Hello dear friends. Customers or visitors who are looking to buy something or waiting for their package. This message is for you.
First of all, we want to thank you for your trust. In most cases, we sincerely hope that we have fulfilled our obligations to you completely. If for some reason we didn’t please be sure – we will. It’s our duty.

The first thing you should know about us: We have never considered ourselves as a big e-commerce shop. Idolstore has always remained a small store with a staff of two people. And we never planned to become something like eBay or AliExpress. This is a small business of two people. It’s enough for us.

The second thing: As you know our main office is based in Russian Federation. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th. Western governments have imposed a string of sanctions on Russia. The banking sector is totally banned from the rest of the world in the most popular ways (including PayPal). We are totally supporting current suctions against Russia and supporting Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. STOP WAR!

 

SANCTIONS AND FURTHER RELATED ISSUES

About PayPal:

We have always used only one way to accept payments. The clearest and easiest and either popular – it’s PayPal. We never intend to mislead our customers. If you never received your purchase or something went wrong during shipping – you can be sure your money is safe. This means – you can always open the dispute or even claim with PayPal and you don’t have to ask us. Your money – is your money. Our duty is to fulfil your order OR refund your payments. No “buts” etc.

What is the current situation?

Unfortunately in Russia, nobody cares about the opinion of ordinary people, companies or entrepreneurs. Nobody. At this moment we’re living in an autocratic country. We live in a time and environment where we have not been asked. No one asked about our opinion regarding the war in Ukraine and didn’t ask when they blocked any activity on PayPal.

Paypal has blocked any actions for merchants (as we are) in Russia until the sanctions against Russia are in action. We, as a seller, cannot make returns or refunds upon your request. We cannot accept new payments, refund old payments, withdraw funds or use the funds in any way. The whole sector is totally blocked.

We can log in to our wallet till March 18th. But only login. After this date, all Russian will change status to “blocked” until further PayPal decisions.
Here is the link where you can read more about it: https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/paypal-suspends-service-in-russia-over-war-in-ukraine/

Visa and Mastercard are also blocked in Russia, we do not have the ability to top up the Paypal account.
To read about that use this link on BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60637429

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Here are screenshots of the PayPal support agent’s answers to our questions.

WHAT NOW?

You say – “Now what? What about those who have already placed an order and are waiting for it.”

We are in the process of finding solutions to this crisis. The store plan is the opening of a Paypal account in a foreign bank to continue accepting payments, refunds or pay our manufacturers and further functioning. Including returns and dispatching.

It will take 1-2 months: April and May. Unfortunately, opening a bank account in another country (esp. as a business) is more difficult than it seems at first glance. We are doing our best to speed up this process.

From the owner and the guy WHO REALLY CARES:

It’s Alex. Hi.

Right now we take the following steps:

1. Closing business in Russian Federation
2. Finding a new location (Country) for businesses to be able to accept payments, issue refunds, to pay manufacturers and shipping companies.
3. Relocate the business completely.

We are blocked from the rest world in the full meaning of this word and cannot take any action other than opening an account with a foreign bank. The only hope is that you could understand this situation. I have no words to describe our disappointment.

I sincerely ask you not to open cases or disputes on Paypal. If you can. Because it doesn’t matter if you open a dispute or case – we’re unable to do anything with that. What you can do – is to wait until the dates we said above. And submit a formal request through the contact form on the site. We will try to best ways to open a bank account in another country ASAP. If in this case, you won’t need your item anymore, please submit a refund request. When we’ll be able to issue – be sure we will do.

Stay tuned. We’re looking for solutions.

UPDATE 2023

Hey guys,
As you may noticed we’ve been using paypal for some time and some of you were able to pay using paypal. However some payment we were able to use to dispatch products, some not. There is no way right now for us to run successful fast shipping as it usually were. Solution for 2023 is get two ways:

1. You request refund and we proceed it asap by situation we have now.
2. You’re waiting for us this nightmare somehow to be resolved sooner or later. We’re looking for solutions everyday.

   Yours
   Alek