I purchased a commission from Galactirad on etsy that was never fulfilled by the artist. I attempted to contact them twice on etsy about it and recieved no answers. Unfortunately Etsy said I had missed the window on opening a case against Galactirad which means I never recieved my commission or a refund from etsy or the artist.
For a long time I was unable to reach Galactirad through etsy or Instagram. For a long time they went silent on social media until recently they announced they would be moving to another Instagram account under the name Strawberrydecayy. I politley contacted them again to see if they would resolve the issue, instead they blocked me.
I've noticed their etsy shop is now closed, but they are still accepting commissions through PayPal.
- We originally agreed I would provide references and payment and they would draw me a full body colored image of my character.
I've tried to provide adequate proof in chronological order for the event in question. This includes messages and proof of payment.
So I’m not too sure if this goes under a Beware or a Caution but here this goes.
In the middle of July 2020, I won an auction for a ych piece and had waited for Nika to contact me. Since i did not receive any messages or comment saying I won, I went and sent them a message which they did not reply to for approximately another month. It was definitely a red flag. We add each other on discord and begin to discuss the commission there, references, payment, etc. So I sent the payment on September 17, 2020 and within the span of about 4 months, I only hear from them once more time in October, then silence after that.
In January 2021, I told them that I will be refunding the payment from PayPal if I don’t hear from them and so I did exactly that. A week or so later I started a resolution/dispute on PayPal. Within the same hour of having started the dispute, she texts me saying she is working on the commissions she has in line and if I can wait. I tell her my limit to wait has been reached and I wanted my payment refunded. She starts to guilt trip me by saying she will be homeless if I refund the payment. She also stated that it was against her terms of service to refund the payment when progress has started.
So I go back to look at the terms stated in the post (which has since been deleted) and it says “NO REFUND after I started to work on ych.” I look for my name in the list of the commissions in progress she has. She has 44 commissions in progress at the time of writing this, another red flag. I finally find my name buried in there and it says 0% pre sketching, meaning that she hasn’t begun. I clearly have not broken the TOS but she insists that I have and now she will not send me the refund.
I want to make this to warn anyone who wants a commission from her because she may try and bait you out until the point where you cannot refund on PayPal.
As of December 1st, 2017 I came across an advertisement listed on Furaffinity's home page for a fursuit head sold by blueraccoon23 for a flat price of 400 dollars plus shipping. I promptly messaged her about it and showed immediate interest to her and a payment arrangement was quickly made within a couple days.
The conversation continued and we agreed to a payment plan of 50/50 through paypal. The first paypal request was on December 6th, 2017 (Sent from her through goods and services) for the amount of 215 dollars. (200 for half the commission and 15 for shipping through USPS) And was paid by me on the date below (December 8th, 2017)
After the first payment, commission details were discussed. Including possible additional pricing for other items on the fursuit head. Originally the extra price was going to be included in the second paypal request. But she had the materials on hand to do it a different way so it wasn't in the second payment of 200 dollars through paypal goods and services.
She requested the money through a Furaffinity note message on March 17th 2018 for the amount of 200 dollars. And I denied it at the time.
In retrospect this should have been the first indication that something was wrong when she was asking me for money out of the blue, when there was no date set for either transaction and she made multiple mentions that there was no problem with the delay of transaction.
The above date is when the invoice was sent on April 3rd, 2018. And it was paid by me to the amount of 200 dollars on May 9th, 2018.
During the entire month of May, a string of messages from me went unanswered by her for over a month. Ending with her last communication via furaffinity note message on June 2nd, 2018.
(The length of the screen captures show text from previous messages to keep consistency between posts)
Inbox messages, showing the long gap between her responses.
Outbox messages, showing the unanswered messages from me to her.
I sent one more note on July 31st, 2020 that went unanswered. No more communications between us occurred on furaffinity.
By October 3rd, 2018 I messaged her on her business email account. Found on her Instagram, website, and also through paypal. From that date until October 16th, 2020, she only replied once and 7 messages went without reply.
(Again, screen captures are kept long to keep consistency. These are gmail messages in PDF printer format. Bottom of the page indicates 1/1 pages on all screen captures to show no replies are missing or falsified)
During all of these emails, on May 23rd, 2019 I found her telegram account by using the same name, Blueraccoon23 and messaged her, she replied in roughly 1 hour. Over the course of 17 minutes she sends 5 messages and then never responds again through Telegram.
The email attempts continue on September 15th, with only one message sent in the thread.
Finally I ask for a refund on October 16th, 2020 with the details of the transaction included.
She mentioned in her one email response to check her Trello account, because that's where she updates her commission queue. She never added my name, and the names that are in her queue currently have been on there for well over a year. Her Trello can be found here: https://trello.com/b/H0ZXIlhr/bluecoons-creations
Her last update was May 10th, 2019)
Her Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/blueraccoon23/ and at the time of this post, the website listed on her Instagram is no longer a valid web domain: www.bluecoonscreations.com and that was the only place that I know of where her Trello account was even listed in the first place.
[removed by staff for proxy: Remember, posts should only talk about your issues with an artist. Not other people.]
So in short, if you ever see blueraccon23 (Jasper on Instagram) Don't commission her. There is a high likely-hood that you will never see your name on the queue, that she won't ever respond to you, with possible lost money and lost time.
So, I just found someone that took a commission doing a copy/paste of my art, removing my watermarks, without permission and without crediting me.
Original art links
I had a customer order 4 YCHs off of me on the same base and used discord to discuss it with me and the options.
They sent me through the forms and I did a little clarification and then went ahead and sent WIPS of the product before colouring, got the all clear and completed them. I then sent through one which didn't look right and asked if they found a flat version of the pattern on google as this one was textured. I agreed to fix anything they would want as their form was very descriptive. They then proceeded to say this art wasn't as good as the other I have done even though its to the same par. They then decided to just cancel the whole commission even though it was completed and just wanted colour changes. I informed them that I don't do refunds to people who already have their YCHs done, especially when I have sent them the files, to which they explained the YCH doesn't even have shading which I never offered on that base as not all my bases have shading included.
Then after all this they decided to threaten me if I didn't refund them and called it trash and junk.
In August 2017, I contacted Noben about a commission and it was agreed upon. $150 was paid on August 23rd, 2017.
All of her business was handled through someone else at the time, and they are no longer working with her. I had also messaged about a refund last May, and it was agreed upon through their secretary that it would be done, with no guarantee on when I would get my money back.
Fast forward to November 2020, and that secretary no longer handles their business. I emailed Noben as it said to on her Furaffinity, and as of today on January 1st, 2021, I have gotten no reply.
I'm generally very patient with artists if they communicate, but this is just exploiting my patience at this point.
PayPal Invoice
Trello card (Current)
Agreement to refund (I am BigHoot)
Email to Noben with no answer
I did a commission for the guy, I talked to him very normally, and the verbal agreement was done.
I started his commission sent him 2 progress reports, after the second progress report was sent, the next day he blocked me.
I'm not going to harass him or anything but just be careful he seems just fine with stealing.
Funny thing it was still a wip...
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.
