Beware: Panicat

This is an old Beware, but I was unaware of this website's existence at the time of this commission. To date, the commission has still not been completed as detailed, and the user continues to have me blocked, so I consider it still relevant. The commission took place on FlightRising, and thus all screenshots are from Private Messages and Crossroads (transaction history, basically) from that site.

On a side note: all icons and names from PMs show up as Panicat because that's how the website shows them. However, I have marked clearly which ones are my replies and which are theirs.

This is the original post I had made looking for art. Take note that it has not been edited since almost a week BEFORE any of our correspondence took place, so you're seeing the exact same message that they did when contacting me. The text links --

Tattoo Reference:

Pose Reference:

And a link to the original thread which still exists and has not been edited since, to verify that I'm not altering any of that information.
 

On Dec 09, I received a PM from Panicat offering to fill the commission.

The References link:

Not perfect, necessarily, but most of it seems solid enough.

So I replied:

Their reply:

For an idea of the cost, 1.5k gems is somewhere between $15 and $20. That was about 3x the going rate for that kind of commission on the site itself at that time, but since I was asking for a PSD to be edited by me later, and because I trusted in their ability to provide a quality commission given their sample images, I was willing to pay it.

My reply. I should probably have waited to send payment, but honestly, I've commissioned dozens of pieces of art (not including adoptables) and had never been burned before (or in the three years since.

Proof of payment. The diamond at the bottom is gems, the premium currency on the site. As you'll see, though, they did NOT keep me updated, though that's a minor complaint compared to anything else.

This is what I received almost a full week later.

Take note that this is NOT the pose I had asked for, nor do I  believe this is "solid human anatomy," as the character looks like he's going to topple backwards. Also, should he put any weight on that left hand, with his fingers bent like that, he would BREAK HIS FINGERS. Regardless of knowing anything about the character or not, this not only does not match the reference pose, but I'd argue, isn't solid anatomy at all, nor is it representative of the samples they provided.

So I contacted them, mentioning the various problems with the art they'd provided:

I tried to provide positivity (what a cool breakdancing pose!) to soften the blow of the art being so wrong that it would probably need to be scrapped and done again. I also provided more specifics on WHY I liked the pose reference I had provided, hoping it would prevent a second mistake.

I do not feel that I am in the wrong to request that they ACTUALLY draw what I paid them for.

Their reply.

They messed up, and they want ME to pay THEM to fix it. Just... WHAT?

And 1kg? That would put it at 2.5kg for what is basically PARTIAL LINEART that is PROBABLY on top of a very, very rough sketch. That's absurd levels of payment, in my eyes, even given that I was asking for the license to animate the resulting image with a basic glow effect. For reference, that puts it very clearly above the $25 level. For again, what is essentially partial lineart.

On principle, I refused to pay someone to fix their own mistake. I asked several artists (both friends and strangers) whether they felt I had been clear enough in the original thread, and they all replied that yes, the misunderstanding was on Panicat's end, not my own. So I replied:

As mentioned there -- if they had questions, I would have happily answered them. If they'd "kept me updated," as they claimed they would do, I would have pointed out the error the moment I saw it. But they did none of those things, and instead blatantly ignored my requests.

Their reply:

They're insisting that I still pay, because "well how could I know better?"

So my reply:

I feel my solutions are pretty fair. They didn't deliver the commission as ordered. I would have PREFERRED a redraw, but it's entirely possible a YCH auction would've earned them money back for the (incorrect and inaccurate) work provided.

Their reply:

They delivered the WRONG work, and decided to blame me for not accepting blatantly inaccurate work that didn't reflect the original commission.

My reply:

I never received an answer to that PM, and soon after posted the entire exchange to the website-specific version of ArtistsBeware.

I have since learned that they've blocked me.

This is what I see when I try to view their profile:

And this is what anyone not blocked by them, or me via incognito window (logged out) can view:

So no resolution will ever be found, it seems. They scammed me out of my gems, refused to correct their mistakes, and blocked me when I tried to find a resolution.