2023
December 13th
Kai had posted a reminder for one of their multi-slot YCHs. I liked this one a lot and decided to comment asking for a slot and Kai sent me a note asking for details and gave me a payment link.
December 14th
I had something happen with power going out at my house so I was unable to answer right away. He sent me another note the next day asking me how I was doing and I replied with my situation from my phone.
December 15th
When I was able to get to my PC I replied to his first note with the characters, asking if he'd be able to draw them before I sent payment. The character's species has a specific blocky head-shape and aren't supposed to have foreheads/ protruding brow bones so I told him that. He said he'd have no problem drawing their head-shape and to let him know when I sent payment. I went ahead and sent it and mentioned that I forgot to ask him if the cigarette in the piece could be changed into a vape instead and he replied saying he received payment and had no problems with changing it to a vape.
I'm going to post the character references I sent him so you can see the head-shape and details on them that become relevant later.
2024
July 19th
I hadn't heard anything from Kai but he posted a journal saying he was done with his medical school exams and now had time to work on his queue. He was going to be working in the order of when the YCH's were listed vs bouncing between who ordered what slot first and was doing the YCH's in batches for each month. Mine was set for September.
December 3rd
I checked in on his journal and saw another person had been asking in November if the deadlines were still accurate as they were waiting for a YCH from October and November. I commented as well, asking if the queue was still accurate as I would have been waiting a year for the piece on the 16th..
2025
January 5th
Kai uploaded his first post since people had been asking for updates and it was a reminder for a YCH and he continued to ignore everyone else. I ended up commenting on the reminder stating:
"I don't mean to be rude, but why are you taking on more slots when you haven't finished the ones from over a year ago? Everyone has been patiently waiting and asking you for updates on your "deadline" journal just for you to ignore us for months and come back to take on even more commissions.
You need to either finish your queue and/ or begin sending out refunds. Otherwise it looks like you're just trying to run with our money. :/"
I also went and copy pasted it onto the YCH he had the reminder for with the same thing. There was someone who commented wanting a slot and I warned them that Kai had a queue of over a year and they removed their comments.
A few hours later, Kai ended up responding to me and the other two commenters on the journal with a copy paste message saying:
"I'm sorry for the delay. I was not able to use my strength to the full and the three-year burnout has taken its toll. I took a month off in December, which kind of helped, so I will update and make a more accurate list of deadlines soon, but by name. So that each of you can keep track of my work.
I'm really sorry for the wait."
He hid my comment on the YCH reminder but didn't hide the one on the YCH itself.
Eleven hours later got a note from him telling me that he had been burnt out from work and that he actually had finished my YCH with a link to the piece.
It mostly looks nice but there are several things off. Kai didn't even try editing the head-shape outside of erasing the nose and adding slit nostrils and missed a few key things that were on the character's references (Horn rings, Nyx's collar and neck fluff), he also didn't change the cigarette.)
I feel like given the amount of time it took for him to respond to me that he went and rush did the piece because otherwise I don't know why he wouldn't have just sent it to me beforehand. I messaged him back asking for changes but that note has been left on unread and I sent him another on the 26th which has also been ignored.
I'm almost certain that I am not going to get a response anytime soon and he's just running off with several people's money. I really think people should stay clear of him unless he does a major turn around.
I have commissioned Wulfchow at the Artist Alley @ AnthroCon 2024. The commission is for a digital drawing with a scene commission, which was verbally explained in person at the booth to be a fullbody with a background. Scene commissions are shown to be offered on their social media, but the price is not shown as it was sold out at the time of posting on July 6, 2024.
Payment was done through Square, so there is no use of PayPal. Instead, the only proof is my bank statement, showing that I had ordered from Wulfchow on July 5, before the scene commissions were sold out.
On July 5th, we had exchanged Telegram messages to establish contact. Afterwards, I attempted to reach out for updates, where the screenshots include specifically my mention of a scene commission.
The Trello link is all of their currently owed work from AnthroCon 2024, including the scene commission they agreed to do: https://trello.com/b/6FFKY0ug/post-anthrocon-24-queue
There has been no indication of a response since my check in on November 16, 2024. The artist instead updated on their Twitter that they will correspond by email instead, despite claiming to respond to all outstanding DMs.
I have reached out to them on the email they publicly supplied and am still waiting for a response.
I began a commission process of a two page a comic from ectoflorist/kettucutie on Februrary 16th 2024. The artist seemed nice and welcoming at first. The total for the commission was $70, although I was given the option to put a down payment of $20 first and pay the rest at a later date and agreed.
After sending the $20 down payment for the commission, the artist sent a rough sketch of the first page of the comic.
On March 17th 2024, I then had the rest of the payment, which was $50, and sent it to them as well. Both transactions were made via CashApp.
I've waited until April 23rd and April 28th 2024 to as for an update on the commission. But was greeted with a bit of a hostile reply.
After apologizing, I waited for a response, unfortunately, the artist became unresponsive.
I waited for months sending check up messages while trying to be respective of the artist's space as much as possible.
However, the artist did not respond at all.
Strangely, as I made the transaction and contacted the artist on Discord, they still seem to be active on there.
Unfortunately, the artist's Furaffinity page has been inactive for months, and there's no other place to reach them other than Discord.
On January 22nd I tried contacting the artist through private message on their Tumblr. However, they have blocked me and had not sent a reply.
The artist is currently still posting on their tumblr, reblogging posts from others even though they've not sent a response.
Originally, artist and I agreed on a 150 USD budget on animation to help take care of costs because he was looking for work to be able to feed himself. Artist insists he would do weekly updates. What followed was months of silence, and updates only whenever I would ask for them. These "updates" would never include actual proof of progress on the work. False promises of delivery and asks for more money always followed each update request I would send. In the end, they provided a paypal email different from their original, saying they needed "storage" to be able to deliver the final file. They have recently asked for more clients as close as the past month. They should not be trusted to deliver their work or offer refunds for working with them.
10/30/23:
I initially purchased a custom fursuit collar from RegallyWild, in-person, in the dealer's den of Furpocalypse 2023.
I was out of fursuit while looking at the collars in the den. The vendor overheard me say to my partner that, while I really liked one of the collars, I didn't think it would fit on me when I was in suit. They suggested I purchase it, take it back to my room, try it on, and return it if the fit was not correct.
I did this and found, as suspected, the collar did not fit, so I returned to the vendor's table. When I arrived for my refund, the vendor suggested that, rather than refund me, they'd prefer to custom make me a new collar - same pattern and materials - and ship it to me after the convention was over, with the shipping being at their expense. I thought this was very generous and agreed. I provided my name, address, and contact details, which they wrote down in front of me, and I handed them back the too-small collar while they kept my money via credit card transaction.
11/11/23:
About two weeks later, I had not heard from them, so I decided to reach out via email. They responded almost immediately, verifying my recollection of events, and letting me know they'd been sick and promising the order would "be heading out next week." Since a specific timeline had been provided, I was looking for follow-up in the next week. That didn't happen.
12/02/23:
Three weeks later, I reached out again. I was concerned because I knew I'd be out of the country for a few weeks and may have had to arrange for someone to receive my mail if a package was going to be delivered. This email received no response at all.
12/18/23:
Two weeks later, despite being out of the country and in a vastly different time zone, I tried reaching out again. This time, they replied the next day, saying that spikes for the collar were out of stock - odd, since they were supposedly ready to send it one month prior. Strangely, they also offered to send "the rest of the order" before the collar. The collar was the only thing I had purchased, so this was confusing. Since there were no other items to be sent, I told them I was fine to wait for the collar to be completed, because I saw no other option. Also confusing was that one of the emails referenced providing a phone number, but there was no phone number in the message at all. This would be the last time the RegallyWild ever spoke to me.
01/26/2024:
Around five weeks later, I was back in the states and had not heard anything. I reached out again, and additionally requested the phone number they had previously offered to provide. This email received no response.
02/01/2024:
Due to the complete lack of contact, I followed up more quickly, one week later, requesting a status update. This email also received no response.
02/06/2024:
Five business days later, I reached out again. As it had now been nearly two months since they had responded to anything, I felt my only course of action was to request a refund or initiate a chargeback. I know chargebacks can be hard on small businesses, so I felt I owed them a chance to correct the issue before contacting my credit card issuer. This email was not responded to. Unfortunately, I was unable to initiate a chargeback because I had provided them with too much leeway. My issuer would not dispute the charge because it was older than 90 days and neither would Square, RegallyWild's payment processor.
02/15/2024:
About two weeks later, I noticed they had posted new work on Twitter. In desperation, I looked to try that avenue to contact them, but they had their DMs closed. I tried replying to the post, which went unanswered. At this point, I presumed maybe something had happened to them or they had gone out of business.
05/24/2024:
Nearly six months after their last contact, I noticed RegallyWild running banner ads on FurAffinity. I followed the ads to their website and learned they were still taking orders. This prompted me to reach out again one last time. This, of course, also went unanswered.
10/24/2024:
It has now been just shy of one year - fifty-one weeks - since RegallyWild took my money and gave me a year-long headache. Recently, I've had another burned customer of theirs reach out to me via Twitter DM asking if I'd had any luck getting in touch with RegallyWild. Their experience was, unfortunately, much the same as mine.
I've since learned RegallyWild will be vending at Furpocalypse - my local, home con - again this year. So, I feel it's important to get a warning out about possible issues with this maker in advance, in the hopes that no more customers will have the same issues that I have.
I began the commission process with p0pr0ck on August 23, 2022, for a 3/4 suit including head, paws, tail, feet, legs, and additional armsleeves for $1600. I paid in two consecutive installments of $800 through Paypal on August 24 and August 25 2022. Naively, I did not ask to pay goods and services, and paid through friends and family as requested by the maker (this was my mistake). The maker had a public trello linked in their bio, so I was aware she had a few projects ahead of me, and knew it would be some time before my suit was started so I waited a few months before reaching out.
However, per the screenshots provided, I had to borderline beg for communication, deadlines, and updates. I'd send multiple messages over the course of weeks that would go unanswered for long periods of time. I was hopeful when p0pr0ck began to send frequent updates around mid-late April 2023, as she was working on the head of the suit.
Once the tail, head, and paws were finished, we mutually agreed p0pr0ck should send the mini partial out, however it took nearly a month after completion for her to send out the suit and for me to recieve it.
With the absolute battle that communication was, and some of the messages p0pr0ck had been sending me about her personal life, I opted to settle for the mini partial and get a partial refund for the parts I did not recieve (feet, legs, arms). She had since updated her pricing ladder, however, so I had to manually calculate the cost between a mini partial vs a 3/4 suit in her old prices vs her new ones to find what the refund cost should be. I calculated it should be about $673. This number was agreed on by p0pr0ck.
It then took another few months to hear back from her on my question about ETAs on the refund.
The first $100 of the refund was recieved on September 6, 2023, with a message from p0pr0ck detailing she had sent it. The second installment came in September 20th, 2023, but this time with NO alert message from p0pr0ck.
There was them more periods of radio silence before the 3rd installment was sent on April 3rd, 2024, again with no messages sent from p0pr0ck indicating she had sent it.
Finally, around August of this year, p0pr0ck posted to her story for commissioners to message her on telegram, citing DM troubles with Instagram. I recieved one reply from her on August 9th, 2024, and have heard nothing back since.
Given that the refund was agreed to on June 17, 2023, I have now been trying to get my partial refund for a total of 15 months, nearly 16 months, at the time of writing this beware.
I reached out to WetVenom in late October 2023 inquiring about his rates and terms.
After talking for a bit about his rates and the character being drawn, we settled on $150 for a two panel, comic-style commission. I sent the first payment on November 1st, but we ran into a small problem. Because I paid through PayPal with a checking account, PayPal turned the payment into an eCheck. Since Venom is from outside of the US, it took almost a week for the transaction to even register, and by that time I didn't have the funds in my account. PayPal automatically retries the transaction after a few days though, and ultimately the eCheck cleared on the 16th of November. After receiving email confirmation that it cleared, I followed up with Venom and he confirms that he received the payment and will be starting on the commission.
A little over a week later he reaches out again to reconfirm the details, and I verify the details of the commission once more. From this point however, communication starts to taper off.
The next communication is two months later on January 17 2024, where I reach out to ask how the commission is coming. He responds a few days later asking to once more confirm the details of my commission, and stating that he's fed up with impatient customers. After confirming who I was and clearing up the misunderstanding, he then says that the commission may already be finished and that he needs to double check. I ask him to let me know if that's the case, and then I wait another ~2 weeks before checking back in.
This time he responds the same day, confirming that he is still working on the commission. I wait another month, March 7th, before checking back in on his progress. This email goes unanswered. I wait another month, April 4th, to inquire about his status.
He responds the next day citing family issues are what caused him delay. I empathize with his situation, and let him know that if he wants to cancel the commission all he has to do is let me know. This goes without response, and I reach back out a week later.
After reconfirming privacy details and format, I wait a bit longer, thinking that his last email was an implication that the commission was nearly done. I reach out again on the 29th of April to confirm, and he responds shortly after saying he's sending the commission later that night: stating that an error within the commission gave him some delay. A few more days pass and I send another email on May 3rd to verify if the error was still giving him problems.
After telling him that I didn't need another commission and that I only wanted to confirm where he was on this commission, I receive nothing back but silence. I send another email on the 24th of June to ask what the status of the commission is, to no response.
About a week later I send a separate, Ultimatum email.
This too went unanswered, and ultimately nothing came of the PayPal dispute since 180 days had already passed since the transaction date.
As of 9/27/2024, I've reached out to both of wetvenom's public emails to confirm their intent on completing the commission.
On January 31st, Baasil made a post for Tarot card slots, two separate decks that would ideally be finished and printed.
After kind of waffling about it for a couple days, I reached out on February 2nd.
I promptly paid for the slot, very excited to be a part of the project. They confirmed payment and shared their excitement for the project with me.
I hadn't heard anything in March, so I sent a note for an update.
I was not given a wip, so I figured maybe they had fallen a bit behind, as trying to keep a deck consistent is most definitely a lot of work. So I gave the benefit of the doubt and patiently waited as time ticked on. Then I requested another update in June.
Here they acknowledge that there wasn't enough interest for a full deck, but was still happy to do prints for the people who commissioned the art. I was more than happy with just getting the art in general.
July rolls around, and I still don't have a single update or wip, and I start getting a bit nervous as it has now been about 5 months since I commissioned them
I'll admit I got a little too stern for my liking, but I was getting increasingly nervous as they tended to disappear for a while and randomly come back.
They were very polite towards me in their response, because I did genuinely still want the art, I still loved the concept and I was happy to wait.
In August, Baasil posted one of the cards, and I got excited again, knowing that they were being worked on, and that the style was looking really good.
After this, starting in September, they were focusing on streaming work. I thought, okay sure, we all have bills to pay, so I patiently waited.
At this point I was preparing for a massive career change so a lot of time got lost on my end, and I ended up reaching out in March 2020.
I wanted to give another chance as I really do love Baasil's style and part of my thought process was that it was only $35, so I'd be happy with any art from them. They still remained very polite towards me throughout this entire exchange, while explaining loosely what was going on.
I changed my character choice as well as offered full artistic freedom, as I wanted it to not be stressful on them, as I know sometimes drawing with heavy constraints in an art piece can be a lot, and they have a super flowy style that I thought would work well with this character.
Which brings us to our last correspondence with each other, two years later. Again, we both remain civil through this exchange.
At this point, all of the journals except a select few have been deleted, and I didn't think to screen cap them because of a huge move and personal issues going on in my life as well.
Every so often they come back and post more, but they haven't been active in almost a year, and truthfully, I'm just really disappointed. I tried to give chances, and I'm a very patient person, but if this was really going to be this much of an issue, I would have done that chargeback back in July of 2019.
I recently reached out one more time to see if I could get some response, however my note when completely unread.
The only positive thing to come out of this was that neither of us were confrontational at any point in time, and it was always a civil and professional discussion between the two of us. I commission a lot of artists and I almost never have these issues, I am going to have to take this to heart and maybe some day I'll see my $35.
Uses deceptive wording and pressure tactics. Initially I was willing to forgive and assume inexperience, but the ask for double for delivery, then for a different commission, then for a 50% tip flew way past the acceptable line and drained the remainder of my good will.
End product (no watermark free copy was received) not received as of today 9/17/2024.
Artist reached out first after small talk and was the one who initiated conversation after I followed them on Tumblr.
I paid Lapis $100 for this YCH back in April of 2023, before I largely departed from the fandom. It was to contain two of my characters, one of which I don't even own anymore. This is proof of payment, as best I can manage, given it was done through boosty.
Immediately there seemed to be a trend of me having to ask multiple times for a response, and it would be five months from payment before I received any sort of WIP.
After several attempts to contact Lapis over ~4 MORE months, I finally received a long explanation as to why it hadn't been done yet. I strove to be amicable as I understand how bad burnout can get, as an artist myself.
After this, it would be a couple MORE months (over a year at this point) before I heard from her again. It took commenting on her FA, and eventually tracking her down on Telegram to finally get a response. I'm of the belief that clients should not have to hunt down their artists. Note: I HAD started an Artists Beware post, but as she started contacting me in the middle of revising it, I stopped because I thought she'd gotten her act together. She had not.
So anyway, under threat of an AB post, she suddenly regained the ability to respond to messages, and the following conversation ensued. I was willing to talk it out and admit that I had been speaking from a place of anger, and I figured things would be better from here.
Note: I traded one of the characters who was supposed to be in this YCH to someone, who apparently contacted Lapis asking them to change her to one of the characters that became mine in the trade. This was not my idea nor was I consulted about it in the slightest. Lapis did not even attempt to confirm this decision with me.
Unfortunately, she began ghosting me again.
I made several attempts over the last two-ish months to contact her, during which she apparently had time to post screenshots of FA's twitter in another server, but not to acknowledge any of my messages.
Blurred out the irrelevant FA Twitter drama.
Only when I publicly asked her to respond, did she decide to do so. The next images will only be screenshots of the conversation that followed in its entirety. I was very angry and my tone throughout reflects that- but after being strung along for 1.5 years, it's hard not to be.
I'll be the first to admit I was a bit pettier than I needed to be towards the end of this discussion, and my temper did get the best of me, but being told I am being unreasonable for not enjoying being flat-out ignored for over a year while she posts art/animations daily on VK.. well. I can only hope Lapis cleans up her act moving forward- she really is a very gifted artist.
