13 May 2013

Review: Work From Home Miniatures - Too Good To Be True?

Please note: The following is an opinion article and a peer review. It may not reflect the actual business practices of Tiny Details or Christian Miniatures. It is only a first-hand account of what our customer experience was with this company. The following opinions are my own. I have not been paid to post them, nor do I consent to their reproduction or their use in a court of law. Please research these companies before forming your own opinion.

Have you ever visited the Tiny Details website? If so, you're probably familiar with their scheme. You send them a $55 deposit and they send you back a "kit", which consists of a bottle of cheap glue, a cheap razor knife and a few sheets of paper printed from what appears to be an inkjet or laser printer.

You are then supposed to cut out all of these tiny miniatures from the paper, assemble them and send them back for a big reward. In my case? $75 plus my $55 deposit back! AMAZING! All of that for just 100 miniatures? Plus, everything is made in the USA. Props!

My husband and I ordered a kit. I couldn't complete it. I'll admit that, but my husband did an amazing job. He, of course, used his own razor knife because theirs wouldn't cut evenly. Here are some photos of one of the White Chocolate Bars he made...



They look pretty darn good. In fact, they look better than the "sample" item they sent us. They have a policy that you have to send them a sample on your first product in order for it to get approved. My husband sent his sample and received a lovely approval letter. He was good to go!

He then finished all of the chocolate bars (100) and sent them back to Tiny Details. They were shipped back to us a week later with a note that said they weren't good enough. Why? There was too much white showing on the edges. We found 6 bars that matched that description. We fixed them and shipped the bars back (Take note: each time we ship them to Tiny Details we spend $4).

After 9 more days, we received the box in the mail again. This time the letter read that many of our bars weren't put together correctly because they were flattened. We found NONE of the bars matching this description, so I phoned the company. It had now been 40 days since this started, and you only get 60 days to finish your products or you lose your deposit. You have to ask for extra time.

They never returned my call. I left them a total of 3 messages on their answering machine and 4 emails. Nothing. And guess what? The second time, when they sent the items back, they accidentally sent them with the wrong return address - they sent them from Christian Miniatures, their other company. Of course, one would have no idea that these two companies are related except for their similar website designs.

At this point, I decided to do a more in-depth search about Tiny Details. I googled their name and found many similar experiences to my own.

Have you had an experience with Tiny Details? Did your miniatures get approved? Did you receive payment? Leave a comment and let me know the "Details".

Please Note: We decided to review Tiny Details only after a friend in our local area had a bad experience with their customer service. She ordered the calendar kits and was denied four times when sending them back. She, too, lost her deposit as she ran out of time and could not get in touch with Tiny Details.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you reviwed, I'm not gonna purchase then as I was thinking about doing.

I just think you shouldn't have waited a friend have that experience but done this review right away.