Buyer Beware

For the past couple of years I have bought and received some wonderful gifts from Etsy and never once did I have a problem with a seller. Then, a few weeks ago, I was finally ready to order the wall decal that I found on the site for the baby's room...

To me it was perfect. I used it as a jumping off point for the colors, bedding, etc. in the room and was so excited to get it. However, the first problem with it occurred when the post office couldn't deliver the package because the seller had sent it through Paypal with no postage attached to it, despite the fact that I had been charged for postage during my purchase. So after paying it twice, I contacted her for a refund which she gave to me two weeks later.

On Saturday we were finally ready to put the decal on the wall, after allowing time for the rolled up pieces she had sent me to lay flat. The second we started to work on the tree, disaster struck. The pieces themselves were huge (almost 75 inches long) and when removing them from the contact paper side to begin applying them to our wall, the decal stuck to that section of the paper and then also to the transfer paper in different areas. It was nearly impossible to try to peel it off, while holding it exactly into position and applying pressure to something so big. We tried and failed for over an hour to get the first part of the tree on the wall. To top it off, it ripped in places and became completely unusable. I was so upset. I imagine this issue is due to the fact that she probably has these pieces rolled up for who knows how long waiting to be shipped and the decals become one with the paper.

I contacted the seller to let her know of this issue and how disappointed I was, especially given the fact that this was to be the focal point of my nursery and wasn't cheap. She did not and has not responded.

Thankfully, yesterday I was in Babies R' Us with John buying our gliding chair and we happened to find another tree in their decor section. We were able to get it up much easier and utilize it with some of the animals, leaves and flowers that had come with my original decal and I did my best to recreate what I had originally envisioned.

Here is the end result...

I'm pretty happy with it, considering all that we went through to make it work, but definitely will be more cautious in what I purchase online in the future.