I had originally commissioned them due to a recommendation from a friend for a partial fursuit for $500 and later on added sleeves for an additional $150 and another additional $50 for extra work needed for a total of $700.
The commission was originally set for a FC'20 completion date.
This was later pushed back to due supposed health concerns.
This was consistently used as an excuse to push back the completion date to which there wasn't an actual set date. I had sent another telegram message to them back in August 2020 for a reminder (which had stayed unread) but deleted when I had posted those last 3 lines. I sent her those messages in hopes that she would do some work and at least just get a head since it would be less work than a partial but she has completely ghosted me.
She had been consistently taking on other commissions while her backlog was increasing. She has deleted her "commissions" channel from Telegram as well which I was unfortunately unable to get the chat log from.
Pepapen and her husband, Posepedia, had opened for collaborative commissions on March 27, 2021. I managed to get a slot for a single commission. Pepapen contacted me soon after, letting me know that the pair had accepted my submission for a commission.
Here is the correspondence Pepapen and I had, coming to an agreement of terms for a single full body commission at $150 USD:
Here is the proof of payment for the commission:
About a little more than a week later, I was contacted by another individual with the handle Lainebrary on DeviantArt, who was messaging previous clients of Posepedia and Pepapen with compelling proof that the artist had been found to trace artwork. This prompted me to look for myself on one of the artist's webpages, where I found that I had been blocked by both Posepedia and Pepapen. As that had been the only method I knew to contact them at the time, I checked with an associate of mine to see if they were able to view their page for themselves.
They found that they did have access to their DeviantArt page and decided to message them on my behalf:
A few minutes after sending this message, both Pepapen and Posepedia had deactivated their DeviantArt accounts. As the website was the only way I had previously contacted them, I had no other known way to get in touch, short of emailing the PayPal address. However, because of the sudden closure of the account, followed by other accounts that could be found by searching their usernames on a search engine, I decided to go through PayPal to begin filing a claim.
It was around this time I received this email from Posepedia through a previously unknown email:
I do not have my email publicly available, so I took this as legitimate, since it is associated with my PayPal. I was offered a refund by a certain date, which has now passed and was not returned, and I have received no additional correspondence, even after replying to them and asking for the refund. As such, I have kept the claim with PayPal open and am now awaiting PayPal's ruling on the matter.
While I have personal feelings on this matter, I wanted to present objective facts about my situation separate from them. With no communication, I feel it is appropriate to demand a refund, which has not been met as of the time of writing.
Around the end of August 2020 I made a post in a facebook group for Custom Plushies asking to commission a plush maker for a plush of a character from the show Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go. One of the makers that approached me was a UK-based maker named Sona Simkova. On the post I asked them to send me a direct message with examples of their work.
After they sent examples, I asked Sona if they had any social media accounts and this was their response. This is why they are referred to with their full name, as it is the only thing available ("Ockolapka" is from their public facebook page's URL).
I agreed to commission them and on September 2nd 2020 I sent them payment via PayPal.
Once the payment was given, I would message them every 1-2 months requesting updates on my commission. Being an artist myself, I'm more than understanding of how much time and work goes into making plushies so I never rushed them.
In the beginning their responses seemed pretty normal delay responses.
Now this I thought was slightly odd as they never mentioned before that my commission was in a queue, but I did tell them I was in no rush so I was understanding and let it go.
Here is where I started to get worried. COVID-19 is no joke and of course if they did contract the virus I would want them to take it easy, but at the same time it started to get weirder and weirder that Sona was feeding me excuse after excuse. But I didn't want to think badly of them for it; I hated the idea of accusing them of being a liar during a deadly pandemic. However, this was also the start of their delayed responses, and I was started to get seriously annoyed that I was the only one initiating conversation. As you've seen in the previous responses, I had gotten a few "I forgot to tell you"s, so really I should've been a lot more suspicious much earlier on (Word is censored from their message because they put my last name).
So once again I got radio silence, and it's getting close to me needed to move out of my current apartment so now I really needed my commission to be done sooner. At the same time I started to realize I might not even GET my commission, so I decided to twist the knife and see what happens.
Unfortunately my fears were true. As you can see in my second response, Sona's facebook icon is next to it indicating they've seen the messages. They have now proceeded to ghost me and has not responded to my messages since. I reached out to one of the mods of the Plush facebook group about them and this was the response.
Sona appears to be attempting to disappear, and has ran off with my money. I cannot open a dispute on Paypal because it's past their 180 day limit (which I will admit is on me for not keeping track on dates).
Beware of this person, they silently return money, so if u not checking your emails so often - YOU CAN LOSE YOUR MONEY
after one week he\she requested money back. (March 28)
I don't know how to find any other their accounts, but I have their email. (IDK if it is fine to put here emails, so I will not??)
He\she bought the adopt from me [proof 2] and then silently request money back, but my rules saying "no refunds" [proof 1]. Then, it was my bad, because I am not usually checking my email, so I lost too much time to argument the request. [proof 3]
wolear - old account which one was deleted after purchasing the adoptable
yaawween - their fake (I guess) account
Proofs:
[proof 1]
[proof 2]
[proof 3]
"Emergency" summer pin-up YCH via FA submission circa July 13th 2018 meant to be completed within two weeks per the original posting. The submission that I had originally requested a slot from as well as the original request for payment from the artist has long since been deleted, but here is the paypal statement from it.
I was rather busy during 2019, so I had let the commission sit dormant expecting it to be done at the artist's leisure, however around two two year mark of waiting (2020), I decided to follow up due to the extreme amount of time that has passed.
Inbox record:
Outbox record (including unread messages as of 4/13/2021)
As can be noticed, several messages have gone unread over the last 5 months. This is in line with a previous artist beware I've now seen that was posted after my commission, and is also in line with multiple posts that are present in various journals /shouts the artist has on their furaffinity account.
Record of notes I've had with the artist on Furaffinity, in chronological order:
(Initial PM to them originally accepting my commission via FA submission)
(Followup two years later)
__________________________________
At this point, they had posted a journal on their FA that they had deleted their previous trello and made a new one - and to note them if you were missing from it.
_________________________
I ended up hopping into one of their "OVERDUE COMMISSION ONLY" stream on picarto on Jan 13th, managing to give them a poke that I had sent them a note about my commission.
(firefox history)
They had posted a journal soon after this that were streaming via picarto. I had sent them a PM instream which also went ignored.
(firefox history.)
___________________________
The artist has since been replying to people in journals taking additonal slots for work and various other responses.
I won a Your Horse Here auction from the artist back on April 29th 2020 artist asked me to send them a note and I did with my email to get invoiced
They never sent me the reply saying they had sent the invoice and I noticed it 5 days later when I logged in for another invoice.
They had sent the invoice over as a Friends and Family request and I unfortunately was new at commissioning back then and did not know better then agree to that option.
they never responded to my note when I found the invoice and let them know I paid it.
I sent them another note in September checking for an update and I did get a Work In Progress image:
since then I've asked for another update back in December
I requested of them to do a character I had previously bought from them. I'd had other horses if he had been to complicated for it and would have been willing to change to a simpler horse if requested.
to which it was marked as Read by fA but I was never replied to
I sent another request for an update 3 weeks ago as we are quickly coming up to the 1 year mark since I commissioned the piece and the message is still marked as Unread
they have recently posted finished pieces and more recently favored a new piece of art
I have sent them a new message asking for either an update or a refund and will update when I get an answer to my latest note.
I have some artists I have waited Longer then a year for. But that is with communication between myself and the artist. I am normally level headed and honestly I would not miss the $30 quite so much as unlike most I had steady work while others were in lock down and such. But with them ignoring my asking for updates and such. It rubs me the wrong way. I understand there might be things lost in translation, but I have worked with numerous artists who rely on translators to understand the work and I've not had any issues. So I'm feeling at this point that they don't really care about their smaller commissions, as I've seen art posted from their Iron Artist type stuff that was paid more for and art turned around faster then I have been waiting for this piece.
In July of 2017 I attempted to purchase a fursuit from Lucky Gum Fursuits (see originalpurchase1edited.png and originalpurchase2edited.png). After a few years of waiting I asked for the refund that was promised in their terms of service. The buyer agreed to the refund and promised to pay me back every month until I got $1515 promised to me (see promisedrefund1edited.png and promisedrefund2edited.png). However I have not received any of the payments. I have made several attempts to contact the buyer again to work with them personally on how to best resolve the issue (see twittercommunication.png and attemptedfurthercommunicationyahooedited.png) but they have yet to contact me back.
Back in August of 2019, My partner Lainebrary and I purchased this set of adoptables for their ABs; $125 each. The transaction went incredibly smoothly, and Pepapen was very quick and professional to deliver files; even going so far as creating additional files for us when asked for separate .pngs for the fullbodies / portraits.
April 3rd, 2021; I was browsing Pinterest and I came across an art piece that feels oddly similar to my character, Blessing; and when I overlaid them, it became incredibly clear that this wasn’t just a reference, there was a direct trace.
I spent the next hour and a half, in tears, tearing through the internet with image searches to try to find which image came first; the adoptable, or this bust piece I found on Pinterest. Spoiler; it was the portrait I’d found, which pre-dates these two adoptables by two years. You can find it here, time-stamped December 26, 2017; two years before the adoptables were created. https://monappy.jp/picture_places/view/22490
I reached out to Pepapen immediately seeking recourse. The emails are as follows;
In the emails, my demands to fix the problem where as follows;
A public post on your art and social media accounts admitting that you traced. With this, I would like to see you come clean on every piece that was traced or 'heavily referenced'. Track down the people who paid you for these works or adopts, and offer them a full refund or a redraw.
Reach out to the artists whose works you've stolen.
A full refund on these designs.
Within a day, all of my demands were met.
Hello everyone, I would like to comment on the incident that I had a few days ago with a client.
not more than 4 weeks ago a user in discord (and inkbunny, himself) asked me for a commission for a cartoon fight (characters hitting each other in a cloud of smoke) with some tv characters and 2 of my ocs, one sfw and nsfw. he sent me a reference from another artist (censored too
however my commission list was full at the time, I did tell him it was full but I could put him on a pending waiting list.
so the user accepted. then the days passed into weeks, honestly I am very sorry to make my clients wait, and it is my fault that things can be forgotten on me, so I quickly asked for my sincere apologies, the user was somewhat angry and I understand it perfectly even that I feel sad, my art is slow...
The user was very kind so it motivated me to draw on a better way.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not usually ask the money first because I like that the clients are satisfied with the sketch and then I receive the payment. so there is no image of the payment.
I sent the first sketch, the user did not like it but I did not hate it either.
naturally the user tells me what changes he wants, but not minor changes if not a total change. I personally understand that there are clients who ask for perfection, so in that aspect it does not make me unhappy. but a total change I really did not feel that I could do it, I felt a little nervous since I promised to send several sketches in a single day, and it usually takes 3 hours per sketch and more than this size.
how I still thought that he felt angry, I preferred to give up and say that I could not do it and I would not complain at all because he is in all his right, but while the conversation was flowing the client told me things like "I thought you knew what that I wanted "(I want to clarify that English is not my main language so I usually have to make mistakes and misunderstand things) I understand this. another thing he told me "You're hurting your chances" then I felt that the sutuiacion was feeling "heavy" bad
so I decided to explain to him why I feel that I cannot make a big change and why it takes me a long time, with the hope NOT that he would accept the sketch, if not that he understood and did not get angry with me.
I don't think the user understood at all, maybe it's because of my English or I don't know.
until he told me that he could pay me 200 USD which was not very sensible because I felt like a very poor girl. it was like an insult to my person. after that he decided to cancel everything and not talk to me again. What I would have liked is maybe to receive an apology or at least a small payment for the sketch, even though I understand that he is not obliged, i dont will lair i trying ask him a payment, he told me no, then i decided stoped.
What can I say is that I be careful with some clients
I was part of an auction of UtikaBu the auction is still here and his comment on winning.
I won the auction on 25. Oct 2020
After this we exchanged our discord tags to talk about details there.
We agreed to add some clothes to the picture wich would increase the price by 20 $
The artist was active and was slowly getting trough his queue all fine from this point so far.
After some time he stopped posting stuff on FA and/or Twitter. This is where the silence began.
After roughly 4 months I asked him for an update on his queue on 06. Feb. 2021. Sadly no response
I waited and another month pasted and I sended him a note on FA on 15. Mar. 2021
Wich is still unread to this day
I also wrote an email to his email address that is behind his paypal account he uses, wich reminds to look into the notes and discord messages. (Also no response yet)
