This is a beware that involves somebody that was once a friend of mine. For that reason, this is quite a tough one for me to write. I have tried to limit the amount of personal information to what is required for anyone to be able to follow this beware.
It all started over a year ago. The artist posted in a discord server that she had an unexpected bill for her new house. As a friend, I wanted to help her out, so I originally offered to let her borrow some of my money for free. She raised the idea of a commision instead. The screencap below is my response in PM to the post she made on the discord server.
After this reply we had some chit-chat about trading cards that I have not included here. Afterwards, I asked what she could do for 250 pounds. Besides a plushie that was currently not a good option, she could do at least two “standard colour pictures”. What I knew of this type of artwork is that they were of just the character's face.
She asked for screenshots of one of the characters, Truun, which I provided a while later. After that I asked her where I should send the money to. It was recommended to use paypal with friends and family. She also mentioned that normally she only asks people to send the money after the work is completed. However, given she had this emergency bill, I decided to pay right away. After mentioning the paypal that sent the money, she confirmed the payment.
At the end of all this, the strongest I would say that we agreed to here is 250 pounds for 2 and a half standard color images. These are the type where I knew they were just the face.
A few months went by without any progress. Besides the regular chatter, occasionally we would be in a group voice chat in a WoW guild discord with multiple people casually talking about all sorts of things. During those she would often on the side mention how she was sorry that she still had not started yet with the art and would start soon (which she then never would).
After one group voice chat I started having my doubts about the “2 and a half image” agreement when she would mention that she would start on my 'one' character soon. So I asked for clarity on that after the voice chat. She ‘confirmed’ that it was indeed just one character. I agreed to that, under the assumption that it would then not be a standard color image given those were 100 pounds each. If we look here at a learning moment, I should have pushed at that moment for more clarity. Though I found it difficult to do with her being a friend. However, I do also believe that the artist has to do their part in asking questions and being clear when there appears to be doubts.
Many months went by. During that time we still had our usual conversations and she would continue to occasionally mention how she felt bad that she had still not started yet.
At one point I sent her a message to ask her to double check with me before she gets started. This commission was for a roleplaying character and a lot of character development had taken place between the first transaction and then. This would affect the work. I did not get a response to this one.
Around two weeks after this message our friendship reached a breaking point. This was not due to the art commision itself, but a long buildup caused by painful interactions over time. I decided the best thing to do was to take distance from her and also leave the WoW guild discord she was part of. A lot can be written about how this friendship broke down, but I prefer to keep this private. Around three weeks later I decided to ask for a full refund for the commision. It had been over a year where no progress was shown. I decided to present the situation to two artists first before requesting the refund and they both mentioned that this would be fair. I hoped that after a whole year of having the money for free and having no progress, and me having done this to help her as a friend, she would understand and would have agreed to the full refund so that we could both leave this commision and everything attached to it behind us peacefully. At this point, I was not convinced this commission would ever still be finished and even if it would, I felt the work would only remind of the painful experiences that I tried to leave behind. I would not be able to seperate the art from how it came to be.
She was not willing to offer the full refund even though it had been over a year. The reasoning being that she had started working on the commission since the moment I took distance. However, between me notifying her that I was taking distance and requesting the refund, there had been no contact from her what so ever. Also from what you can see from a previous image, I asked her to double check with me before she would start.
I was not willing to accept this. I was also very skeptical whether she had actually already started at this point when she mentioned she could only show me progress the day after. After some pushing, and with a bit of time passing, she actually managed to show me the sketch that represented the progress she had made so far. I was skeptical about whether this sketch had not been done during the time I asked for the refund and when she posted it. She tried to convince me that was not the case and then went on to ask about details for the sketch itself. She also mentioned that I have had information along the way, but this has been mostly limited to the voice chats I mentioned earlier where she would apologize for it still not being done. There was never any progress shared or any questions asked regarding how the art should be.
So she showed me a sketch of just the face of the character. As this seemed to be heading towards being one of those standard images that I originally would get 2 and a half of, I asked if it would indeed be just the face.
I got the answer back that this was indeed the case. At this point out of good will she was willing to do a sketch of another one of my characters.
As you can see above, she mentions that I agreed on this single image in voice chat. Though I asked her after the voice chat for clarity about how many characters were going to be done, and I did agree to just one (see an earlier image) , I never agreed to it being just the face.
I offered besides the full refund that she could refund me 150 pounds and just finish the one image as a way to accomodate.
She refused both offers and pointed at what her regular commisions are, which are indeed only faces, but these are the "standard color images" that I would originally get 2 and a half for. In the same response she grudgingly offered to do a full body instead for the full amount.
At this point, I took some time to think about what to do next. At this point, I would not be able to separate the art from how it was produced and looking at it would mostly just give me painful memories to this exchange and all the things that ultimately made it better for me to take distance from her. A few days later I made the final offer. I would give her 50 pounds for the work she had already done (the sketch), without asking anything in return for it. She would be allowed to pay back the 200 pounds in installments of 50 pounds per month.
She also refused this offer and this is where I have left it at.
While this beware was pending, she came back to me to offer me 125 pounds without offering any art with the argument that it is 'common to do 50/50 with these large commissions'. However, this would still not be fair. We never agreed to this split up front and all the way at the start, she even mentioned that she commonly let people pay afterwards (see an earlier screen cap). So this is a pretty weak argument. A standard color image is 100 pounds, all the progress she has is the sketch of the same size. This would mean she is letting me pay 25 pounds more for less (or actually none as I won’t get any work for it).
Ideally, I would have preferred not to have had to make this beware. I had hoped that after all this time she would have agreed to the full refund and we could have both left this peacefully behind us. Even after she refused that offer, I tried to accomdate in multiple ways. I feel my offers have been more than fair. At this point, I will only still accept the 200 pounds refund.
This was the first art commission I ever tried and it has been the only one so far. It feels as if my friendship has been taken advantage of. Though this has been a rather painful experience that makes me somewhat hesistant to commission art in the future, I have learned two important things. One is that I should have pushed for a very strict written agreement even though we were friends. Another is to never do these types of transactions using “friends and family” for paypal.
I hope with now having written this all down I can start leaving this behind me and have been able to warn others and perhaps tell a cautionary tale.
I commissioned Hollewdz back in April of 2022 for a size art that amounted to $160.
After this I followed my usual rule of 1 month between check ins just to give leeway to the artist. Everything was fine for about a month or so until in June, when I stopped receiving responses. I blocked out one word as, even though she was open about it, it is a personal issue of hers I don't feel right saying myself. As for the supposed methods of attaining a refund, I later realized that I had misunderstood Paypal's policy and that I was well passed a grace period.
Throughout this I did attempt to communicate by other means, messaging her on Patreon and via email. She does not have her email posted, but it was the email through which she sent out the invoice.
This has been a disappointing experience. I hope that it can still be resolved someday, but I wanted to make others aware of this sort of possibility when commissioning this artist. My friend made me aware of this site as a polite means of doing so.
The original agreement was a commission for $35 involving two characters. This was for an emergency commission post they had made in August.
I sent the payment to them through CashApp, that was their preference and they asked for payment in advance.
Everything was confirmed and they had let me know that they would give me updates as the week goes by. This has not happened at all.
I have not heard anything about my commission so I sent them a message on January 1, 2023. Throughout the entire month of January, I have not heard back even after bumping the message multiple times. Eventually, I request for a refund which has not happened and at this point, I don't think it will happen considering the lack of communication that has happened with my messages. They are active on Twitter and have been posting art and tweets throughout the month so it appears that they are ignoring these messages. Currently my refund request is pending on CashApp and there is not much I can do but hope that they refund me.
Below is proof of payment and the refund request that ended up expiring eventually. Fortunately, I was able to recover the lost funds through my bank.
I contacted Lady Bullfinch on December 11, 2021. I had found her on twitter and commissioned her for a pixel pagedoll.
I was added to her queue (_qphelia, due feb. 12) and thought nothing of it.
She specifically informed me that turnaround would be about two months - absolutely no problem. Payment is sent.
I told her okay, informed her that I found her through the pagedoll tag on twitter, and we agreed on the commission. February 17 comes, I shoot her a dm asking about it, no pressure, she says she hurt her hand over the new year. I say no worries, take your time, no rush. She also offers a discount on future commissions.
March, May, and June come, and I dm her to check in on things. It is one month later, in july, that she gets back to me. She says she has health issues, I ask if she can do the commission or if she wants to just refund me. She says no, she can't refund me, since paypal is broken in her country. We go ahead with the commission as planned.
Between then and now, nearly six months later, there's been nothing. No contact, no updates, nothing. She liked some posts on twitter in october, but did not respond to my message.
A PSA was crossposted to toyhouse but neither I, nor the people in the comments of said PSA, have received any update.
In short, I paid Lewdtime for thee commissioned pictures and only received one.
The full story: on 7/14/22 I subscibed to Lewdtime's Pixiv Fanbox, which works very similarly to Patreon in that the user pays a certain fee every month in exchange for terms set by the artist. This complaint deals exclusively with the monthly colored sketch and so I have omitted information on the lower tier's terms, which this tier also receives.
Lewdtime has since replaced this tier with one that has an identical description but an increased price.
Pixiv Fanbox records a user's payment history like this:
At the end of September I decided to cancel my subscription so this represents the entire relevent payment history. I have censored mention of another artist I support on Fanbox as they are not related to this complaint.
I communicated with Lewdtime through Discord.
I have since deleted the imgur gallery so the link was dead when I recently took these screencaps.
After ten days Lewdtime had not responded so I sent another message.
A few days later, a little late, Lewdtime gave me a first sketch and we briefly discussed some changes which resulted in an updated sketch.
At this point things were going well, but after this two more weeks went by with no word from Lewdtime so I contacted him again.
After another week with no further word, I was worried Lewdtime was getting badly behind on what was supposed to be a series of sketches completed monthly.
By the 1st of September I decided to accept the idea of a two-character piece replacing the one-character pieces for August and September, hoping that it would lead to Lewdtime catching up and that in the future sketches would not be late.
I have censored the descripition of the idea for perhaps being too lewd for this website.
More than two weeks later I had heard nothing and sent another message.
I have censored the sketch for the same reason as above.
When I had not heard back by the last day of September I decided not to allow my Fanbox subscription to renew for a fourth month. After I cancelled it, Lewdtime sent me one last message with a second WIP for the combined August/September picture, as well as, finally, a completed version of the July picture.
Details of the second request censored again.
I had cancelled my subscription but as I had already paid for the August/September picture and Lewdtme had produced some WIPs for it I attempted to communicate a further two times in October.
I received no reply.
Prior to making this post I tried one last time to contact Lewdtime, making clear my position on what I thought was fair.
I have received no reply at the time I submitted this post.
Pixiv Fanbox does not seem to offer subscribers any recourse when artists do not fulfill their end of the bargain so my money is simply lost.
The original conversation have been deleted (not by me) from Telegram after a lost of account from the vendor (said by him in the chat convo - p1).
I've found him on Twitter after many months, where the conversation continue.
The order was a pair of hand paws. From 14 April 2020.
Original Transaction Date from Paypal history
I have WIP and pictures showned of the progress. (in attachment, convo - p2, p3, p4)
But as time moved on, I propossed an alternative for the maker to just sent everything done or not, if he were unable to complete. He accepted. Since then, I made along multiple months several reminder about the shipping.
The last message were not responded nor seen.
In April of 2022 I commissioned artist Kittygrave on Twitter for a simple flatcolored bust sketch of my OC to help support them when they said they needed money.
I paid the money and waited about a month, what I figured was more than enough time to get the commissions done since it was nothing seriously huge, they responded saying they would have it done at some point in June.
I let some time go by, and nothing ever came of it. So I reached back out in November for any updates or a refund if they were too busy or no longer wanted to do it, again another promise to have it done, but this time within a week!
At this point I'm a bit too antsy and 10 days had gone by, so I requested a refund and they promised it by the end of the week.
At this point I become a bit more firm on my requests and set them to this strict time frame since they had promised it yet again. They responded and said they'd have it within 24 hrs, as of January 4th I have yet to receive any kind of refund or a response even though I had asked for updates.
During this now 9 month wait, and past my given deadline, they had done personal art, opened commissions (They deleted the comm advertising post, but evidence of it will be posted), and adoptable batches. They HAD a trello but had taken it down to update it and I have been unable to find it since. I don't even know if I was ever put on it to begin with as it was inaccessible to me before my commission. Normally things like this I would even be fine with, but they just did little communication and never updated me if they needed to extend a deadline, which I would have been totally cool with!
Down below are proofs of their activity post deadline:
1/25 MOD NOTICE: The artist has since made amends with OP and provided a refund, and the matter is now considered resolved.
In the beginning of October 2019, I bid on a YCH animation that Kasai619 was auctioning off on their Furaffinity page and ended up being the high bidder. The YCH post is still visible on their FA page as of this writing. (YCH attached)
On October sixth they reached out to me on Discord and informed me that I was the high bidder. I offered to pay more if he would add on a bit more to the animation. Kasai readily agreed and we settled on a price of $300. I paid for the animation and received confirmation that it had been received. They also informed me they were going to use the money to buy a new tablet and sent proof of its purchase as well.
At first things seemed fine. I got one sketch of my characters face and an updated clip of the WIP animation.
After this they continued to keep in touch but every time they messaged me there was a new reason why my commission was delayed.
They were Sick.
They were busy.
They're family members were losing jobs.
They were distracted by GTA.
During all this time I was patient and understanding of their issues but was becoming concerned since Kasai was continuing to take in-stream commissions and complete other customers work while my own seemed to be constantly delayed.
In February of 2021 they contacted me for the last time in regard to my commission. After this I didn't hear anything for many months.
Finally in November of 2021 I had enough and asked for a refund. We agreed on a re-payment plan of twenty dollars every two weeks, and I was hopeful that things would be resolved but once again Kasai went radio silent for many months. Not a single dollar was ever sent to me.
I waited patiently until April of 2022 to reach out to them again but only received a vague excuse about a recent financial difficulty they were experiencing. I became frustrated and expressed my skepticism of their explanation, but they once again went silent.
I reached out to them for the last time in September and was re-assured that he was working with someone to find a way to pay me back. They promised to stay in touch but since then I have heard nothing from them.
It's far too late to get a Paypal re-fund, and I doubt Kasai will ever pay me back. Since I considered them a friend I waited years before even thinking of posting anything here but if this helps other's avoid similar difficulties then I guess it's worth it.
In July 2021, I came across an adoptable character made by Keira Deer linked here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42781289/
I decided to autobuy the character.
I later received this note from her.
Payment for auction:
I decided to message her through Telegram to work out the details for the reference sheet as well as confirm that I had paid her the amount. As promised, she then sent me the full resolution file.
Nearly a month passes before I hear anything back from her.
Communication is spotty at best until in October 2021, I get a hopeful answer.
I never receive another message from her through Telegram after October 12th, 2021. I have also never seen the sketches that she says she made. I decide to reach out to her through Twitter DMs. On November 18th, I receive another message from her.
I have omitted part of the message that stated Keira was having to deal with some personal issues. You can see my acknowledgement above.
After November 18th, 2021, Keira has never acknowledged any messages from myself. As you can see from the Telegram and Twitter messages, they have been left on unread. However, I know she is active on all platforms and has posted new art to FurAffinity, her Telegram art channel and Twitter account. I wanted to give her a chance to respond so have waited nearly three days before writing this.
She still hasn't responded despite me sending the same message to her through FurAffinity notes, on Telegram and as shown on Twitter. I do not wish her any ill will but feel I have given her plenty of time to fix the situation.
Telegram
Twitter
FA
This started on discord where I ask if I can get a 2 piece commission from 1 of there post in a artist community discord. (their original post on discord has been deleted)
* I post my 2 Character REFs in-between theses *
Paypal transactions:
Screencap taken on 7/28/2022 of my commission on their Trello: -Kev0855: Paid / Sketch in progress
I ask for there Trello to keep up to date with there progress without bugging them too much. (I tend to bug people/Artist with questions a lot)
We talk about some IRL things between these 2 caps of our DMS*
This was my 1 and only draft of the commission that I've got so far and this is about 3-4 months into this commission 4/28/21-7/28/21
I'm very patient with people and I knew they had commissions ahead of me from there Trello but I don't hear from them till 7/28/22 ( 1 year later )
during this year gap, I went through IRL issues so I wasn't always online. So I didn't reach out during this time till I got settled down and was able to check-in on things. Never got any updates or messages from them either during this gap year.
At this point I started to ask around to friends and other artist in the community about this delay and lack of communication from this artist without saying who they were just incase they were going Real IRL Issues. Most people said I should say something to the discord Higher-ups(Admins/Mods) about this ongoing issues.
On 7/28/22 I try to press on what's happening and why it was taking so long. I try to give them a out by offering to just drop the whole 2 piece commission and just doing a refund so that its 1 less commission to have to deal with. I figured that they might have taken on more commissions then what they could handle at this point and I was trying to lessen there load. They reverse the choice back to me and letting me know of a IRL issues. I figured that with the IRL issues and that it didn't seem to be that much of issue doing my 2 piece commission that i would ask how long would they think they need to finish. They said that they hope to have ALL the YCHs done in 2 weeks time starting from that next Sunday (7/31/22) 2 weeks later being Sunday (8/14/22). This is being the 1st IRL issues delay.
I wait 2 weeks and poke them again to see what's happening.
On 8/14/22, They let me know that they plan on finishing all their YCHs by the end of August and that my commission was next in queue. They offer a apologue on the delay and a choice between a refund or again offering a extra small piece added to the commission. I didn't want to put more work on there plate and I just wanted to have the art finished and 1 more thing of there plate. This is being the 2nd IRL issues delay.
For a month I gave a little *poke* here and there to see how things are going and to see if they have any updates on what's happening since there Trello hasn't been update since July 8th 2022. On 9/4/22 they update me after me asking that 1st piece needs the shading done and starting colors on the 2nd piece. They reminded me that I got 2 commissions, At the time I was taken back by that statement but I ignore it cause I just wanted by 2 Piece commission that I've been waiting for over a year now done.
On 9/26/22 they let me know about another IRL Issue that delayed them from reaching out to me about what's happening and from any progress on any commissions. They claim to have called out of work to go home and finish my Commission that night. They Again Apologies for the delay/issues.
My DM on 10/22/22 was made to let them know that I knew that they went to TwitchCon cause they had it as their Discord Status before and during TwitchCon.
This last cap is the last of the DMs at this time 12/19/22 8am. There are 4 months worth of DMs in 1 screencap and more IRL issues.