baja

Cover your bases so you've done your due diligence. In the reverse of this situation (as a client being ghosted) I've sent correspondence in multiple avenues to make my intentions clear when I've reached an impasse with someone.

Touching upon the claimed work that was not paid for:

You are going to need to prepare for the possibility that your client may never pay up for the remaining slots in a timely manner. If your TOS for your work states to receive payment within 24 hours, it's something you should stick to moving forward.

You've said yourself it's a potentially large amount of money with multiple pieces that this one individual has claimed. It's cost you a lot more potential revenue in having all of this work stalled when the pieces could have gone to other buyers. You do yourself a disservice by letting them sit if you want to be paid.

As far as a time-frame? That is entirely up to you, and how much you value your time in continuing the transaction as is. How is this affecting your current queue, other clients, etc. These are all things to consider when in tough spots like this. You can give them a week, or a couple of days, but that should be your call after evaluating the time spent thus far and the time that may possibly be spent in prolonging your shaky situation with this client.

You need to be firm and direct in communications with the client moving forward, if you were not previously.

If they came to you with the agreement with the payment plan and they aren't following through, you should not have to subject yourself to uncertainty because they are not communicating with you.

Presuming you completed one YCH, and the others have not been started and paid for, you have the option to relist the remaining listings to allow others to have a shot.

If I was in your shoes, I'd give them one last chance to pay for (1) additional YCH, but I would not let them keep however many they originally claimed. If they don't pay for the YCH, just relist them.

As far as the current piece goes, inform them that you need their revisions for the piece you did complete by a strict date (a week, if you want). If they do not provide whatever needed to be fixed by that time, then the commission will be considered complete and no further revisions for the piece will be allowed.

If they wanted to be entitled to your time, they should have followed through with their commitment to you and compensated you accordingly. Regardless of past commission history, it falls to them to keep up their end of the transaction.

Please submit a post in order for us to fully review and understand your circumstances.

Please be advised, we do not accept anonymous submissions.
 

Too long is anything that puts you outside of your refund window, imo.

If you still have plenty of time, you can be clear and firm with this person and give them an ultimatum before opting for a chargeback.

But if the amount is truly something you don't want to pursue and you see it as negligible, you can also just let it go and never work with this person again.

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If you are an active toyhouse user, it has been known by the community that the online activity indicator is not accurate in reference to their on-site activity at all.

It is not as reliable as some users would like to make it out to be.

You have not elapsed a month since this commission was initiated, and it is my recommendation to give them more time before jumping to conclusions.

If you elapse three months without communication? It would be more of a cause for concern, but much of the community of toyhouse is made up of young freelancers that skew underage, or may be students. It is entirely possible that their life outside of toyhouse got a bit busy after starting your piece.

Personally speaking, it is too soon to go to the worst case scenario, even as someone who has experienced multiple commissioned artists ghosting me in the past.

Another thing I will note, is that the email utilized to pay the individual is a valid means of communication. For some reason, with this current crop of artists and commissioners, it is seen as a 'violation of privacy' but the email itself is used for the processing of the payment via direct pay via Paypal or if they utilize invoices. You are not overstepping your bounds in using information that was directly provided to you in the transaction.

That email is fair game to use for communications, so it would be wise to use that as your back up just in case.

Right here.

We also have a subforum for positive artist reviews.

For your reference, one of our community members has drafted up a comprehensive overview on ultimatums.

With regards to your outlined circumstances here, you are nearly two years out from this commission, and you will not be able to request a refund via paypal.

Paypal's refund window is 180 Days; roughly six months from the start of your transaction.

Personally speaking, I would have gone to the three month mark without communication to start addressing my concerns with the process if I have seen no progress and would have gone through with the dispute before 6 months if there was no resolution at that point.

You may have to accept this commission as a loss due to the amount of time that has elapsed for a refund, even through a banking institution.

It will be up to you if you would like to inform our community of these circumstances in depth through a submission.

I see the onus being on the plush-maker for the repairs if the product was sent to you without all the seams sewn properly.

While it was a gift to you, I'd suggest your friend look over any terms they agreed to with this plush maker to see if there are any clauses in their TOS that they could utilize to facilitate the discussion of repairs further. While keeping this strictly in the realm of suggestions/advice, I am assuming your friend was the one tho took the lead in getting this gift created for you.

It's fully up to your friend if they wish to move forward with making a cautionary post of any sort if there's no happy resolution with the product being repaired.

If you are forced to utilize Paypal's claims system, it will go through to that email regardless of whether or not you attempt to contact them through it beforehand.

Either way the email will come into play whether you intend for it to be used or not. It's not necessarily an invasion of privacy as it does serve as a means of communication that they provided you when you both agreed to the transaction.

It should not be explicitly stated as it was an integral part of initiating the transaction in the first place.

It has not been a month since you initiated the transaction with the individual, while I understand it can be frustrating to not have that prompt communication as promised, I would give them until the one month mark to follow-up with the artist in question through another means of social media or the paypal email you were provided.

Note you will have 180 days if you do feel the need to open up a case to resolve the transaction, but overall, I think its a matter of patience that should be exercised here before jumping the gun.

It's coming off like you expecting the artist to not deliver if you're already worrying about the worst case scenarios. Yes, follow up with them, but I personally would abstain from making demands right out the gate.

As you are coming from toyhouse, if you are basing their online activity based off of the public profile activity, it has been known that the way the site tracks the 'last seen' feature is not indicative of them actually having proper activity on site. The lack of any administrators/moderators outside of the sole site owner does not help in clarifying for the community exactly how this feature is supposed to function with regards of tracking individual activity.

If you paid with Paypal through goods and services, you have a 180 day window from the day you paid. Within this window you have a fair bit of time to decide what the best option for you is.

With that said, did their TOS mention anything about a turnaround time? Or what to expect for delivery of the project you requested from them?

You are not a 'nightmare' customer for expecting your product, but if they are not communicating with you, it isn't easing your concerns about the project. You've said it yourself it's only been about two months since they made it known that they had some sort of personal matter that's impeded their workflow. I'm not going to judge them for putting out personal work, an artist is within their rights to do personal projects in between commissions, that isn't an immediate red flag.

Give them a another week or so to sort themselves out. You, and only you will need to come to the decision of going for a chargeback if they refuse to refund you or produce the product in a timely manner. But these are options you should pursue after sending them an ultimatum with a hard deadline.

I would not take any chances and wait til the absolute last day to file a dispute. If your correspondence is going ignored despite seeing activity, I'd go through with a claim sooner rather than later.

Personally? I send a final message expecting a response by a deadline (one week, or end of the month if inclined for leeway on a situation) before going through Paypal for further mediation.

1) is an incredibly bad idea. While you have good intentions, this can be viewed as unsolicited harassment.
Not every person will react favorably to this, and it is entirely possible that not every client has had a similar experience to yours.

2) feel free to submit a post to us, read our Submission Guidelines thoroughly before sending something in for our team to review.

3) once a post is approved, we post a link via our twitter that you may retweet or link it where acceptable to add some visibility.

4)  You are more than welcome to inform a subject that you will be openly speaking about your experiences as you are unhappy with the outcome of the commission, and often times we do encourage the transparency. Xai has put it succinctly.

Taking everything stated thus far into account, our platform is strictly informational and attempting to use it as a means of harassment is unacceptable. The conduct of this individual doesn't sound great, but we are not a platform for drama; confrontations, no matter how difficult they might be, should be kept as professional as possible.

Overall? Be prepared to eat the loss in this situation and take it as a lesson learned for future commissions.

This is a difficult situation to really give advice on without getting full context, which would require a beware being submitted to us.

Is the commission in question of another character or of the same character you did a ref sheet for?
That's unclear in your write-up.

Overall? If you see a lot of similarities to your work and this new commissioned piece, it would be for the best to discuss things with both parties to really get an answer about your situation. Reach out to the client first, and then the artist who did the work.

It may not be a scam, it is entirely possible that the client wanted something to strongly reference the original piece, etc etc. The little things we can't know and won't know until you reach out and discuss things with the two parties involved here.

Outside of Paypal's window, you are left without much recourse outside of contacting your financial institution (Depending on what you used with paypal to pay them) for a possible chance of recovering your money.

Note: A 'no-refunds' clause is not legally enforceable, regardless of what terms you agree to when entering a contract with an artist.
If they do not provide the service you paid for, you are entitled to a refund if you so choose, but remember to act before your 180 Day window closes.

This is a hard lesson learned unfortunately.

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Thank you.

Bornes has covered it succinctly, but if I have a less than stellar experience with an artist, I make a point to not use the art.

A lot of the time I will just let the work sit on my HDD with the name of the individual but I won't give any official posting of the work attention just to put it behind me.

If someone asks me who did the work, and I have happened to had it uploaded prior to any sort of fallout or new info, I'm always the sort to give proper credit to the person who did the piece, but you can always say you don't recommend working with them. If its something that bothers you, you can always remove your own uploads from public view for piece of mind.

And heck, if you even want to go to this extent, you can ask an artist to leave your name off an upload if they're going to display what they made.

Though the latter would vary on an individual circumstances, etc etc. 

tl;dr, A piece can be beautiful, but carry bad vibes. I send those bad vibes away and look to greener pastures.

9 hours ago, theodor said:

The buyer didnt say it was racist, its other people commenting on it! Sorry it wasnt clear.
 

I never said that the customer did, this is a general response to prevent the greater audience at large from misinterpreting the policy as you have it presently written.

Take language fluency out of the equation and make it about a general difficulty in communication hindering the process.

If you cannot properly communicate with a client, be it due to a language barrier or their refusal to adhere to your terms, then you reserve the right to cancel the commission and refund accordingly.

Rewording it can distance yourself from the misinterpretation of it being a race-related matter, of which it is not, but as someone who is ESL, I can see how it might be interpreted that way.

You have to be direct or just take the loss at this point.

Past the point of Paypal's Protection period, you're SOL on being able to get a refund and you are entirely at the whims of this individual.

A lot of artists appreciate any sort of visual reference you can give them.

So say you might not be the best artist out there, but if you can rough out a concept with key details you want to see on your character, its a huge help that supplements any reference images you provide (i.e. clothing, body type, etc). I have a penchant for including body scars or markings not immediately visible over clothing, so I'm the sort of person who makes a crude base as to where i want to see these markings, n such.

When it comes to character sheets, I personally look over an artist's previous works if they offer that sort of thing. Its not a bad reference point to say you'd want a refsheet in a format they have offered in the past; i.e. Standard front-back, maybe an alternative outfit, it all depends on what you're ultimately looking for.

It's rather uncommon for an artist to ask the client for their age, and often I see that in the TOS there is a reference to this along the lines of:
"By agreeing to these terms, you acknowledge you are above 18 yrs of age." Or something like that.

You're expected to read the TOS before an artist agrees to take on your commission, so you're expected to do your due diligence as a client, even if the artist isn't going around IDing people at the start of the process.

So in a way its going off of an honor system, and the presumption that you are an adult who has access to the payment method accepted.
Paypal requires all users to be 18 yrs old to maintain an account, as do most of the popular money transfer services if I'm not mistaken.

Here's a topic from a bit ago that covered this from the Artists' perspective on the matter, it might bring you some insight on how its handled from the other end.

It looks like a lot of their social media has gone dormant, but their Patreon seems to be presently active as they've posted within the past two weeks.

Have you tried shooting them an e-mail? It looks like there's one listed on their contact form.

I'm going to touch on this bit right here, since Cel covered the majority of your concerns succinctly.
 

Quote

Additionally, I’m afraid that the artist might make a callout post in retaliation for my beware, which might be an irrational fear, but still. It’s just not okay for someone to take money in exchange for the promise of art only for them to not only fail to deliver the art, but stop communicating with the commissioner altogether.

If you, as a customer, have done nothing wrong in your circumstances, then this fear is massively irrational, and you gotta suck it up and push through.
We have rather extensive guidelines for posting an alert on this site to avoid the rigamoroll of misinformation, miscommunication and mob mentality that one would see on greater social media (i.e. twitter, toyhouse, etc) if going the route of the "callout post".

To retaliate against someone who is only interested in bringing to light some unsavory business practices when the customer has done nothing to warrant that attitude will only serve to reflect negatively on the individual who retaliates in that matter.

I'll level with you, my first official beware here (before migrating to the present website) was regarding an IMMENSELY popular artist who had a huge following! This person even publicly trashed me, all because I wanted some edits to my final product-- a service they extended to me of their own accord.

My situation was a "resolved" as it was going to get, and it was a learning experience for me as a commissioner, and it highlighted some less than stellar things about the artist. Was it absolutely terrifying to speak up? Yes. Do I regret ever speaking up? Hell no!

Even if my situation was one in a million, or a weird one-off, shady business practices deserve to be seen by the general public. There can be no accountability if you do not take a step forward to add yourself to the ranks.

Do this as you see fit with additional communication, an ultimatum or a public message, but you leave yourself at a complete and total standstill if you're worried more about strangers' commentary over getting what you're owed.