I commissioned Sabletide / Stark / Glaciekat after meeting them on a Discord, on the 1st of November.
I want to add that I tipped them a $5 extra because I know that artist life can be hard and that I liked their art a lot.
Moreover, I didn't ask for a specific delay from the beginning. I let them take their time and have free will about their decisions and what I wanted with the commission.
Here's the timeline of what happened (see Discord and Gmail screenshots):
Between the 1st and the 13th of November, I had no news from them.
On the 13th of November, they told me that they'll send me Works In Progress (WIPs) when they will be home.
On the 14th they said that they weren't home but they'd send me the WIPs "tonight".
On the 16th I sent them my ref sheet. No answer.
On the 17th I asked them the WIP, they said that they were doing edits. I told them just to change the face markings of my character.
One month after, on the 7th of December, I sent them an email asking for news and saying that I lost their Discord nickname. No answers.
December 12, I asked them to answer me within 48 hours, otherwise I would do a PayPal dispute.
December 13th, still no news from them at all, I asked a refund to PayPal because I didn't want to get scammed. They finally answer my e-mail after I created the PayPal dispute.
16th of December, after we got back to each other on Discord the same day, I asked they if they were ok to draw my Fursona even if the character have completely changed. They said it was okay (they could have said no) and that they could get it "mostly done today" (on the 16th of December). I then closed the PayPal dispute.
On the 17th of December they sent me a WIP.
On the 19th of December I went back to them, they said they were slow because of the holidays, which I understood. I asked they not to tell me any more delays because I can't just come back every time they say "I'll finish it in one week/one day" etc because it's frustrating both for them and I. They told me it would be "within 2 weeks for sure". I understood.
On the 11th of January, I asked they if I could get any answer from them.
On the 14th of January, they sent me another WIP. They said it "shouldn't take too long".
And today here we are, 4 months after and all I had were just WIPs.
I didn't ask for any deadline or any precise date but they gave me a bunch of delays that they didn't keep.
They could have said no for the whole new character - I would have understand it - but they didn't and accepted to re-draw the character entirely.
They didn't keep me updated at all, which ended up with me disputing for the payment because our conversation was so lost in Discord I couldn't get it back.
I ended up asking for a partial refund, because I ordered a bunch of other commissions in the meantime and all of them have been completed but theirs.
I understand that they have priorities, studies aside their commissions, but keeping me waiting and keep saying that they'll do it in [insert a delay here] isn't going anywhere.
