Hello everyone.
I had the personal dream of cosplaying as a Helldiver in Titan armor. Earlier this year I was provided with the opportunity to do so and decided with rushed research to purchase a set of armor from Holtsclaw Studios via Etsy. They had good reviews, some interesting sets, a decent website, and a nice Instagram profile.
I negotiated out a deal for 1350 for the armor. Included would be the helmet, armor, baklava, cape, and boots. Holtsclaw would keep in touch with me every step of the way guiding me through this and helping me make design decisions.
I was having issues getting my Etsy account back online as it had been sometime. They immediately directed me to their ‘sister’ site Luster Tavern since it had Shopify enabled, and so ‘a team of artists’ could get it done. Directing me to Luster Tavern should’ve raised a red flag immediately, but in my ignorance I thought that Shopify protected buyers more from scams like this.
The second red flag was that the Luster Tavern site didn’t have many reviews, and purchase orders through it. Like I may have been purchase number 002 or something. Another troubling sign.
The third red flag came in pretty quickly after that. I contacted Holtsclaw Studios directly through Instagram and they didn’t respond at all.
Regardless against my better judgement, I purchased the set. I told them how much it meant to me and that I was putting a lot of faith and stock into them. I was told that it would be done in 6-8 weeks… tops. I told them I was patient and that I wanted their artists to do their best work.
The fourth red flag, was that communication would be done exclusively through Holtsclaw Studios chat application. Why not Luster Tavern, since they took my money? Why only that limited contact portal? Where is their physical address and contact location? Why does your chat application DELETE conversations after 10 days?
The fifth red flag, and I shit you not, less than one week after I paid out, Holtsclaw Studios website got a MAJOR facelift. Like the ‘photos’ of the armor, and ‘workshop’ went FULL AI. Conveniently the chat app, supposedly provided by Spotify, was not. -More about that later.
By this point I already didn’t trust them and screenshotted every conversation that we had.
Time passed. After the first week I asked about progress. No response. Eventually when they did respond and it was, “Oh we were at a convention,” Or “Shopify handles our messaging system. We didn’t get that.” This excuse occurred over and over again. It made me feel like I was bothering them. I gave them my direct contact information, email, and phone number. Nothing. Just constant delays.
Eventually I threatened to pull the purchase after what-8 or 9 weeks. This caused a flurry of responses from Holtsclaw Studios. They sent me photos of conversations they supposedly tried to have with me showing me progress. Anytime I got a response from them there would be a message in my inbox. These were not in my inbox.
Again they blamed the front end that Shopify provided, stating that I was somehow flagged as spam, and showed me a photo of the helmet sitting in front of his garage, conveniently minus the visor, which was supposed to be yellow gold.
Then the helmet was on the way, with the armor coming separately from Luster Tavern. Then the wait begun. Finally after much delay the helmet arrived. Upon arrival I was excited and pretty impressed. Then, slowly I realized, no conversation or design decisions were made by me. No communication at any point. The helmet had battle damage on it. Cool, but I didn’t ask for that. The helmet itself, had been chopped on the back end around the edges. Like massively trimmed. It was a tight fit that barely fit my face. Furthermore, the yellow gold visor.. No dice. It was black. Another red flag, Holtsclaw Studios blacked out their return address on the box.
Another two weeks passed. I found a trash bin contact us link at Luster Tavern, and through Shopify complained about the purchase. Holtsclaw Studios told me.. “Oh it’s otw but it has to come to us first to verify the package contents.”
Eventually it did show up. It didn’t fit at all. It should have as I had lost 20 pounds since I originally placed the order. I wasn’t packing on bulk. I was losing mass. The chest plate- the colors had been reversed. It should have been an orange outline with gray armor. It was orange with a gray outline. It was all shoddily built and looked like it was repurposed Mandalorian armor. It didn’t look like the Titan armor at all. The baklava, boots and cape were not in the order and never showed up.
When I complained about this, Holtsclaw told me, “Oh well, I’ll try to figure out how this happened with Luster Tavern. We don’t do business like this. I’ll contact them and figure this out and we will send you a new one soon!” “The baklava, boots, and cape, we order those off of amazon and they will show up soon.”
A few days went by. No response. I told them I was going to file if they didn’t respond soon. No response. I told them I’d file by the end of the week. No response. The Luster Tavern inbox was also disabled. Shopify was no help.
Eventually knowing that I had a purchase rights through Visa, that extended well beyond the purchase date, I filed on ‘Luster Tavern’ though I suspect it was Holtsclaw Studios DBA Luster Tavern. Luster Tavern went offline. Not to be found.
I filed with Visa and currently I’m waiting for them to rule about the case.
I don’t have faith I’ll get the money back but I’m giving it a shot.
So Holtsclaw Studios can say, not so fast! We did our job. -They did it poorly and slowly and with as little communication as possible. They blamed everyone else for mistakes. They directed me to a ‘partner site’ that was a scam and wiped their hands of responsibility. Then ghosted me when I got upset.
That’s not customer service. That’s a scam.
I’m also not the only one. There’s been a few incidents as well with other people saying that my situation with Holtsclaw was eerily similar to theirs, and that dealing with Holtsclaw was a nightmare.
So I’m doing my part. I’m admitting to what I’m embarrassed about, and that I was taken advantage of. It couldn’t happen to me… I’m hypervigilant about scams..
Well it did, and now here I am, using the power of my football blog site to expose them to the world.
Do your research. Trust your gut and see red flags. Do not do business with Holtsclaw Studios. It is a total scam.
