alecrimcarmim

Thank you so much for taking your time helping us, @Alex Wright, it was super appreciated! We already added your corrections to that part of out TOS document, we just kept some parts since small details were described that change some parts of the terms in a way that may cause confusion. Since on artistic liberty we can keep the design but in regular commissions we can't (since it's the client's property), we decided it was better to leave that part on our TOS. if you think there's a better way to separate this part or even make a single text for both commission types, we're all ears ❤️ The text with the corrections so far: ===== 1. CANCELLATIONS, TERMINATIONS AND REFUNDS A. If the commission must be cancelled, please contact us as soon as possible. The first 30% placed down is nonrefundable and considered a payment over our time, the design process and materials. B. If payments are still due on a commission, and there has been no contact with the client within 3 months, the commission will be considered terminated without refund. C. Refunds will be returned in monthly payments, dependent on the amount of the refund, and is on a case-by-case basis. D. We reserve the right to terminate an Artistic Liberty quote at any time. E. Clients are responsible for their end of the communication. Clients who repeatedly provide vague responses, response delays longer than a week, disrespectful behavior, multiple design and/or production changes without payment, and/or clients who request multiple price revisions or postponements may find their Artistic Liberty quotes terminated with or without notice. 1.1 REGULAR COMMISSION: A. Please note that the initial 30% of payments are non-refundable. If a refund is requested, payments made above that will be refunded. Fursuit work completed will remain as Alecrim Carmim property. Usually this means that we will make modifications to the original design and re-sell the project as a premade. The studio has no claims over client designs on Regular Commission projects. B. An order may be terminated at any time due to breach of terms by the client. An email will be sent to the client with the termination notice and reasons, and any quotes made to the client will be voided. The studio has no claims over client designs on Regular Commission projects. 1.2 ARTISTIC LIBERTY: A. Please note that the initial 30% of payments are non-refundable. If a refund is requested, payments made above that will be refunded. Designs made and fursuit work completed will remain as Alecrim Carmim property. Usually this means that we will make modifications to the original design and re-sell the project as a premade. B. An order may be terminated at any time due to breach of terms by the client. An email will be sent to the client with the termination notice and reasons, and any quotes made to the client will be voided. C. We reserve the right to terminate an Artistic Liberty quote due to non-payment. Unpaid designs will remain the property of Alecrim Carmim. Any attempts to use, share, distribute, or claim the design before payment will result in a client Beware. D. If the client wishes to withdraw from the quote, the commission shall be considered canceled and/or terminated. Any designs produced will remain the property of Alecrim Carmim, and kept in our premade library or used for a future premade design. 2. BLACKLIST We reserve the rights to blacklist clients that fail to adhere to these Terms of Service. Clients on the black list will be unable to receive quotes for evaluation or purchase premade designs that we may release in the future.

Hey there! As we stated in our last comment on the beware post, our team is taking their time to fix our terms of service by parts, so we can make sure we don't repeat ourselves too much or lack in communication with a serious document like that. We would like to ask for some advice as we go (if possible) and for that we'll send updates on the terms as we fix each step of it. We decided to start from the cancelation //termination clauses since those were the ones in most need of fixing to adjust to the topics listed on the beware. Any tip/fix/suggestion is much appreciated and we thank you in advance for your time and attention ❤️ ===== 1. CANCELLATIONS, TERMINATIONS AND REFUNDS A. If the commission must be cancelled, please contact us as soon as possible. The first 30% placed down is nonrefundable and considered a payment over our time AND design processes. B. If the commission must be cancelled, please contact us as soon as possible. The first 30% placed down is nonrefundable and considered a payment over our time, the design process and materials. C. If payments still need to be made and there has been a cease in contact after 3 months, the commission will be terminated and there will be no refund. D. Refunds are not immediate and will be made over time, according to each case. E. We reserve ourselves the rights to terminate an Artistic Liberty quote at any time a client is accountable for communication difficulties (client providing repeatedly vague replies, messages taking more than a week delay to be answered by the client, fearmonger behavior, constant disrespectful language, continually delays caused by client side, client requesting multiple design/production changes without payment made, client requesting payment postpone or price revaluation multiple times, etc); 1.2 REGULAR COMMISSION: A. If a refund is requested, the rest of the payment made until that point (minus the nonrefundable initial 30%) will be refunded. Fursuit work completed will remain as Alecrim Carmim property (we will make modifications to the client original design and might re-sell the project as a premade to cover the slot costs). B. An order might be terminated if at anytime during the commission process the client breach the terms stated in this Terms Of Service. An email will be sent to the commissioner with the termination notice (and a brief explanation of the termination reasons) and the quote sent will be void. The studio has no claim over the client designs on Regular Commission projects. C. In case of termination after the first nonrefundable 30% was placed down, any fursuit production will be kept by the studio and a new concept with a few changes will be made to proceed with a premade design development in order to cover for our costs in material, time and production. The studio has no claim over the client designs on Regular Commission projects. 1.2 ARTISTIC LIBERTY: A. If a refund is requested, the rest of the payment made until that point (minus the nonrefundable initial 30%) will be refunded. Design and/or fursuit work completed will remain as Alecrim Carmim property (we might make modifications to the design and re-sell as a premade piece to cover the slot costs). B. An order might be terminated if at anytime during the commission process the client breach the terms stated in this Terms Of Service. An email will be sent to the commissioner with the termination notice (and a brief explanation of the termination reasons) and the quote sent will be void. C. In case of termination after the first nonrefundable 30% was placed down any designs and fursuit production will be kept by the studio and a new concept with a few changes will be made to proceed with a premade design development in order to cover for our costs in material, time and production. D. We reserve ourselves the rights to terminate an Artistic Liberty quote at any time a client uses/shares/distributes/claims the unpaid design created by the studio without our permission during the quote process and commission production. E. In case of termination after the first nonrefundable 30% was placed down, any designs created and/or fursuit production will be kept by the studio and a new concept with a few changes will be made to proceed with a premade design development in order to cover for our costs in material, time and production. F. If the client don't go through with the commission quote, the commission is cancelled and/or the commission is terminated, the design created for the Artistic Liberty project will be kept in our premade library and might be made in premade future designs. 2. BLACKLIST A. We do have a blacklist and clients that fail to follow the terms in this TOS will get their projects terminated, will be blacklisted permanently and won’t be able to send us future quotes for evaluation or purchase premade designs directly from us.

Just as a final update on the matter (hopefully): ex-client stopped harassing us with new accounts and so far we didn’t receive any extra updates on their stories (seems like they set it to private and that’s totally fine by us; in their safe space with the people they trust they can share anything they want. Our problem was with the open-public harassment they were doing). For future reference, as for this specific situation we had never terminated a commission on this stage of development before. We try our best to provide a good experience for our clients, but we’re very strict with our TOS. Since the beginning this negotiation was walking the line of us being too soft with our own terms (trying to be sensible with the client and at the moment thinking the project would be good portfolio material so it was worth being more flexible), and in the end we got the raw side of the deal. Since we’re a new studio not much can be found of us online at the moment, sadly. As the brand our opinions on the matter might be taken less earnestly by people who do’t know us or our service, and for that we welcome anyone to ask our clients directly how the experience of working with us was. Most of them are tagged on our IG posts (of course, respecting their privacy and space). We thank you all for your time and attention on this matter and from this entire situation we plan on changing a few things on our TOS and procedures from Artistic Liberty in the future to prevent this kind of stuff from happening again [we’ll share here so other makers can have this testimonial to refer to if they want]: ▫️We’ll add a more detailed clause on cancellations // terminations on these designs made by us to prevent further claim discussions about this. ▫️The cancellation from our side will be more explained since for us Artistic Liberty slots are pick with the main objective of being a fun project and a good portfolio material. If during negotiations the client requests changes that make the project less interesting from production we’ll reserve ourselves to terminate the quote. We’ll also make it clear that on Regular Commissions the client has all the freedom in the world to request any changes desired, to request a character to be created from 0 and pay for that kind of service accordingly (our Artist Liberty services are way cheaper than regular commissions for that reason, and we plan on letting this more clear on the TOS too). ▫️We’ll stop being way too reasonable with clients that send a quote request for this kind of project without having the money to pay upfront the initial nonrefundable 30% of the commission price. Most of the cases of clients that stole our art were from people who didn’t have the money upfront to pay but wanted to move forward with the commission anyway, under their word of paying us in the future. We trust our clients until being scammed, and for that reason we plan on protecting ourselves more from that kind of situation. ▫️We will request an ID from now on after the quote is analyzed and approved. Working overseas might making check those IDs more difficult but it’s better than having this kind of headache again in the future. ▫️Clarify even more that designs created during quote or during commission process are property of the studio until payment is complete and no designs can be claimed on cancellations // terminations. We’ll be stricter with also the use of unpaid claimed designs to be made into fursuits by other makers (that didn’t happen before, but better safe than sorry). ▫️Making sure to attach a PDF version of our TOS in the quote confirmation email and ask the client to read and confirm agreement again before sending the invoice for the project. ▫️Proofreading all the TOS with English native speakers to make the terms as clear as possible for future clients (as it is right now it was only proofread by Brazilian translators). We welcome you and thank you in advance in helping us with your suggestions on this TOS changes, and we plan on posting a more detailed text on the forums, but feel free to PM/email us suggestions or corrections, we don’t want to flood this beware with further replies that are not direct related to the subject.

We only do business with people older than 18, and we ask for that to be confirmed on our quote application and said client did so during our first contact... Sadly we can't confirm it's age on their IG account or anything, all we have is the information provided during the application submission. We just hope they stop harassing us and spreading half truths and misinformation. As I said on our last message, we don't plan on keeping track daily on what the client is doing/saying public (or to his followers/friends), since all that had to be said and exposed is here for anyone to see (at least of the public posts so far). To be honest, all this situation made us learn a lot, and the most important it showed us to stand our ground and that there are places to share this kind of experience in order to help others not have to deal with this experience in the future (at least we hope so).

Just to keep the situation updated, we're posting more stories from client. We hope they do as they say and just let this rest. All that had to be said about this entire situation was said and once again, if a person doesn’t agree with a maker/artist terms, just don’t commish them, it’s that simple. We thank you all for taking your time to read all this and follow the situation as a whole. We hope we don’t need to share more proof from that client and we’re glad to make this beware to spread awareness on this kind of behaviour.

Just to clarify this specific comment that is being used against us without context by the client to support their claim: We deleted the design not because of the backlash, we did it because we don’t want to move forward with a design associated with drama. We try our best to provide the best service possible not only to our commissioners but also to people interested in buying our premade designs. We have no intentions of moving forward with a design tarnished with this kind of situation and it would be no problem at all for our lead artist to come up with a new design not even remotely close to that one using the same colours / mood if we feel like doing a edgy concept for a premade. To summarize: we’re a positive brand that don’t want to hold on drama to get our designs/work sold. We already got our art claimed without payment 3 times now (one of those we were able to talk with the person and sort that out, the other we just let go of it, blocking the user and blacklisting withour further drama - in this case the user kept the design quietly and by that time we didn't have time or energy to bring that to public and instead we just revised our terms of services and guidelines to prevent that from happening again, that happened almost at the same time as this specific situation and we had already sent the design to this client without the watermarkings, sadly) and for us the problem is the client attitude, stealing art is bad as it is, claiming unpaid designs is horrible, tarnishing a brand is even worst in our case since we’re beginning and we don’t need that kind of attention at all.

Instead ol letting go of the design, the client is still using convenient half truths to claim de design and keep creating new accounts to harass us. Just to keep this post updated. The account blocked doesn't even have an icon, 0 followers, etc. And the stories are shared here to prove that the client is still keeping the design with minimal changes to to it. At this point this is just a matter of exposing messing behaviour. Don’t be like this, respect the makers, don’t commission from someone if you don’t agree with their work ethics / terms. And most importantly: don’t steal art no claim something as yours disregarding any effort of the creator.

We learned our lesson on that behalf not even with this entire situation, but with a previous similar experience, and all the quotes for artistic liberty sent since have a disclaimer and a watermark to prevent this from happening again.

That was our last commission sent without the watermark because previously to this whole thing we had another design claimed without payment and we finally learned our lesson about that. The thing is that this whole situation happened out of nowhere and we didn't even know that the client was using our art as theirs or even tried to sell the design previously. It was an extra information provided to us by this website and we were very surprised the client had breached our TOS before even starting this whole mess. We just decided to bring this to light because our reputation is very important for us, as being a new brand trying to establish our work in the fandom and getting backlash by a person who couldn't even respect the terms agreed on during the quote submission is something worth exposing for future people who work with this specific client.