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The Octopus Tarot & Playing Cards

Created by Luna Charlotte

We currently don't have shipping prices entered for physical rewards in BackerKit. We plan to wait until closer to fulfillment to enter & charge you for physical items purchased on the pre-order store to get the most accurate/fair fulfillment prices. We will update backers after entering those shipping prices & before we charge you in BackerKit.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Breakdown of financials
over 1 year ago – Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 10:11:17 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

An update for everyone
over 1 year ago – Fri, Sep 02, 2022 at 04:55:45 PM

Hello Everyone,


I have had meetings with EasyShip and my staff, here is what’s happening;


  • EasyShip will not be sending any more links until we can confirm our stock is in transit to the fulfillment location. Once the legal matter has concluded and our stock is shipped, I will update you.
  • When our shipment is released from the HKG fulfillment center, we are going to make the tracking details available to all backers so that you will be able to see the whereabouts of the stock for yourself.
  • The limited stock that I have in my possession is partially being used to fulfill backer orders, not just sales. I am waiting for EasyShip to push the remaining people from the HKG account into my Canadian account so that those orders can be fulfilled. Once that is done, I will fulfill as many other orders as possible of those who have paid from what I have available.
  • Extra stock has been kept aside in case of damages. Extra stock was allocated to each fulfillment center as well. 
  • Staff hours have been cut as we re-direct funds towards the legal actions that need to be taken. Selling items on my website has been keeping my team employed to deal with logistics and replying to emails and comments. That being said, it will take longer now for you to receive responses. There is no need to send multiple emails and ask the same questions multiple times, we will get back to you when we can. Sending multiple emails can actually delay our response time as it will send your email to the back of the queue again. 
  • You can continue to send address changes to [email protected] while we wait.
  • An update will be posted once the legal matter has been resolved, this is actively being dealt with.
  • I am working on the financial break-down so far since I know you all want to know exactly where it has all been spent, this will be posted within the next 2 weeks. 

Thank you to those of you who have stood by me through all of this - I seriously can’t tell you how much I appreciate you during this very difficult time. 


We will continue to update you as much as we can - we are taking things one step at a time with the limited control we have over the situation. Things take time, especially when there is legal involvement, and we are actively doing our best to resolve things. 


Love,

Luna

Full Update!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Aug 17, 2022 at 10:00:10 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Hang tight!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Jul 30, 2022 at 04:23:06 AM

Hello everyone!

I know a lot of you have requested that I update you even if I don't have any new information for you so that is what I am doing. This message is for EVERYONE.

If you haven't read my last update, I ask that you do that because it fully explains what's going on!

We have a VERY important meeting tomorrow that will dictate next steps, I could have kept you waiting until after that but at this point, I just want to tell you that we are actively working on a solution to all of this!

I am going to keep this update simple because I am so sick and tired of letting you down. We keep making plans and those plans are always getting delayed or third parties stop responding for weeks on end leaving us with no idea what's going on - I hate that so many aspects of this are out of our control!

My team and I are under a lot of stress but we have not stopped fighting to get this done. I will have a MUCH more detailed update soon regarding EasyShip links, fulfillment centers and when we can start shipping to those who have been patiently waiting.

One thing I do want to say is if you receive an EasyShip link and you know for sure that you have already paid for shipping, please do not pay again. You have already paid and will receive your items. Last I heard, EasyShip was doing tests on the US account but we haven't received an update from them in weeks. A backer reached out to us saying that they received a new link to pay for shipping and paid, you don't need to pay twice! 

We DO NOT personally have access to the EasyShip funds which means that we would have to rely on EasyShip to process refunds. Unfortunately, we have zero control over these things.

I will be in touch soon, my Ops manager will be around to answer any questions that you have in the comments!


Love always!


Luna

A heartfelt disclosure
over 1 year ago – Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 01:02:51 AM

Hello lovelies!

I honestly can’t believe that I have to be making this post, but here we are. This is a really difficult post for me to share. I have no idea what kind of response to expect.


Before you keep reading, it’s important to know that everything WILL be fulfilled! You WILL get what you ordered. I wanted to give you the behind the scenes story on what is happening with the delays and why things are where they’re at.


The following mostly affects the USA, Europe,  UK, South & Central America as well as a select few who haven’t received their orders yet due to system-based errors in EasyShip.


What’s going on!?


Everything was finally on track, it really seemed like we were going to have everything sorted, and then our third parties - yet again - have created another bump in the road.


I’m going to try and communicate a very complex situation as clearly and as simply as possible and with full transparency.


As you all know, we have struggled with our fulfillment center and EasyShip for a while. After constant promises of movement a couple of weeks ago and action steps taken that were meant to create progress, everything went silent; we haven’t been able to get a response from EasyShip in over a week.


Unfortunately, on top of everything, we have now reached a point where we are operating at a loss. This is due to hidden fees from our fulfillment center that weren’t disclosed in the contract I signed as well as the INSANE amount of money that I have had to spend on staff answering messages, navigating logistics and communicating with our third parties to problem solve.


I didn’t want to have to share exact numbers and details, but I feel like I have to in order for you all to understand exactly what I have been dealing with and why things are taking as long as they have.


Out of full transparency and to put things into perspective, our Hong Kong fulfillment center has billed me $4700 USD for shipping out 92 orders and sticking a few barcodes on some of the merchandise (which was one of the many hidden fees they hadn’t communicated prior to signing the contract). They have refused to apply the $2000 USD deposit that I gave to them at the beginning of our agreement (which they said they would do when we closed up with them, which we are trying to do) and have decided to freeze our account and hold hostage the 14 boxes of goods that they’re meant to be shipping to our LAX fulfillment center (which contain the stickers that are a part of every order along with some of the playing cards) until I pay that bill in full. This isn’t counting the $3000 USD it’s going to cost to relocate those 14 boxes of goods to LAX from HKG.


Nor does it include the fact that it has cost me thousands upon thousands of dollars to hire and maintain staff to communicate with this fulfillment center as four people at this facility ask the same questions 10 times over, they lose (or ignore) the paperwork that we send them and make us do it again to their liking. They don’t ask you to fix it or offer any guidance, they’ll just stay silent until you do it their way. For a “professional” company, we haven’t seen much professionalism. Every time I feel like it can’t get any worse, it does.


Here’s an example of ONE of the MANY issues that we have an ongoing problem with:

During the initial consultation with one of the managers of the fulfillment centers, I was instructed to create barcodes for the items in addition to the SKUS’s that I had made. I was told barcodes had to be different than the SKUs (it turns out it would have been easier had they been the same), and asked if there were any guidelines I should follow on making barcodes - to which they replied there were none so long as the items had a barcode associated with them. EasyShip requested that we fill in a form that they created with the SKU’s/barcodes so that our items could be read across platforms, so we did that.


After purchasing all of the labels for HKG, we had labels rejected for being on “Backorder” (and other reasons) which made no sense because we knew what items were in stock. After going through each label and trying to figure out what the problem was, we find out WEEKS later that the barcodes were apparently too long for their system to read so they decided, on their own, and without informing us, that they would be using different barcodes for all of the items instead. So every time we bought a label, it was flagged as not in stock because their system was no longer in sync with EasyShip. I have had to pay my staff thousands of dollars to try to figure out what the problem was because the change wasn’t communicated. I wasted the time of our contact at EasyShip because he wasn’t told about the change either and was trying to figure out what the issue was PLUS I have to pay rent for the fulfillment center to do nothing.


It has got to the point where I have to involve my lawyer. She is currently reviewing contracts and seeing what can be done. Worst case scenario, I’ll be paying it out of pocket and absorbing the major loss, so I can just leave it all behind me and get you your decks. I’ll have learnt a lot from it, I’m not upset about the loss, I just need a moment to figure out how to cover it all.


Unfortunately, between manufacturing, taxes, relocating products, paying staff, and so many other expenses, navigating this mess has taken up ALL of the KickStarter funds and I have been officially operating off of my own money for a few months on this project now. I plan to give you all a very transparent breakdown of the expenses and costs at the end of the campaign once everything is fulfilled so that you can all see exactly where every penny went.


The fulfillment centers that we are using were recommended to us by EasyShip (before things went wonky with their system too). It wasn’t a shot in the dark. I really wanted to do what was best for everyone to keep the cost of shipping reasonable and it ended up in this mess.


This entire post briefly describes a fraction of what we have been navigating. I hope sharing this information gives you some insight on how complex these things can be to move through.


This WILL get sorted, no matter how much money or time this takes me. I made a promise and I plan to keep it.


I would realllyyy like to stress that I created this campaign expecting to raise $20K max. I expected to be printing 1000 decks. Everything is literally TEN TIMES what I had anticipated. Ten times the money, ten times the costs, ten times the decks, ten times the orders to manage and individuals behind these orders. While I was prepared to scale, this went beyond what I could have ever imagined. After the Kickstarter skyrocketed, I sought out mentorship as I had accepted that I wasn’t well versed in something of this scale. Sadly, looking back, I would have done better to follow my gut, ignore all of the advice I had received and shipped everything from Canada myself, with a small team and without 3rd parties.


I was told I couldn’t do something on this scale myself, but it turns out that even if it hadn't been easy, I would’ve done a better job.


Unfortunately I can’t go back in time, so now I’m just doing everything in my power to regain control over my stock and get it into your hands.


What this means for you;


We will open up address changes yet again since at this time, we are still unsure of how long it will take to get out of this mess. (I sincerely apologize for rushing you all a couple weeks ago with this - everything was scheduled to move forward and we just wanted to make sure we could move through it all as smoothly as possible to get you your decks quickly and without error once LAX was in operation).


Please please pleassee, have patience with my staff answering your messages. We are doing our best. We want to help you, we want to get you your decks SO BAD. We know you’re frustrated because we are literally dealing with ALL of your frustrations combined. We’re people that care deeply about every single one of you, and about this project.


Approaching your communications politely is infinitely appreciated. It really makes a big difference for us when there are so many messages coming through on a daily basis.


We will continue to update as things progress. Hopefully the next one will contain better news.


EasyShip Links


Since we are still receiving several messages a day about EasyShip links I wanted to address this.


If you paid for shipping already, you are all good. As soon as the items are available, you will get the items you ordered.


If you have contacted us to let us know that you haven’t received your link yet, we have you on a list and you will be taken care of. We do not have control over sending links - we have to wait for one person at EasyShip to do it. It is one of the many things we desperately wish we had more control over.


When the US account is all set up and ready to go, we will let you know when you will be receiving your links. I know we said in our last update that they were working on that but we haven’t received communication from them for over a week and are sitting ducks at this point.


If after everything is live, you still don’t have a link, at that point you can contact us again and let us know but for now there’s no need to let us know if you haven’t received a link.


Thank you!


If it’s of any consolation, I have been receiving countless messages from people who have received their orders claiming the wait was beyond worth it. I hope knowing that you won't be disappointed will be helpful in holding on as we continue to work this out.


As always, thank you for your patience, understanding, and your ongoing support.

I truly am blessed to have such a beautiful community.


All my love,

Luna