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On October 25 2011 01:48 Djzapz wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Just a bit of background to those who may not be aware of the previous history of StarcraftMecca. ***Much of what I'm saying is speculative and based on what kOre has reported*** (TLDR at bottom)
kOre, the owner of that site tried to do something good for the community, while (presumably) making relatively little profit. I don't think he's ever had a very deep bank account given that he's in his 20's and in school, I believe.
1-
The first sale was CJ Entus - he sold various items, including a jacket and some shirts. Unfortunately, the huge boxes were marked as worth $1, which got them held at customs and ultimately forced him to pay additional fees (which perhaps were not calculated into the price he charged his customers). On top of that, one box got opened in transit and some of the merchandise slipped out - we're talking about many jackets which were rather expensive plus shirts. Ultimately, I was lucky and got my jacket (although months late due to MANY various delays) and my shirt which was missing was refunded as store credit - though we had an option to get a direct refund from HIS POCKET.
Costs to him (and his partner who left the project later): Customs + Lost items. He's probably losing money overall.
2-
Later on there was the Hwaseung sale and I ordered stuff again... Customs held the packages again. They held the stuff for a LONG time because kOre was under investigation for fraud because shipping had taken such a long time and many impatient people filed fraud report. Frankly, I can hardly blame them because k0re is insanely hard to get in touch with sometimes and his answers are not always satisfying. In fact, kOre's estimates were consistently too liberal. After months waiting, kOre finally got to meet with a customs agent or whatever the hell those things are called. Turns out, none of the merchandise had the "made in Korea" tag written on it, which is against some BS Canadian regulations. The merchandise, worth thousands of dollars, got shipped back to Korea.
Now, most of the refunds for that merchandise have gone through but the merchandise can't be sold at the same price given that Hwaseung Oz is dead. Plus, shipping to him would cost another few hundreds and importation fees.
Costs to him: Everything. Thousands of dollars here, for sure.
3-
Slayers sale: Many people ordered, Jessica flipped out and the whole thing got stomped. kOre had to refund all the orders.
Costs to him: Whatever fees are involved in the payment/refund process. Probably not that much, but an annoyance for sure.
4-
I don't know much about the GSL shirts sale, I personally wasn't interested, but they were relatively "cheap". There's no way he would recover the losses he incurred in the 3 previous sales. It's not the first time kOre completely cut contacts with his customers for a while (I know he went to Blizzcon). He should come back soon I'd guess.
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StarcraftMecca has had an extremely rough start, which undoubtedly puts an incredible strain on kOre's finances. It's his fault to a certain extent (or completely). Running a business is hard - running a business alone with school+job is really hard. I'm not making an excuse for him, arguably he's screwing up hard, but I strongly believe that he's never had any intentions of scamming people. If you don't have your GSL stuff, it's probably coming slowly. If you don't have your Hwaseung Oz refund, maybe there was a mistake or he just doesn't have the money to refund you or something.
I know that in his position, many adventurous young folks wanting to become business-people would have to file for bankruptcy here to be able to move on with their life.
That said, I've been in that position twice and I feel your pain. Doing business with StarcraftMecca hasn't been easy and I hope your issues get resolved.
As much as I want to agree with you on this, not contacting his customers despite receiving hundreds of emails, going to these events that cost a decent amount of money and putting his business on halt, and not refunding items nearly a year over-due is just wrong. You can talk this kid up as much as you can, but what his done is pretty terrible. Why start a business that you can't handle? Nobody had a knife to his throat saying he had to do this. He could of closed it down when he started having problems with the business(CJ Entus gear).
It seems half the posts in this thread is people saying k0re is a good person, and the other half angry with the lack of communication from k0re.
I'm siding with the lack of communication from k0re. He might be a good person, but what he has done is wrong. If you want to run a business then you put in 100% effort or this shit happens. You don't take 'breaks' from your business when hundreds of people are mobbing at your doorstep for refunds, or just answers.
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On October 25 2011 04:18 Character wrote:
I recognize Djzapz and Wubbles name from the StarcraftMecca website. I think we were in this from the start. As Chill as, Kore is one guy trying to run a fairly time consuming business while in school. I think it was a little much to take on.
I was communicating with Kore on a frequently basis at first but haven't been able to reach him over the last couple months. I was involved in the first CJ order and was one of the unlucky ones who had his stuff fall out of the box and had to get refunded. An effort was to get my money back to me and there was open communication.
Like everyone else involved with the Hwaseung orders there was a problem with the whole order and it needed to be sent back to Korea. I was actively visiting the site and in contact with Kore but never received my refund. The last message I got was him saying there was an issue with his merchant and he needed to process some refunds separately, but it would take a week to show up; that was a month ago. The biggest problem is the lack of communication now. I don’t mind if he says, “I’m broke, and it’s going to take time to pay everyone back.” As long as there is some sort of payment plan where we can see what’s going on.
Also, the reason why we can’t bring this to his site is because it’s just a Wordpress site and every comment needs to be approved by the owner. Of course, nothing has been approved so we weren’t able to communicate with each other. I’m glad this thread got started so I can see it wasn’t just me.
UPDATE!!!!
Just got an email from him saying he will be sending my refund with a screenshot of the transaction tonight. Looks like he's starting to sort this out hopefully.
Lack of communication has been the theme for starcraftmecca/kore. The sad part of this all is, every time there's been an issue with communication, things have to escalate this far to finally get an answer. And when he finally does update you, you would think he'd make the effort to be more active with his updates and learn from his mistakes, but it never seems to be the case.
**EDIT**
Also, another reason we have a hard time communicating with him on his site is, he always purges the forums, blog posts, accounts, etc so unless someone has been actively logging everything, there's no real way to reference information regarding the orders.
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On October 25 2011 04:39 iControlYou wrote:Or kOre should close sc mecca and everyone should just order from primezzang its much much better
But primezzang only sells prime gear? derrrrp.
what about those who are after cj entus/bw team gear?
i'm still waiting for for my refund on slayers shirts. it's been too long.
i've talked to him a fair amount a few months ago, he's not a bad guy. friendly enough when we talk. He definitely needs to fix this though.
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seems he is answering emails so i am thinking this thread is actually helping 
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after reading all this, thank god i didnt put in an order.
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got a mail from k0re :
+ Show Spoiler +No worries, completely understandable, consider it done by today then. StarCraftMecca CEO - Edwin Jung Website - http://starcraftmecca.netEmail - starcraftmecca@hotmail.com Cell - 1-403-918-3847 스타크래프트메카 - 정원교 사이트 - http://starcraftmecca.net이메일 - starcraftmecca@hotmail.com 전화 - 1-403-918-3847
now lets hope its for real and i actually get the refund WILL REPLY IF I GET ONE !!!
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On October 25 2011 04:51 MonkSEA wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 01:48 Djzapz wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Just a bit of background to those who may not be aware of the previous history of StarcraftMecca. ***Much of what I'm saying is speculative and based on what kOre has reported*** (TLDR at bottom)
kOre, the owner of that site tried to do something good for the community, while (presumably) making relatively little profit. I don't think he's ever had a very deep bank account given that he's in his 20's and in school, I believe.
1-
The first sale was CJ Entus - he sold various items, including a jacket and some shirts. Unfortunately, the huge boxes were marked as worth $1, which got them held at customs and ultimately forced him to pay additional fees (which perhaps were not calculated into the price he charged his customers). On top of that, one box got opened in transit and some of the merchandise slipped out - we're talking about many jackets which were rather expensive plus shirts. Ultimately, I was lucky and got my jacket (although months late due to MANY various delays) and my shirt which was missing was refunded as store credit - though we had an option to get a direct refund from HIS POCKET.
Costs to him (and his partner who left the project later): Customs + Lost items. He's probably losing money overall.
2-
Later on there was the Hwaseung sale and I ordered stuff again... Customs held the packages again. They held the stuff for a LONG time because kOre was under investigation for fraud because shipping had taken such a long time and many impatient people filed fraud report. Frankly, I can hardly blame them because k0re is insanely hard to get in touch with sometimes and his answers are not always satisfying. In fact, kOre's estimates were consistently too liberal. After months waiting, kOre finally got to meet with a customs agent or whatever the hell those things are called. Turns out, none of the merchandise had the "made in Korea" tag written on it, which is against some BS Canadian regulations. The merchandise, worth thousands of dollars, got shipped back to Korea.
Now, most of the refunds for that merchandise have gone through but the merchandise can't be sold at the same price given that Hwaseung Oz is dead. Plus, shipping to him would cost another few hundreds and importation fees.
Costs to him: Everything. Thousands of dollars here, for sure.
3-
Slayers sale: Many people ordered, Jessica flipped out and the whole thing got stomped. kOre had to refund all the orders.
Costs to him: Whatever fees are involved in the payment/refund process. Probably not that much, but an annoyance for sure.
4-
I don't know much about the GSL shirts sale, I personally wasn't interested, but they were relatively "cheap". There's no way he would recover the losses he incurred in the 3 previous sales. It's not the first time kOre completely cut contacts with his customers for a while (I know he went to Blizzcon). He should come back soon I'd guess.
______
StarcraftMecca has had an extremely rough start, which undoubtedly puts an incredible strain on kOre's finances. It's his fault to a certain extent (or completely). Running a business is hard - running a business alone with school+job is really hard. I'm not making an excuse for him, arguably he's screwing up hard, but I strongly believe that he's never had any intentions of scamming people. If you don't have your GSL stuff, it's probably coming slowly. If you don't have your Hwaseung Oz refund, maybe there was a mistake or he just doesn't have the money to refund you or something.
I know that in his position, many adventurous young folks wanting to become business-people would have to file for bankruptcy here to be able to move on with their life.
That said, I've been in that position twice and I feel your pain. Doing business with StarcraftMecca hasn't been easy and I hope your issues get resolved.
As much as I want to agree with you on this, not contacting his customers despite receiving hundreds of emails, going to these events that cost a decent amount of money and putting his business on halt, and not refunding items nearly a year over-due is just wrong. You can talk this kid up as much as you can, but what his done is pretty terrible. Why start a business that you can't handle? Nobody had a knife to his throat saying he had to do this. He could of closed it down when he started having problems with the business(CJ Entus gear). It seems half the posts in this thread is people saying k0re is a good person, and the other half angry with the lack of communication from k0re. I'm siding with the lack of communication from k0re. He might be a good person, but what he has done is wrong. If you want to run a business then you put in 100% effort or this shit happens. You don't take 'breaks' from your business when hundreds of people are mobbing at your doorstep for refunds, or just answers.
You're completely misunderstanding me, I think that if you read what I said, you can see that I'm not talking kOre up, I'm merely saying that I don't think he's trying to scam anyone. Yes he's been doing a terrible job and people deserve to be treated better.
As for "Why start a business you can't handle", like 50% of businesses fail after 1 year and over 90% of businesses fail after 5 years. People think they can handle it, turns out they can't.
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Sounds like he got in over his head.
Buyer beware though.
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Is there anyway I can get a KT Rolster T-shirt, just like the one Flash has? I'd pay a lot for that ...
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On October 25 2011 06:10 SolidGasPro wrote:
Is there anyway I can get a KT Rolster T-shirt, just like the one Flash has? I'd pay a lot for that ...
Maybe you will be able to pay for one, but you won't get it xD (just kidding)
I hope all of this will get solved, I kind of scared to order something atm.
I know this may not be the right place, but does anyone know why it is that hard to find jersey of korean teams? (BW and SC2?) They just don't want to make money or what?
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They probably don't want to deal with inventory, shipping, customs, etc... all the things that people are complaining about here. I don't think they'd sell enough to just drop ship them from some warehouse and they'd likely want to keep it in house? The ratio of hassle and cost to potential profit is probably not worth it.
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Korea (South)1081 Posts
Hmm, thanks for the posts/thread... I'll make sure I don't order from this site.
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On October 23 2011 07:05 aike wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2011 06:27 Fadetowhite wrote:On October 23 2011 06:22 FryktSkyene wrote:
Hes scamming people? What a douche. he is not scamming people it is more like he does not know how to run a company and doesnt have the time to run it, but he made it seem like he did. so when a deal fell through ( OZ orders ) he was slapped with refunds and i am guessing he got a bit greedy and spend most of the money before he actually shipped anything.so now he has to refund thousands of dollars but no bank to actually refund it all. so that leaves people like me (400 dollars  ) in the situation of him not being able to refund but no longer able to file a dispute cause of the time passed. at first it was all good cause he kept in touch via site / pms on TL / emails but lately it has been complete lights out and havent heard of k0re in weeks. and to hear he went to IPL when he owes you 400 dollars is a bit of a slap in the face to say the least. This is pretty much it. His heart was always in the right place, it's just that his mind wasn't. He's a good guy for sure, but he got into a business and had a business model that was just not a very good idea. Selling team shirts is great, but you should do it right. Buy the shirts first, and then sell them to people... get a business loan if you have to.
Anyone who owes people money and then dodges them is not a 'good person' or someone who 'has their heart in the right place' for me.
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Oh, shame
Whatever, I have to do a business project for my school and I would like to do it on an online store selling team jersey. So, I will look at that in the next few months, and if it looks doable, I'll do it for real 
Good luck to everyone facing problems with scmecca...
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I wanted to buy the Oz jackets, but thank god my starsense has told me to not buy it. Hope you guys get your stuff/refunds : (
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His biggest problem though is not communicating well enough. It's even ok to say "I only answer mails on saturday". But then he has to answer them on saturday (holidays are ok as long as they dont happen too often; IPL & Blizzcon are ok).
[deleted bunch of stuff ... honestly not worth discussing sry^^]
If he actually didnt register SCmecca as a busisness and is accountable with his private wealth... I just feel very very sorry for him. And that would be the #1 sign of him not wanting to scam anyone, but that a young kid just overestimated himself / underestimated the effort to run a company.
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UPDATE!!!!
Just got an email from him saying he will be sending my refund with a screenshot of the transaction tonight. Looks like he's starting to sort this out hopefully.
Yeah, I got the same email. I'm not cheering until the money's back on my account. Please keep this thread going until we see this thing through.
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+ Show Spoiler +An email will be sent out around 10 PM MST with a screenshot of the a payment sent to your credit card via my credit card. It should not take longer than a week to go through.
According to this I should've been given a screenshot of the payment by now. Still NOTHING. I'll be back tomorrow with an update on this.
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On October 26 2011 03:06 eleganten wrote:Show nested quote +
UPDATE!!!!
Just got an email from him saying he will be sending my refund with a screenshot of the transaction tonight. Looks like he's starting to sort this out hopefully.
Yeah, I got the same email. I'm not cheering until the money's back on my account. Please keep this thread going until we see this thing through.
still nothing on my end, and the refund should be going to a paypal acc so it should instantly show up if i am correct?
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I live in Calgary as well (Where the site operates) and when ordered my GSL shirt in August had made arrangements to pick it up from him at the University instead of wasting the extra $17 on Shipping and handling. I was told on the 17th of October it had arrived here and would be shipped to me in time for Blizzcon. Still nothing ......
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EPT
