On September 30, 2019, I was made aware of a special auction Mischief Makers was holding on Dealer’s Den. The auction was for a summer 2020 completion commission slot.
Tweet Link
Archived Tweet
The promised deadline was the catalyst for my bid on this auction. At the time of the bid, I was not made aware that Mischief Makers had a queue going back years. I had a positive experience commissioning them in 2016, so I expected this commission would be another positive experience.
PLEASE NOTE: Mischief Makers (or Dealer’s Den) has removed the auction listing, so I cannot screencap it. It now leads to an error page.
On September 30th, I sent my design to them for approval, and the design was approved.
I won the auction for $7,100, as shown in my Dealer’s Den history here:
I informed Mischief Makers of my auction win on October 12, 2019:
I received my invoice from Mischief Makers, and sent the payment shortly after:
I did not receive any communication from Mischief Makers from October 2019 through April 2020. Concerned about my commission’s deadline, given the summer deadline advertised in the auction, I reached out to Mischief Makers on April 1, 2020:
When I did not receive a response from Mischief Makers, I followed up on April 7, 2020 and asked them when I should send my DTD. At this point I became aware that the auction page was removed either by Mischief Makers or by Dealer’s Den. I did not receive a response to my email.
I contacted Mischief Makers via Telegram. I sent a message on April 5th that was unanswered. My message from April 8th was answered:
In this message, Mischief Makers informed me they would improve their communication. I decided I would be patient sometime longer.
Fast forward to July 2020, I sent Mischief Makers some follow up messages via Telegram, asking about the start date to my commission. My messages from July 13 and July 20 were not answered.
I started looking around on Twitter to see if anyone else was having trouble with Mischief Makers, and came across numerous people indicating that Mischief Makers was ghosting them on commissions that were years old.
After some callouts from other customers, Mischief Makers posted a Tweet on July 27th acknowledging their poor communication and committing to fixing it.
Link to Tweet
Link to Archived Tweet
I sent an email to Mischief Makers after reading this post on July 27, 2020, in which I expressed that I was not willing to wait for them to finish their years long queue to get to my commission, as the commission was advertised with a specific deadline, and I bidded accordingly:
I also sent this same message via Telegram:
I did not receive a response to either message. I followed up on August 18, asking for a chance to discuss the commission.
This message was not responded to either.
On August 22nd, there were numerous customers discussing Mischief Maker’s lack of communication and lack of commission progress or updates within in the Mischief Makers Telegram Chat. One customer noted that Mischief Makers had a queue of 28 suits, with a number of other customers not present on the queue.
At this point, an individual named Keitel came forward and asked that customers direct their inquiries toward them. This message was placed in the Mischief Makers telegram chat:
On August 29th, I contacted Keitel per these instructions:
I did not receive a response from Mischief Makers, so I followed up with Keitel on September 1st:
I continued to not receive any communication from Mischief Makers, so I followed up with Keitel on September 8th again. At this point, I was informed that my suit was delayed, but that I should get my suit by the end of the year, and that it would be worked on alongside other suits. I found this reasonable, and hoped for the best.
Fast forward to December 2020, and I hadn’t heard from Keitel or Mischief Makers regarding my suit. Given the new promised deadline, I became concerned and contacted Keitel on December 2nd asking for an update, and when I should send my DTD.
On December 7th, I still had not heard from Mischief Makers, so I followed up with Keitel again:
On December 8th, Keitel responded to me and said that Mischief Makers hadn’t responded to them yet.
On December 13th, I informed Keitel that Mischief Makers still hadn’t contacted me. Keitel informed me that Mischief Makers had not contacted them either.
At this point I informed Keitel that if the suit wasn’t complete by the end of the year, I would expect a refund.
On December 14, I followed up with Keitel and informed them that Mischief Makers still had not responded. On December 15th, Mischief Makers finally reached out to me.
The message I received from Mischief Makers was as follows (along with an indication that Keitel seems to no longer be involved with communication):
I informed Mischief Makers that I was happy to give them more time if I could get consistent communication and a reasonable frequency for updates. I asked them when they expect the suit would be completed.
As of December 21st, today, Mischief Makers has not answered my question despite having viewed it. I sent this message today:
At this point, I am sad to express that I do not trust Mischief Makers will provide me the consistent communication or updates as I have requested. My willingness to accept a later deadline is contingent on trusting my fursuit maker will not ghost me and will continue to provide updates, even if the progress is slow. The silence has spoken. At this point, to resolve this situation, I would like a refund of $7100.
This is an artist beware about Bunnyoffuzz on July who commissioned me to do a comic featuring his bunny character. the commission was given to him on October 11th. He then commissioned me again this time for a hugging picture on the 31st of October featuring his bunny character James Bunny paws and his other character with the Ko-fi donations he sent. after that I received two ko-fi donations or "I like your art here is your tip" I sent him his art he was satisfied with it. On the day of charge back incident I noticed my paypal was in the negative and I checked my email to see that he had opened 3 disputes against the second payment for the comic, the hugging picture, as well as just a normal Ko-fi donation. This is not his first rodeo into chargebacks and most certainly won't be his last I urge you greatly to keep caution when he attempts to commission you. He has had history of doing this in the past.
I will be posting the screenshots I have of Me and him Art that he has posted received from me as well as the emails I have received from paypal etc. The end will be the chargebacks that happened in 2019 regarding him.
In 2019 ontop of chargebacks paypal also had a $20 fee associated with every single chargeback so you can imagine how that add's up in the end.
My personal journey with BadCoyote begins circa mid 2017, when I discovered his art on FA, and fell in love with his more realistic rendering of muscle. He had one pic in particular, of a bald eagle (Shown later below), that I just adored, and when he was open for commissions circa mid-2019, I created a PayPal account and made my first purchase:
Specifically, I paid $250 USD for a character reference sheet, which included "Front, back and side view of the character, color swatch, and choice of font" and "A collaborative design session" (Included here is his newer commission form, circa July 2020, and his older one from early 2020, same prices and listings, but added a bullet point for "Complex armor/outfit/tattoos" costing $50 extra):
I paid in full on June 22nd, 2019, and would not hear from BadCoyote again relating to my commission until April 24th, 2020, a full ten months after the invoice date:
Now, lets talk about BC's Terms of Service (ToS): he has two separate versions, an old one (Used before July 2020, as far as I can tell) which he now claims applies to me based on my purchase date, and a new one (Screenshot taken in October 2020):
Now you will notice the old ToS on the left has no set time-frame and refunds section, and is rather vague on when pieces will be delivered. If I give him the benefit of the doubt, the vagueness was not intentionally set up as a slippery way to get out of refunds, but rather run of the mill incompetence. This is seemingly corrected with the updated ToS on the right, which has a fairly comprehensive policy in the "TIMEFRAME & REFUNDS" section, specifically:
I would consider a character sheet in the same level as a painted illustration, given the work involved, which would have given BadCoyote until December 22nd, 2019 to finish my commission. The fact that I didn't even hear from him until late April 2020 means he is in breach of his own ToS.
And to be clear: He did not start work on my commission, as far as I know. BadCoyote does not run a Trello board, note system, regular tweets on progress, or updates to a profile like FA, Weasyl, Inkbunny, DeviantArt etc. with WIPs, nothing. BadCoyote routinely goes completely silent, for months on end, and no one has any idea what he has been doing in the months since his last tweet or last art stream on Picarto. The few updates commissioners or fans get is through his Twitter, which, for our purposes here, does not routinely give updates on commission progress or WIPs. He will post finished pieces randomly, usually weeks or months between such updates, and I never received any indication my commission was ever worked on.
This leads to my character commission. On Twitter, I sent him examples of what I was going for:
Here start and ends the "Collaborative Design Session". This is me telling him what I wanted with the commission, and then it just ended. I would send him more examples of what I wanted from bodybuilding references...
Doesn't matter. He never acknowledged these additional images, or that he got my messages. Thus ends the "Collaborative design session", I guess. Personally, it did not feel collaborative, nor a session. Pretty unsatisfying, tbh.
On June 28th, 2020, BadCoyote updated his Twitter with a list of 23 commissioners waiting on pieces:
A few days after this tweet, BadCoyote announced one of his random Picarto streams, where he did art live, and his husband, Lobo, ran trivia, with prizes being either sketches or chibis (btw they still owe me a chibi from a year ago when I won trivia) done in an hour or less, live on stream.
I take this as proof that he can work fast, as the following two pieces of my werewolf sona, TK, were finished within 4 days for the weightlifting piece, and the forest piece was finished live on stream since it was a $30 sketch commission, in under an hour:
I would also like to point out his response to posting a queue of 23 separate commissions waiting to be completed was to draw sketches as trivia wins and take on stream commissions.
Because he announced the stream, I figured that was a sign he was working, and decided to ask for any updates:
Note that I did not say "I agree" or "I like it", because I did not want this to happen. But this was the first and only indication from BC that my piece was finally going to get worked on, a full year after the original invoice date of June 22nd, 2019. So I made a point to watch the stream, win trivia again (because that's what I do dab), and have people admire my eagley boi. This is the only piece I have received from BC regarding my $250 color character sheet, a full year after I commissioned him, paid in full:
I'd like to note I was never sent a draft or image, and instead had to screenshot the stream.
I will be honest: I don't fully like it, and I would have liked more changes, as I detailed on Twitter; such as a v-taper waist and more prominent obliques, as well as some changes to the muscles overall. This is a starting point, I fully get that, but BadCoyote and Lobo were seemingly against any changes made in the chat on stream, I guess because it made more work for them?
Now, what I imagine BadCoyote will say is that because I have this pic, I will only get a partial refund from him, if any at all.
My argument is that I paid for a character sheet he described in his commission form as being "Front, back and side, with color swatch". This is a black and white draft, barely the front view, and was started and completed on July 4th 2020, well outside the 6 month maximum outlined in the ToS, given an invoice date of June 22nd, 2019. This here represents the first and only piece of evidence BC did any work on my commission, and it was preformed a full year plus after invoice date/the commission was paid in full. I have not received what I paid $250 for, given the only work preformed is this black and white sketch, when I commissioned him for a full color eagle character reference sheet including front, side and back views.
Since the Picarto stream on July 4th, 2020, I left Twitter because of personal reasons (Twitter was stressing me out, basically). This had the unintended consequence of cutting off my only communication line with BC, so I made a new Twitter account solely to communicate with him. He told me it would be better to email him, so I did just that:
I never got replies when it came to updates on my commission, but he did reply to an email relating to his husbands health:
I take this as proof he is reading this email address, and therefore is selectively choosing what he does and does not reply to. He told me on Twitter to email *this* email account.
After speaking to a fellow BadCoyote commissioner about how long its taken and not hearing anything from BC, I finally decided enough was enough, and sent an email to BC saying I am posting an ArtistBeware on him because it has been over and year and a half now, and I have not received any updates on my commission. He did not reply. So I decided to leave a warning in his shouts to anyone considering working with him:
BadCoyote deleted these shouts a day later, and reached out on FA:
Let me be clear: There is no good time to ask BC to preform his work duties. Anytime I have seen anyone bring up the fact he owes them art or a refund, he treats it like he is being bullied, followed by a bevy of excuses ("Multiple Surgeries", "Burnout", "Been feeling sick because of my [censored]", "Dealing with family drama" etc). If I did not contact him on his holiday, I would have interrupted him while he was *totally* working on someone else's piece, or was sick and not feeling well, or was dealing with his dog, or whatever. There will never be a good time to make BC do his job, in my personal view. To ask him for updates regarding my $250 commission from a year and a half ago is quite obviously rude, and how dare I.
The finale to this is I sent him a note on FA asking for any updates, and BC sent me a note back saying he is willing to do the piece, so long as I remain civil. So I accepted his offer, specifically because of this line:
I reiterated what I wanted for my eagle design in response:
Like the past year and a half, no response, no updates on Twitter, nothing. The week passed. Its been 18 months at this point.
When BC talks about civility here, what I believe he means is "Go easy on me" and let him continue operating as he does. The way he conducts himself has lead to a queue of 23 people, all of whom paid in advance, waiting in some cases years for their drawings. When you criticize this simple fact, you are being uncivil in BC's view, and in fact, bullying him.
BC says in his FA messages to me that he plans on leaving the fandom:
To BC, all I can say is good luck.
[email protected]
[email protected]
Are the emails they use for "paypal information" when you ask for it. I did some digging online later and found out it was the same person, so I'm only making this thread once.
Situation 1:
@GayBearBitch / Bumble Boyo wanted to buy my character i posted in The Dealer's Den: PAWn Shop on telegram. i asked for confirmation as I was checking my paypal and they disappeared after clearing the chat. of course i didnt send them the character as i didnt get payment. -- Illustrated in images 0-2
Situation 2:
@That_GayFurry -- same thing. didn't send payment, and cleared the chat. but i screenshot everything so there's that.... images 3-6 -- they mention in images 5 & 6 about the "controversy" involving their email... if you google search it, I'm sure you can find all the proof splattered on twitter regarding it.
IMAGES EDITED TO REMOVE MY PERSONAL INFORMATION -- and the characters in them are no longer available, so... there's that too.
I came into contact with ronmeru via discord, following their recommendation to contact them there as posted on their twitter, which is where i first saw them. I liked their artwork and agreed to pay them for a sfw piece. I paid the same day and they said they'd add me to the queue. Being used to putting confidence in artists, I didn't think much more of it as time passed. After more than a month I asked how it was coming along, since my commission wasn't more than a coloured sketch. They said they'd reset their queue the next day and get to work right away. A month passed, and I asked them again, to which they responded they'd do it tomorrow. A month passed and not a work, so on the 26th of november I asked for a refund as I was no longer interested and they had no proof they'd even started on it. They didn't respond and I escalated it to a paypal claim. They didn't respond and paypal gave me a full refund. During this time, they've shown activity on their twitter and discord server, blatantly ignoring my commission. I want to warn potential commissioners of this artist.
I purchased three YCH pieces from the artist ("BrokenVocaloid" on FurAffinity) at the beginning of this year. (see the following: "FireShot Capture 001 - BrokenVocaloid YCH commission 1.jpg", "FireShot Capture 002 - BrokenVocaloid YCH commission 2.jpg", & "FireShot Capture 003 - BrokenVocaloid YCH commission 3.jpg")
None of which have been finished and the artist hasn't even given any work-in-progress. All pieces were paid in full immediately upon my claiming them. (see "Message 01.jpg", "Message 02.jpg", "Message 03.jpg", "Payment for BrokenVocaloid YCH commission 1.jpg", & "Payment for BrokenVocaloid YCH commission 2 & 3.jpg")
Links for the aforementioned YCHs:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34518839/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34859599/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34859584/
With the COVID situation going on as well as the number of other commissions that the artist had, I allowed the artist more time to finish them. At one point sometime in April (exact date unknown, artist has since deleted the related journal), the artist posted a journal asking all commissioners that had not received their owed art to send them a message with the related details. I responded with the required details and the artist confirmed(see "Message 04.jpg" & "Message 05.jpg"). In September, I made another inquiry as to the progress of the commissions. The artist stated that the owed art would be completed soon. (see "Message 06.jpg")
On November 1st, when over 270 days had passed since the pieces were paid for, there had still been no progress nor completed art. I was tired of waiting and asked for a refund (see "Message 07.jpg"). Throughout the entire year, I had seen the artist complete other commissions and post them, even YCH pieces that were purchased long after I had purchased mine.
I have asked the artist for a refund numerous times, to which they have stated that they would give said refund, but have yet to do so. (see "Message 08.jpg", "Message 09.jpg", & "Message 10.jpg")
I tried to submit a dispute through PayPal, but it had been well over the 180 days stated in PayPal's refund policy since the purchase. Thus, I am unable to force the artist to refund my money. The artist has made numerous promises to refund my money, but at this point I believe they are nothing but a lying thief and the evidence is on my side.
*Note: some images were website captures taken in late October for my own records in case the artist attempted to lie about said commissions. These images have been converted to ".jpg" from ".pdf" and are lower quality than I would like, however they are still legible.
Please do not harass this person if you come across them! I am writing this beware as my interactions with them make me worry they will continue to life to artist (and possibly scam them out off money as will be seen later), and continue to steal art and characters.
I was contacted by BitchDrift (will call her BD for short) regarding a client of hers commissioning art from her using a character and art stolen from me.
My character and art in question:
FlowerMimikyu's edit:
After informing me about this I was invited into a group chat with BD, FlowerMimikyu, and one of BD's friends who had notified BD the character was stolen. Below is what happened as I confronted FlowerMimikyu. I go by (the very professional username) "King Rastakhan Simp" in these screenshots.
I thought that would be it and I'd just have to move on from the situations, but some time later the same night FlowerMimikyu sent me a friend request, which I accepted. This is what happened next:
Seeing as we were going nowhere with this I blocked them. At this point I had already made several friends aware of the situation, as well some public posts on my deviantart and twitter, but it was this final chat, as well as what BD showed me afterwards, that pushed me to write this beware.
Permission from BD to use her proof:
I first contacted Hawk on April 25, 2020 through instagram. I received a quote of $1050 (+$50 shipping) on the same day. Commissions were advertised to open on July 1st, so when that day came around I went ahead to request a slot. They did not reply for 5 days (they usually didn't take more than a day to respond), so I emailed them instead. I got a reply in about 6 hours saying that they weren’t very active on insta due to personal reasons and that I could get a slot. I requested a commission slot on July 5th, 2020. At first, they tried to get me to send through Venmo, but I declined due to lack of buyer protection (thank god). Sorry I couldn't fit their user into this screenshot- the email too long to fit this piece and their user into one screenshot.
I got an updated quote of $1200 (+$50 shipping) on July 6, 2020. At time of slot request, I was not first in the queue, so we agreed that I'd pay 30% down ($360) then to save my place, and the other 70% ($840) when I was first in line. I paid the 30% down on July 9th, 2020. After contact via email, replies from Hawk came every 1-4 days. On July 27, 2020, Hawk contacted me to tell me that I was now first in the queue.
I paid the remaining 70% on July 28, 2020.
After sending the rest of the payment, they confirmed that they'd received it, and said they'd be posting to their instagram, @fluffy.fox.fursuits, in a few days. Their instagram has not posted anything new since April 2020. As seen in the screenshot below, their definition of a late response was 3 days after the money was sent, which would become nothing compared to after this email lol.
On their website, it states that the turnaround time for a partials take 6-7 weeks once you're first in the queue, so I expected to see SOME kind of progress within 2.5 months.
After seeing no work in progresses and getting no response, I reached out just to check if things were going alright. I'm completely okay with delays, but not with being completely ignored for months.
As my buyer protection was nearing its close, I decided to file a paypal dispute on November 23, 2020. By the 27th, they still hadn't replied, so I messaged them through paypal giving them one more chance to respond before I escalated the issue to paypal. After no response, I escalated the issue. Paypal has messaged them but have not received a response as of yet. It's safe to say I'll be getting the money back by default after the unresponsive 10 days are up. Judging by their attempt to get me to pay through venmo, I think this was their plan all along, yet they aren't experienced enough with paypal to know that it has buyer protection. I suspect after their account goes under by the $1.2k they'll suddenly appear and want to chat.
This maker had great recent work despite their not-so-great past, and I personally know the person they last made a suit for, which is what made me choose this maker in the first place. Still, even if they decide to fix up their act after losing the money, I wouldn't trust them again, and I'm surely not giving the money back if they ask for a second chance.
First time posting here guys 🙂
On 10/09/2020, the twitter user MickieWesten contacted me for a NSFW commission. I agreed, and USUALLY I take payment in full up front, but it was a slightly higher bill than I usually get ($85) so I agreed to half up front and half upon completion. (I said sketch in text but I meant when the commission was finished)
I received $50.00 via PayPal from them rather quickly, and I kept them updated on the commission process, and they responded each time.
I officially finished on November 6th, and I have not received any response from the client, and as of November 4th, there is no activity on their Twitter account whatsoever. I have yet to send them the high definition file, but I don't imagine that I will be getting around to that since it appears I've been ghosted possibly.
I have some photos below of our conversation. Images are blurred so it is SFW
Would like to note that the Client since this incident, has deactivated their twitter and FA account.
I have attached all the proof and censored out any sensitive information,
On November 16, 2020 I received a notification of a chargeback on my PayPal account for the sum of $600 from this individual's commission stating it was an order "made without their permission" or an "unauthorized purchase". This was false as I attached when the client contacted me about his stickers while he paid. The artwork in question was completed and delivered to the buyer.
When the chargeback occurred, I emailed the client asking for an explanation. He claimed that he "paid his mother" via her PayPal to get them and wasn't sure why it happened. However the PayPal email and his real life name matched (which was censored out).
I went ahead and responded and asked him to remove the dispute.
He disappeared for a couple of days, which I hadn't heard from him until Thursday November 19, 2020 to which he responded that he will do everything to get the money to me, including an additional $100 to make it $700. However, he stated that he was recently kicked out by his parents. As of today he has deactivated both his twitter and FA account and seems to be disappearing into the void.
While I can understand his situation, it does not mean they should retract payments that were made after work was completed and delivered. Especially that much work that I spent hours completing and even made a priority to finish. I provided a service that they paid for prior to any of these events occurring.
I have went forward with the dispute to try and get the money returned to me by PayPal, but it may take up to 30 days. This is a warning to those that may work with this individual (StarBlazer/GamerGalaxy2013/KlalWuf ) in the future.
