Scotty Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 What do you think of this? It's a new weekly magazine available in the UK and I bought part 1 with the free dinner service to check it out at a special offer price. The normal price however is £6.99 (approx $10) and you get a piece of furniture/accessories free each week to build up the dolls house. After 10 magazines you get the dolls house free (except postage). There is no indication how many you would have to collect to complete the house - it probably runs into loads. The staircase is one of the free gifts but again you don't know when that is coming so probably week 38 lol. However, all things considered it doesn't seem too bad a deal if you subscribe for 10 weeks you get the house and some furniture, although I doubt any of it will be in matching sets (they clearly want people to stay hooked for the long term). Also there is no mention of what the dolls house is made of though I think it might be plywood. What do you think? Would you be tempted to sign up to spend around £70 or $100 on this? http://www.dollshousecollector.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muriel Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 Any magazine things like that that I have ever seen have always been many issues to complete the project, usually ending up in £100s and not worth it. Haven't seen this particular offer, but they should have listed somewhere how many issues there will be. If you get the whole house after 10 issues and you can then buy windows, doors, stairs, trim etc cheaper elsewhere, then might be worth it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muriel Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 Just checked and it said 55 issues to complete collection (£385), but of course that includes the china set and other accessories If you've got stuff already or can get them cheaper to complete the house, then £70 plus postage is certainly reasonable for the house and the bits they'll have sent you in the first 10 issues Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo Med Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 No I wouldn't bother with this. Its not the first time this has been done but I forget the name of the actual house last time. I'd put my £7 in a jar every week until I have enough for the house and fixtures I really want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 Muriel, didn't there used to be another magazine that used to do the dollshouse-by-installments? (I'm having a bout of CRS & the name just isn't there today). I remember (vaguely) one of the Small Stuffers posting about one she got mostly together after about 200 issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scotty Posted March 11, 2011 Author Share Posted March 11, 2011 Thanks Muriel for finding the number of issues, I did look but couldn't find it. I think for anyone with no dolls house then getting the whole house (minus staircase) and 10 weeks' worth of furniture/accessories for £70 is probably a good deal. However, I'm not entirely sure I like the house so it may well not be worth it for me personally. I intend to get the first few mags though because they have furniture pieces I'd like to have. I foresee a huge drop off in subscription after week 10 though when everyone's got their free house - don't you? Was the previous doll house collector mag the Del Prado one? I picked up a couple of them in a charity shop once. That looked really nice but I bet over the issues it cost a fortune. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havanaholly Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 Thank you, Debbie, it was Del Prado, and for what the subscriber spent they could probably have bought one of Mark Turpin's structures and furnished it with Ferd Sobol's furniture! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
judithfa Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 Hmmm...... The concept is intriguing, though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gee Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 I once subscribed on a magazine about dino's. each magazine was supplied with a part of a dino. you could build the dino in that way part by part. i did it for my son, who was a dinosaur freak at that age. anywayz, years later (son thought dino's are stupid by then) i had a complete plastic dinosaur, it could not be played with, and it had cost me more than 300 dollar for a dino that cost probably 30 in any store. so í am never falling for that trick again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MerriMagic Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 WHOA...go down to the bottom right of that ad, and collect 'legal'...they're going to use all your information and sell it. They say they won't, with the exception of their 'partners'...but who knows who those partners are? And can they vouch for the honesty of the resellers, and their partners? Note that you will be contacted by virtually all these 'partners' for the purposes of selling you something else. Bad idea..bad, bad, BAD idea. Bless you for wanting to share..but if something sounds almost too good to be true, it usually IS too good to be true. Retailers are merciless..and what they've got planned for you, far outweighs any benefit of getting a dollhouse and furniture. Anyway...beyond this deal....I'm real leery of getting anything that sounds really good, by mail, without seeing it first. I have to relate a story here, because to this day I still laugh about it. Zeb, my hubby is one of those trusting souls who believes everything he reads. So when he got a letter telling him he'd won a really cool fishing boat, he believed it. All he had to do was send 85 bucks for 'processing and mailing' and his boat would arrive in six weeks. In spite of all I said, I could not convince him that his fishing boat was a scam, and he'd be severely disappointed..he took his money and sent off for the fishing boat. It arrived six weeks later, all right...it was a little blow up lifeboat, the kind that a kid might play with in a pool..complete with a plastic motor. The motor DID work, for about fifteen minutes. I told Zeb he wouldn't catch me dead in that boat, because it looked unsafe. And I was correct..I think two days later it split a seam and deflated. To this day Zeb gets furious with me if I even dare to mention his 'prize'. I have to watch him like a hawk, because he's so vunerable to stuff like this. He really, truely believes that other people are honest and no one would want to hurt anyone with scams like this..in spite of all the obvious, all the proof offered from every direction, he still has the mind of a 6 year old when any goodie is waved under his nose..even if he's never seen it. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that somewhere in the past, Zeb bought himself the Brooklyn Bridge. Geeze. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muriel Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 Lol, the partners bit is on anything/anyone you give details to here, nothing new or strange about that, they have it for any/every magazine you subscribe to. The magazine is legit, the newsagent next door has it for sale. In fact thought it was very sweet, one of the people working there is going out with a friend of mine and when I went in there today to buy a drink he said 'oh, just the person I wanted to see. Would you like me to keep you a copy of the dollhouse magazine when they come in?' I hadn't told him I build dollhouses, but my friend must have, and he remembered! So said I wouldn't be collecting them, but let me know when they come in and I'll see if I want the furniture from that month Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MerriMagic Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 Not so sure...partners is a generality, and a legal way that companies get around directing your information to anyone else they care to give it to. "Partners" doesn't necessarily mean they're partners in magazine memberships, or just dollhouse enthusiasts. So in essence, if you do a contract with them, you may find them to be as risky as Facebook promises to be. Notice also, that they state that they can change their privacy policy any time without your permission. So if they decide to pass on any additional information you may give them in the future, (say, for example, if they offer you an online survey and you fill it out), they can do whatever they want. Not sure, but that might extend to selling credit card information..so they may be a secure site now..but later on, can they give that credit card info out without legally doing wrong? I found another forum, the Dollshouse Emporium forum, where a couple of people got involved with this. They were REALLY unimpressed. Anyway If anyone actually wants to look at the dollshouse itself, here's a link. The front door is open and looks awfully thin. But the house IS cute so even if it's foamcore, perhaps it would be fun to own. Dollshouse magazine Now mind you, I hope you're right, and it turns out to be a nice deal, but I've seen too many people burnt with stuff like this, and now that identity theft, and the selling of personal information being so rampant.. I'm just uncomfortable..because there's gotta be a catch..it looks too good to be true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muriel Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Oh, I have no intention of signing up for it, and by no means think partners is exclusive to dollhouse related stuff, just saying that it is very usual for it to say that they can pass info onto partners. Basically anything you sign up for here, be it a store card, a magazine, a bank account, a catalogue subscription has the added line saying we can pass on your info to our partners. Generally there is an opt out box to tick or you have to contact them directly to say please opt me out, but otherwise they'll assume it is ok. (I haven't looked into the details of this offer because I'm not interested in it). Anything I have looked at or just absorbed has also said they can change the policy without notice. I'm just trying to say that this offer is most likely no different than the ones that thousands of people sign up to here in the UK without problems. Here in the UK there are constantly offers on where you collect parts of a model or parts of something by buying the magazines. They've got knitting ones, model car ones, model boat ones, baking ones, etc. Asside from the issue of passing on details etc I don't think it is worth spending £385 for the whole thing, I'd rather spend the money on choosing my own bits Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KathieB Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Asside from the issue of passing on details etc I don't think it is worth spending £385 for the whole thing, I'd rather spend the money on choosing my own bits And besides, who wants to wait such a long time to get all of the parts?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mesp2k Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Found some chatter on this: here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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