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  • Beware: Terri J. Flippo/ZoopLoopz


    AlitaBerserker
    • Who: Terri J. Flippo/ZoopLoopz on Telegram
      Where: Telegram
      When: 06/21/2019
      What: Commission



    Hi.
    This is a story of two buyers who didn't pay us for our work.

    A little explanation before I start:
    I work together with FyreDraygg. I take care of public relations and make some types of commission; he doesn't talk to our buyers, but is always informed by me about everything he has to know. This is stated on our Terms of Service, automatically accepted when someone decides to commission us.

    That being said, let's start.

    Terri contacted us on 6 December 2018 asking for a Night in The Woods graphic (a type of commission FyreDraygg does) featuring four characters.
    (If you're unfamiliar with the platform it's Plus Messenger. It's Telegram with a different interface)

    image.png.9557e46fa222b071685dbe97d667d712.pngimage.png.fa59cb3c57ebc354914f9c2e73e8cedf.pngimage.png.860c075b3d06dff853cce5a0477b50a2.pngimage.png.7393f798eab424c6955ad391f6021e94.png


    (I know the correct total was 26€ (6,5 x 4 = 26€) when I wrote 24€, , I made a mistake, but I let that slide even after I noticed.)
    Then they proceeded sending us the character references.
    I gave them an indicative date as, per policy, we can't ensure any completion date.
    I also explained them FyreDraygg will work on their piece (even if they should have known reading our ToS or, simply, my FurAffinity page).

    image.png.82d99abbf8ced51dd135cffb02155eb3.pngimage.png.4cbf440c9b4c2cf2c846892e22996698.png

     

    We chatted a little bit, nothing relevant for this.
    They contacted me on 12 December 2018, 2 January 2019, 28-29 January 2019 and 7 April 2019 asking about the WIP.
    As I told them before, I have a proper channel where I send any update on any commission I'm working on, to let people know what I'm working on, but I still accept people asking me privately.

    Finally, on 22 May 2019 I send them the final picture; I know, we took so long, but again we give no guarantees about completion dates and this is clearly stated in our ToS.
     

    image.png.597ea9c1e95baf084bcae520625a7d1b.pngimage.png.1025413b364d90ba1efe8f16842d5e1c.png

    Then, problems arose. Again, as per our policy:

    "A situation where we finish our job and the client delays payment due to not having the required funds available is not at all acceptable and lands said client directly in the blacklist, along with us reporting such incidents to all market platforms."

    ...but I tried to be understanding: we took a lot of time and I've decided to be more patient in turn.
    I was still annoyed because it was just about 6€ per person, not a really large amount, but I kept this for myself. I just wanted to be payed, nothing else, I didn't care about judging other people's finances.

    Then I contacted them on 27 May 2019, 10 June 2019 and lastly 21 June 2019. It was becoming a large problem because I had to file my tax declaration and I needed this payment to be done asap. I also explained this problem to them.
    Then, they forwarded a message from another person (a friend who was taking part to this commission), apologizing and promising we will receive payment very soon (I'm censoring personal emails & Paypal addresses).

    image.png.bd8feb14a4c8a0f59466bb5327dbdaa8.pngimage.png.62d5de18502592c76c02bce64946a35b.pngimage.png.ce25de0060adef44d566fe5c4469e23a.png

    Then, suddenly they asked to change the price because "2 of the characters weren't used at all". We had been graceful enough to decline charging them extra delay fees when offered, the commission was already dirt-cheap discounted to begin with and while we took a long time to deliver, this gave them plenty of time to notice they weren't using a character and telling us about it. Furthermore, after receiving the WIP, they had yet another chance to ask for changes, which they didn't and now, when pressed for payment, they magically discover issues with the work.

    They also complained about us not sending them any WIPs, which we clearly provided as a release candidate due to the nature of the work.
    Thus, since work on 4 characters had already been done, that work would have to be paid.

    image.png.9385e27bef71750b4b0fbbe6db8e8c9f.png
     

    We couldn't send any invoice via Paypal any earlier because we didn't have any email to send it to; the buyer seemed extremely reluctant to provide any such information and had to be solicited multiple times before complying.

    The invoice expiration date was set for 15 days after issuing (my email is a public business email, I don't feel the need to censor it) and Maxx promised to pay after Friday (it was June 21, then payment should have been sent after June 28).
    As you can see from the screenshot I took today it's still "on hold", while the second one (from another person) is paid. Just a comparison if you're not familiar with Italian.

    image.png.d7ca1c8595a0804bdc02e8f0b049ca83.pngimage.png.5a6c5ab7f1579c9823f4ffaeb94769a7.png

    The invoice will technically expire tomorrow, but since we are way past any set deadlines, we figured we weren't going to receive any payment and  decided to cancel this order, ban these buyers from our service and initiatives and report them to the proper platforms as stated in our ToS.

    image.png.556d7a30c7d58531b8d090eaba7b3c7b.png

    I perfectly understand things can be hard in life, we took a lot of time to complete this piece, but on the other hand if a person commissions some work from someone else, they should keep the proper funds available by setting money aside from the start, not pay at their leisure and blaming it on the worker for completing their work at an inconvenient time.
    I also offered them to pay after a WIP because I know it could took more time than expected.
    And again, we're talking about 6€ per person; I don't think someone who struggles to set aside the price of a 12-pack of Pepsi should preoccupy themselves with ordering art, but that's just my personal opinion.

    These users contacted me on Telegram and, apart from personal emails, I don't have any other contact.
    I give you name, nickname and id because it's all I have directly; after some sleuthing I found Terri on FurAffinity.

    Terri J. Flippo, @ZoopLoopz, id: 642843923
    http://www.furaffinity.net/user/turriboo

    Maxx "Wretch", @trashmutt, id: 353535756




    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    I refuse to work with multiple people for this very reason.

    But as a heads up, you cannot charge your customers paypal fees, even if its for split payments. It's against paypals TOS.

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    10 hours ago, theodor said:

    I refuse to work with multiple people for this very reason.

    But as a heads up, you cannot charge your customers paypal fees, even if its for split payments. It's against paypals TOS.

    Just do what everyone else does and build it into your pricing scheme. Paypal also bans people from paying for NSFW stuff but that's stops exactly 0 people lol.

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    Sorry that happened to you. I'd advise to either take full upfront, 50% upfront - 50% after or payment after a sketch. Doing payment after the art is basically finished leads to many risks such as these.

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    8 hours ago, cknsausage said:

    Just do what everyone else does and build it into your pricing scheme. Paypal also bans people from paying for NSFW stuff but that's stops exactly 0 people lol.

    Theyre tax write offs, so you never really 'lose' that money anyways. I have all my fees and time accounted for in my pricing, but its a warning to the OP, because paypal has shut down more accounts for charging customers fees than they have for NSFW.

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    On 7/10/2019 at 6:04 AM, theodor said:

    I refuse to work with multiple people for this very reason.

    But as a heads up, you cannot charge your customers paypal fees, even if its for split payments. It's against paypals TOS.

    I've been working with multiple customers for some time now (even now I'm doing a project for multiple people) and I had never encountered such issues before, so I had no frame of reference. Now we updated the ToS to prevent such occurrences from repeating.

    Oh and thanks for the heads up about PayPal, we'd missed that part. Turns out we would've been fine anyways, since it wasn't really a surcharge for using PayPal but rather a handling fee for processing four transactions instead of one. Still, thank you for pointing that out, we've made our ToS more clear thanks to that

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    On 7/10/2019 at 6:00 PM, Alkraas said:

    Sorry that happened to you. I'd advise to either take full upfront, 50% upfront - 50% after or payment after a sketch. Doing payment after the art is basically finished leads to many risks such as these.

    Technically speaking, the 50%-50% clause was already in our ToS, we actually just tried to show some kindness and flexibility... Needless to say, we won't be doing any more good will gestures besides cold and professional business practice anymore.

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    On 7/9/2019 at 11:04 PM, theodor said:

    I refuse to work with multiple people for this very reason.

    But as a heads up, you cannot charge your customers paypal fees, even if its for split payments. It's against paypals TOS.

    That doesn't mean you can't simply up the price by that amount, or by say a dollar or something to cover said fees without specifically saying "Its to cover the paypal fees".

    I use paypal as well, I am sure many do. Over the years I have watched their fees become more and more and more expensive. So, When they up the fees, I just add a bit to my commission prices.

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    1 hour ago, AishaSlayde said:

    That doesn't mean you can't simply up the price by that amount, or by say a dollar or something to cover said fees without specifically saying "Its to cover the paypal fees".

    I use paypal as well, I am sure many do. Over the years I have watched their fees become more and more and more expensive. So, When they up the fees, I just add a bit to my commission prices.

    You can include the fees in your price all you want, you cant add an ADDITIONAL fee to you cost, at all. Adding any fees for using paypal is against their TOS. Charge $16 for a commission instead of $15 + $1 fee. Thats all you have to do to avoid being in trouble with PP.

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    2 minutes ago, theodor said:

    You can include the fees in your price all you want, you cant add an ADDITIONAL fee to you cost, at all. Adding any fees for using paypal is against their TOS. Charge $16 for a commission instead of $15 + $1 fee. Thats all you have to do to avoid being in trouble with PP.

    Thats basically what I just said.

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    On 7/10/2019 at 3:43 PM, theodor said:

    Theyre tax write offs, so you never really 'lose' that money anyways. I have all my fees and time accounted for in my pricing, but its a warning to the OP, because paypal has shut down more accounts for charging customers fees than they have for NSFW.

    It’s pretty basic business practise to include fees in your overhead.  Adding 5% to your base price to account for PayPal fees is no different to adding $5 to your base price to “include shipping” prices.  I feel like people see this as shady, and want to “disclose” that there’s a PayPal fee included, but don’t realise that as soon as you disclose that, you’re breaking TOS.

     

    Sometimes, you just gotta have a vague operating fee that just winds up being part of your base costs.

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