Reviews About LimeBarb
Reviews from customers about Barbara Staples' LimeBarb cosplay costume commission quality, customer service and personal conduct.
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(06/14/06) - Letter Campaign - Prevent Limebarb From Judging At TsubasaCon (02/16/06) - Limebarb missed a deadline, and pushed back customer costumes to complete costumes for herself and friends - Sends fake tracking numbers? (10/20/05) - Proof that Limebarb intentionally missed customer deadlines to complete personal costumes for her and her friends, and lied about it. (08/30/05) - Evidence that Limebarb has faked computer outages to avoid angry customers, and issuing refunds. | |
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Public Complaint on Cosplay.com |
Public Complaint |
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Anime Central Posts 05-13-04 to 05-19-04 |
Anime Central Posts 01-11-05 to 02-06-05 |
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01-21-05 to 02-06-05 |
Public Webpage Reviews |
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LiveJournal Entry |
Public Reviews on Cosplay.com |
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Public Webpage |
Public Post on Cosplay.com |
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Email Submission (Added June 2006) |
Livejournal Thread (Added June 2006) |
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LiveJournal Entry |
LiveJournal Entry |
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LiveJournal Entry |
Email Submission |
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Public Complaint |
Public Complaint |
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Public Complaint on Cosplay.com |
LiveJournal Entry |
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Email Submission |
Public Post |
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(04/14/06) Letter Campaign - Prevent Limebarb From Judging At TsubasaCon By OrochiYamazaki - (Edited by Sal Bandini) According to LimebarbCosplay.com, Tsubasacon intends to have Limebarb as guest judges for their 2006 masquerade. I have already politely written in to the Tsubasacon chairpersons requesting that they reconsider associating themselves with thieves like Limebarb, who hurt the cosplay community. I know a lot of people on my friends list have been burned by Limebarb, or know someone who has... Frankly, I think everyone in the entire cosplay community knows someone who was burned by Limebarb... If you have some free time, why not drop the nice folks at Tsubasacon a cordial email suggesting they not work with Limebarb? Vice Chairperson - David Richmond - vicechair@tsubasacon.org Live Programming - Keith Lambert - events@tsubasacon.org Masquerade Organizer - cosplay@tsubasacon.org (02/16/06) Limebarb missed a deadline, and pushed back customer costumes to complete costumes for herself and friends - Sends fake tracking numbers? By "Fat" John Nuara (Edited by Sal Bandini) As of this date, it has been verified that Limebarb Studios has missed one customer deadline, and has pushed back several other costumes of paying customers, so she could complete costumes for her friends and herself. These 6 (possibly 7) costumes were for the premier of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which she and her friends wore. She even photo-documented these costumes, and bragged about how much time and effort she put into making them on Cosplay.com, even though at least one paying customer didn't have their costume in time for a November con (J-Rock Connection) and several other customers didn't have their deadlines met. As these customers tried to contact Limebarb, Barbara Staples had another "mysterious" internet outage (during which time she was still able to post photos of her Kaldea costume and other Harry Potter costumes, further proving she fakes internet outages to avoid customers). During this time, too, Barb had made claims of packages being sent on a certain date. She gave out invalid tracking numbers. If any packages had arrived, they were postmarked days after she had claimed to ship anything, and have completely different tracking numbers. Is Limebarb sending customer fake tracking numbers? The situation is currently under investigation, and findings will be published soon. Proof that Limebarb intentionally missed customer deadlines to complete personal costumes for her and her friends, and lied about it. By Axl Low (Edited by Sal Bandini) During first 3/4ths of 2004, many MANY people did not receive costumes that they paid Limebarb to make for them. Most of those who have publicly complained about it stated that they ordered WELL in advance. Limebarb promised they would have their costumes in time for their respective convention, with time to spare. However, Limebarb did NOT deliver these costumes in time. Several of the complaints on this page were from these very people. There were little or no emails from Limebarb, explaining why these costumes did not ship. On several public forums (including the Anime Central forum which has been archived) it was maintained that Barb had so many customer costumes that she had to complete, and "personal problems" were slowing her down. HOWEVER, it turns out that Barb actually put off the costumes of her customers to finish costumes for herself, Julia, Zach and other friends. Barb and Julia even prove this on their own webpage. Sort through the list of personal costumes on the Limebarb Cosplay webpage, and you'll see that no less than 16 personal costumes were completed for Barb and her friends for Ohayocon 2004 and Anime Iowa 2004. The time leading up to Ohayocon is while she missed most of her customer deadlines in 2004, and many more were missed during the time leading up to Anime Iowa. Barb clearly LIED when she claimed she was doing her best to meet the deadlines, during this period. This is one more example of Barb's hubris catching her in her own lies, and proving she willfully cheated customers. Evidence that Limebarb has faked computer outages to avoid angry customers, and issuing refunds. By Axl Low (Edited by Sal Bandini) Barbara Staples claimed that her one and only computer had a hard drive crash. She claimed that as a result of the crash, she was offline for a period of time, only able to connect periodically from friends' computers. She further stated that she had lost her emails, which meant she lost her current orders and all information about her customers. This resulted in her being unable to complete costumes on-time, or issue timely refunds. She even had this info posted on her webpage. HOWEVER, evidence has been uncovered that indicate that this is a lie. During the period she claimed to have no internet access, she posted several photos of her Morrigan costume on Cosplay.com, from the same account and IP address she had posted from earlier that month, and is very close in range with her past IP addresses before she changed ISPs. Several other people have come forward to say they had indeed received emails from Barb during this period. The headers of this email further prove that they originated from her regular IP address, from a computer bearing the same name as her usual computer, sent from the same email client as she uses at a time and date that she was likely at home. The content of one of these emails indicates she still had access to the contents of her hard drive. She also popped up on her AIM account a few times during this period, but promptly went offline when someone instant messaged her. This evidence indicates that she either lied about the duration of her outage, lied about the extent of her computer problems, or that she outright lied about having computer problems to begin with. This alleged computer problem happens to coincide with a period when Barb was getting complaints from various customers, and leading up to when she would be missing several customer deadlines for Otakon. It should also be noted that while she was unable to complete at least one customer costume for Otakon, she somehow managed to finish a Final Fantasy 4 Rosa costume for herself, which she admitted to spending considerable amounts of time creating on Cosplay.com. Barb keeps hanging herself with her own pride. |
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Title: Internet Fraud and Deceptive Practices by Limebarb (Click For Full Thread) Type: A public thread on a public cosplay message board. Date Posted: 02-15-2005, 04:23 PM |
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"I paid her $250 on August 2, 2004 for a Harley Quinn costume to be delivered by Halloween. Today is Feb. 15, 2005 and I still have no costume. She has been ignoring my emails. I posted before on my problem in Cosplay and someone who purchased a costume from Barbara Staples assured me limebarb is "very busy" and "slow." No, that is not slow. That is fraud. To ask for payment in advance, then dump you is more than bad business practice." "B.S. posts weekly on her site all the costumes she makes for herself, all the cons she is going to, and all the prizes she is winning. I have filed a police report on her for Internet Fraud and Deceptive Practices." - LOTUSNEKO (02-15-2005, 04:23 PM) "Alot of other people are complaining about her too, but she never follows through, but the only people currently who are requesting her to help with Cosplay Comissions are probably her friends.... Although, on here, I can't imagine her having any..." - Anna_Chan (02-15-2005, 06:01 PM) |
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Title: Rip-Off Report / Bad Business Bureau Complaint (Click For Full Complaint) Type: Public complaint on consumer protection site. Date Posted: 2/8/2005 3:38:50 PM |
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"...Ms. Staples was still accepting new orders throughout this time, despite missing many orders. Several newer contracts were completed instead of other contracts she was obligated to finish a long time ago. It has also been revealed, on her site, she has been making costumes for herself and her friends, while ignoring those of paid customers." "...there have been inadequate attempts at contacting her customers to notify them of any problems. Frequently, contact requests sent to her by phone, email and mail were ignored." Anna Elmhurst, Illinois U.S.A. |
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Title: Change of plans (BEWARE OF LIMEBARB) pt.1 (Click For Google Cache of Thread) Type: Partial cache of a public thread on the public Anime Central Convention message board. First Post: 05-13-2004, 19:57 Last Post: 05-19-2004, 18:44 Notes: Thread has been recently closed by administration, as it did not fit the model and mood of the board. The forum is a public forum, open to view by anyone. This cache is saved by Google, and FOXHOUND. MD5 Checksums of the thread content prior to deletion, as well as the reputation of Google Cache supports the consistency of these caches. |
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"Please keep in mind that most of the time only one girl makes your costume. When you have more than 10 orders, it can be hard to meet your deadline as my sister found that out rather easily when some ACen con-goers had to be disappointed because she failed to complete a lot of her orders before she was injured." - Amber (05-13-2004, 23:37) "...I didn't have a good order from Lime Barb. I never once said Barb was a bad person, she was really nice to me and all of her costumes are amazing and I only wish that I would of gotten mine on time. I guess the reason I got so sad and upset was because this is my first convention, First cosplay, and I wanted everything to be perfect. Sorry if your taking my statement the wrong way." - London (05-14-2004, 10:04) "I know the Limebarb crew myself..." "It has simply been true that they often accept more orders then they can reasonably handle. Yes, sometimes "things happen". Well, with them these things seem to be happening a lot. Having to go to the hospital so not finishing commisions is one thing, but just being overwhelmed because they made too many promises and took the money... yet again? They use the excuse that they are students and this is a part-time thing- well then MAKE it part-time by not taking in a full-time workload!" "They do ok work, but I think they just need to be more careful on saying they can get something done by a certain time and taking people's money and then reneging on that. It would be better if they just took a step back and realized that they can't do it all." "I myself considered commisioning something from them before, but went with someone else after research turned up that they often fall behind or at times, or because they are rushed, their quality isn't as up to par as their own costumes (which are usually well done though, so I know they are capable). If you aren't happy with the quality you can always send it back and they will fix it for free of course but basically if you're getting it really close to convention, you don't have that time to be sending it back and forth (and I don't like this idea where they would ship things with poor quality- as in the seams aren't even straight- and see if they can get away with it). Another deciding factor for me that made me go somewhere else is that they are known for not checking their email/getting back for a while..." - minakovenus (05-18-2004, 15:20) "...Barb wasn't at ACEN at all. She was at home completing orders for people at the convention. ACEN is very important to her... it is her favorite con, but she chose not to go this year because of her commitments to her customers. So you can also rest assured that she doesn't run off and spend people's money at cons, because she wasn't even there." - Julia (05-19-2004, 13:25) |
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Title: Change of plans (BEWARE OF LIMEBARB) pt.2 (Click For FOXHOUND Cache of Thread) Type: Partial cache of a public thread on the public Anime Central Convention message board. First Post: 01-11-2005, 10:10 Last Post: 02-06-2005, 01:26 Notes: Thread has been recently closed by administration, as it did not fit the model and mood of the board. The forum is a public forum, open to view by anyone. This cache was saved by Google, Yahoo!, and FOXHOUND. MD5 Checksums of the thread content prior to deletion, as well as the reputation of Google Cache supports the consistency of these caches. |
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I think an anime forum is a good place to let others know that they should be wary. In our case, I ordered a costume for my daughter (a small order). It was fabulous. So after having a good experience, I was willing to place a larger order. Bad news. That was December 2003. We haven't received the order. limebarb hasn't responded to our emails since August 2004." "So beware. You could end up like us." - animeMom (01-21-2005, 23:03) - CLICK FOR 05/01/05 UPDATE - "I know that Barb hates to miss her deadline but she overloaded herself to the point where everything fell out of her control." - Amber (01-21-2005, 23:14) "I too have had a situation with the Limebarb business. I ordered a costume $175 worth and was paid fully the instant I got the quote and that was around October 04. I was told I could get the costume on 12/30/04. But since I haven't gotten it I wrote an email checking on the status. I haven't gotten any reply...and as I waited till today 1/23/05 I've written about 4 more emails from time to time and yet still no reply..." "I do believe they are nice people like some say they are...but I work for a living too and this is just a sense of professionalism on how to run a business. You wouldn't want to worry your customers right?" - Ken (01-23-2005, 10:53) "...I know Barb well enough to know she and her staff are not intentionally scamming anyone. It just seems like a scary lack of customer support, poor time management, inexperience, youthful indiscretion and a whole mess of other circumstances contributed to this 30 car pile-up." "It's a really bad situation, but Barb's still a young new businesswoman. Growing pains are bound to happen. Hopefully, she'll learn and mature from this experience, and it all gets worked out in the end." - BigBoss (01-25-2005, 16:05) "I'm not personally attacking them but as business people, they fail. They were very nice in what e-mail responses I got. To be truthful, I got more e-mails while trying to work the deal and money figures...once they got my money...the contact went to almost non existant." " As for customer service and all, Limebarb has done a horrible job. They seem to run the business as amatuers. I can't even vouch for their product since I have nothing to show and their service is far form anything to rave about. When I run my eBay business, customer satisfaction and communication is #1, they need a certain item by a certain date, I make sure it's done." - Lost Decoy (01-31-2005, 00:49) "I've also heard conflicting reports of when she stopped taking on new orders, but I know it was AFTER she was already having problems." "Did ya also know that while so many orders were either "forgotten" or put on the backburner, barb was making butt-hugging pleather costumes for her little boyfriends and all sorts of costumes for her and her friends?" "I lost count after around 15 of all of the costumes she completed for herself or friends for FREE while paid costumes were probably not even a sketch on paper." "My best educated guess is that they made 20+ costuems for free while paid customers waited. Heck,she won an award at an acen while she was holding onto peoples money who had paid for stuff BEFORE she started her peronsla costume." -ActiveBattleSys (02-01-2005, 13:43) "It just seems she is sucking up to new customers, trying to better her name and keep it shiny for them and get their orders done, while screwing over the older orders more and more since well, the late orders are alredy late. It's just not fair to us." "I paid over 2 months before my costume was due, paid in full via Paypal. I followed all their rules for ordering which includes leaving them ample time to complete the orders (which I believe is 8 weeks), plus I ordered during the "slow" season when not many cons were going on." - Lost Decoy (02-02-2005, 23:36) |
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