Terms & Conditions

Last edited 24 July 2021.

📝 PLACING AN ORDER

Let's begin with the types of transactions the Empathy Studios, hereafter referred to as "the shop", offers.

Direct Orders

1. A direct order purchase is when the client directly buys an item from the on hand of the shop, and the item gets shipped out within three business of placing the order.

Pre-orders and Group Orders

1. A pre-order purchase is when the client avails of the pre-order services of the shop to secure acquisition of an item prior to its official release.
2. Pre-order purchases slightly differ compared to direct purchases from our on-hand items collection. This is primarily because when the client purchases a pre-order, one is not buying from NCTzen MNL per se; rather, one is using the pre-order service of NCTzen MNL to purchase, on behalf of the client, from our official suppliers. This allows for less costs and less energy consumption versus buying in small quantities from suppliers overseas.
   When pre-order items are officially purchased i.e. copies to be delivered are secured to be delivered to our warehouse in South Korea upon release date, we will indicate so via our Twitter and our updates tracker on our website.
3. It is important to note that depending on the circumstances of the labels' manufacturers, some album releases will only have its versions delivered at random. This would be indicated in our listings as the "Random Ver." and as such, will be delivered at random to customers.
4. A pre-order listing, tagged '[Pre-order]', will only be open until the deadline for pre-ordering specified in the deployment schedule of the listing.
5. Depending on demand after initial release, the shop opens a group order listing for some items. A group order, tagged '[Group Order]', follows identical mechanics as a pre-order except that its deployment schedule is set at later dates i.e. after the initial release date.

For some releases from artists with consistent demand, the shop does not open pre-orders because it has what it believes is an accurate estimate of the rate at which it will sell. Based on this estimate, the shop's team immediately secures a certain number of units for the item and list it forthwith as a direct purchase.

💳 PAYMENT

This section covers modes of payment and payment periods.

Modes of Payment

Upon checkout, your order will be confirmed and an email with payment instructions and complete order details will be sent to the address you provided. Whichever purchase type you avail of, the following payment options are available: GCash Transfer, UnionBank Transfer, and Xendit.

Payment Deadlines

Starting1 July 2021, we have started standardizing payment deadlines for all purchase types (direct, pre-order, and group order) to be within 24 hours of receiving the confirmation email. All orders placed before this date have followed the old payment deadline policy of having a specific payment deadline for each type of purchase (indicated in each item's listing).

If payment has not been made by the deadline, our team will unfortunately be forced to forfeit your purchase without prior notice. We will only be packing paid checkout items.

If paying a just a little over 24 hours of receiving the confirmation email, use the status of your order in your order page as basis. If the status is still "Awaiting Payment" then you may still proceed. If the order payment has been marked "Cancelled", you need to place another order altogether and pay within the deadline.

🚛 SHIPPING AND DELIVERY

After the payment confirmation email, the next and third email the customer can expect to receive is an email containing updates on their item's shipping status and tracking information.

FOR DIRECT PURCHASES, items will be packed and shipped, and shipping confirmation and tracking information will be sent within the same week as payment confirmation.

FOR PRE-ORDERS AND GROUP ORDERS, items will be packed and shipped, and shipping confirmation and tracking information will be sent within the same week as arrival of items to our warehouse here in the Philippines.

However, please take note that for orders with more than one pre-order and/or group order item/s, the item with the farthest estimated time of arrival (ETA) will be the basis of scheduling shipping. The items within your order that arrived earlier will be securely put on hold until the last item arrives.

The team behind our shop understand that waiting is the hardest part when it comes to pre-orders and group orders, so we designed a shipping status updates tracker on our website that you can check anytime you want which among your multiple items are at which shipping status.

😢 CANCELLING AN ORDER

If for any reason and at any point, you need to cancel your order, our team will be more than happy to assist you. Although, once payment has been confirmed; cancellation of orders is no longer possible.

To request a cancellation, simply reply to our confirmation email thread that you wish to cancel the order. Await update on the status of your cancellation via email.

🤔 EDITING AN ORDER

Especially for pre-orders, album information and detail updates come at a regular basis from labels and suppliers i.e. more versions of an album, changes to album format, etc.

These changes usually cause customers to reevaluate which among the choices offered they want to purchase.

Sometimes, one simply encounters reasons to make changes to their order and we have designed our system so you may do this at any point in your purchase.

In the event you want to edit your order

1. Simply reply to our confirmation email thread—or if you already paid, our receipt of payment email thread—with your name, order number, and items you want to add/remove/replace.
   
   It would be helpful to our team if you sent an email in this format:
   
   ADD:
   Specify the items you wish to add to your order
   
   REMOVE:
   Specify the items you no longer wish to purchase.
   
   In the event a label announces discontinuation of an item previously announced available (for instance, the case of EXO's 'Don't Fight the Feeling' release in May 2021 where 6 photo book versions were reduced to 1 in the middle of pre-order period), please still indicate clearly in this section that you want to remove the items from your order.
   
   If you wish to replace your removed items with new others that are available or newly made available, simply specify these items in the add section.
2. Our team will take 2-5 business days to confirm an edit order request through an email that will also contain an adjusted invoice in the likelihood that the order's total amount has changed. If payment has already been made, only an added payment invoice or a request for refund details will be sent depending on whether your new order amount is worth more or less than the original.
3. Your order number will stay the same.

An edit request will only be approved if it is in light of a need to add and/or remove some specific items to/from your order. Should the customer want to remove all items previously ordered and add entirely new choices, we recommend simply cancelling your current order and placing a new one.

Using the edit your order request to combine items for shipping

We understand that some releases come close to each other in terms of release dates, but announcements can come unexpectedly.

In the event that you have previously placed an order but wish to add more recently announced items to it, simply follow the same aforementioned steps of editing your order and add the new item you wish to purchase.

Once again, as mentioned in the Shipping and Delivery section of this primer, the item with the farthest ETA will be the basis of scheduling shipping. We also encourage doing this since shipping in bulk would save time, energy, and resources for both people and planet.

💖 RECEIVING YOUR PURCHASE AND GIVING US FEEDBACK

The tracking information we will provide in our shipping confirmation email will span from the time we send out your parcel to the time it reaches your door. Should there be any concerns along the way, do not hesitate to contact us through our email hello.empathystudios@gmail.com.

Once your parcel has reached your doorstep, we would appreciate if you show us some love on Twitter and Instagram and tag us @empathystudios_.

Thank you very much!