that if she asked me one more thing pertaining to it I would reject her order and send her nothing but a box of materials. She quickly shut up about it.
It was just this week that Luna received her payment from Bunny (think Thanksgiving time or end of November) and only after I literally told Bunny I would be holding her dress hostage until she paid Bunny and that if she didn't get it to her by January she forfeited her order. I had also had to use this tactic with her last payment. I told her that she had until November 15th to have a money order in my hands for the remainder of the amount which she almost didn't meet.
Now while waiting for the last payment I was rather frustrated and posted as such publicly on my livejournal pertaining to all of this. I suddenly had people coming out of the woodwork wanting to tell their stories about runins with Bunny. I even found an address pertaining to her previous seamstress who ended up in the hospital because of Bunny's pestering and putting stress on her. This seamstress confirmed that Bunny had indeed used the Setsuna Kou practice on her as well but that she claimed SK quoted her $500 for the wedding dress. Is any of this looking odd to you? Didn't she tell me that SK quoted her $300?
More digging proved to show that Bunny has used this on at least one other seamstress and then screamed "scam!" and "crap!" when those seamstresses bailed on her. Finding all of this out left a very sour feeling in my stomach. I posted on cosplay.com as well as talked to some other people on different communities that I belong to about this situation and every person told me the same thing:
"She broke the contract, you owe her nothing. Besides she sounds nuts and manipulative, ditch her."
Thinking of this, I decided that that was the best course of action. I messaged Bunny about this and she said that it was fine for me to send back the materials. I made it clear that I wouldn't be giving a refund either as that is what my contract states as well as the fact that I would be hanging onto the contract just in case she got any wild ideas about going to court or the like. She claimed she wouldn't but since this girl plays dumb moreso than IS dumb I figured I wouldn't trust that and hung onto it anyway.
Then came today... Today I found this love livejournal entry from her beloved 'Mina' who can't sew for dirt as is. It reads:
"I will now excersize the power to write whatever I want in Mai-livejournal. I'll warn you all in advance, I am fiercely loyal to Mai-friends so when someone goes out on a limb to discredit someone who I care about and makes me cry too, I WILL have something to say about it. But I won't do it by attacking you; I'll do it by defending her. You'll notice that I, too, am not friends-locking this post.
I didn't even meet bunnytsukou face to face and she befriended me. She asked me to be her Sailor Venus at Anime Expo and she didn't know what I looked like. She didn't see ANY pictures of me in costume. I didn't ask her; She asked me! Does that sound like a shallow person to you? No! She is kind, caring and generous. Anyone who truly knows her knows that she is anything but a diva. And yet, there is someone out there who DARED to call her ugly! I've said this before, and I will say it again: NONE OF MAI-FRIENDS ARE UGLY!!! Anyone who is beautiful on the inside shouldn't be judged as ugly at all. If you can't see that you are seriously SHALLOW!!!
I'm not saying that she's perfect, nobody is. She's only human like the rest of us, but to say hurtful things you did about her for petty reasons! I can't let that slide!
No matter what you do, people will talk and start drama. It's unavoidable. Just keep in mind that nothing you say will make me drop her as a friend. I will stand by her even if I stand alone because that's what true friends do. And if this is all I can do to help a friend in need, then I WILL do it. Throw all of the rocks you want at me...I'm not afraid of persecution.
Bunny, please don't cry, because I LOVE YOU and I would love to be your new seamstress. I promise to never overcharge and to always put a zipper in the garments I make for you."
Not only is this person a flaming idiot for their use of bastardized Engrish, but at the same time, this is somebody who can't sew, has dreams of cosplay ambition (LOL!), as well as is nothing but a sheep. However I am sure that this person will soon learn that Bunny is nothing but a manipulative psycho Usagi Kou wannabe!
Did I fail to mention that even though Bunny knew that her dress was slated for January she even asked me to make a King Endymion costume for her "boyfriend" (who I hear can't stand her...) for Xmas? I told her flat out that I can't do it and yet she tried the SK tactic on me as well. I told her "please go to SK then cause I can't do it!" Only for her to post less than a day later on livejournal that "Mina" was going to do it for her.... good luck there chickie. I have seen your 'work' and it is laughable at best. I would go to SK before I would go to you.
I have provided screencaps of the livejournal post just in case this person decides to pull the entry or lock it. You all know how I love to post screencaps afterall.
Notice how Bunny once again plays the innocent one. However I should state that this entry of the retard is in response to what I posted about a week ago. My post reads:
"Hey Bunny, You are a little too late on the draw. Deleting comments and taking me off the maintainership of the community doesn't do you much since I already have the screencaps from it all for the article that is in the works on you. You didn't think you were going to get away with your shit forever did you? I warned you from the beginning nothing is sacred and that if I found out that the drama I was hearing was true I would report on it and I am finding it very true. Thanks for lying to me, as well as trying to bully me into costumes with the Setsuna Kou card like you did to multiple other seamstresses. So what price was it that she really quoted you for the wedding dress? You claimed $500 to another person and then $300 to me. How many more people are you going to try to scam in claiming shit like that? Don't worry I have the testimonials to go up on the site and you won't really be able to buy a costume too many places after all of that goes up. Good luck with your "cosplay" and your fantasy that you live in. I plan to contact everybody that wants to be in your "group" and let them know what you are REALLY like. Oh and please realize, you are fucking hideous and really shouldn't be cosplaying Usagi to begin with. You look nothing like her. You also need some serious fucking mental help.
-Sat
PS: Oh and if you haven't realized, you have been defriended, and with good reason. A lesser person wouldn't even do your dress but I stick to MY commitments regardless of the situation."
I pulled no stops on this girl. I was fed up and frankly, I don't care anymore. But since she wants to play the idiot card to her "friends", I am now playing the asshole seamstress card. You won't be receiving any materials Bunny.... none at all. The saddest part about this is that because I have shown my case and proven it as such I don't have to worry about the cries of scammer. I WILL however send back your princess serenity dress. That much is at least yours. I just hope you don't tear it apart like you did to TWO of your Neo Queen Serenity dresses.
That is all I have for a testimonial, however I am sure that by now it is more than enough. Please have a read at some of the other testimonials, the screencaps, and if you have a story to tell please do so. Get the word out about this girl. She is trouble.