KittehMei

9 hours ago, washup said:

That is absolutely awful, I'm sorry that was your first commissioning experience. I'm not saying stoop to their level but maybe slightly editing each piece and calling them orginal pieces with your orginal characters, in case they post it as well you could say you remade the piece because they stole money from you and don't own the art, hence it's art theft. It might make you feel you feel a bit better. That client is definitely deserving of such behaviour for how they treated you. 

I agree with this; you should consider repurposing the art you have done to reduce losses on your end ♥

You would not be stooping to their level by doing this though, because you are the artist and thus retain all rights to your artwork. If they have not paid for your services rendered, they forfeit that art entirely and you are more than within your rights to repurpose it. Either as a personal thing or turn it into a YCH you can sell on ♥ I personally would do the latter to help with the lost time and money.

On their overall behaviour though -- I don't even know what to say? I want to say life happens, but their attitude and excuses put a sour taste in my mouth. Their unwillingness to pay you for your work done, their attitude towards you, as well as their threat to report you to Paypal for wanting to be paid is beyond disgusting and have earned them a preemptive block from me.

My only advice would be what you have already said though - up front or at least a half & half system is much safer. I wish you the very best, and thank you for this beware ♥

Definitely not good for them to just disappear on you after payment, it seems so odd considering their initial conversation with you seemed pretty standard. Though, one thing I noticed is their response to you describing your character's body type -- after you described him as a twink, they seemed to take issue? The way they responded  with "oh... I see...." followed by complete silence makes me believe they had some issue with the term for some reason?

If it were the case I'd expect them to mention it makes them uncomfortable though? Not just straight up ghost you as a paying client - if for some reason they didn't want to work with you they should have said so and refunded, not just disappear with your money.

I want to applaud you for keeping your cool and calling their bluff on their obvious attempts to scare you, well done. You hold full copyrights to your work and they have no right to use it, regardless of whatever strange "client ToS" they try to throw at you.

I agree with Bornes above, I'd definitely consider watermarking your WIPs when sending them to a client. I once had a similar situation to this and from then on I have used a WIP watermark that explicitly states that "artist retains rights" etc. etc. Safe to say for reasons like these I always mark everything I do and I highly recommend you to aswell ♥

I've gone ahead and pre-emptively blocked this person on FA - definitely not someone I want to interact with.

5 hours ago, Celestina said:

Unfortunately this looks more and more to be the case that the client was using a credit card that they should not have had access to.  This generally happens when minors or adults get a hold of their parents' credit card.  Or a parent involved in their life has discovered that they are running up a large balance on their own credit card.  If you contact Paypal again there's a chance they can refund you the credit card chargeback fee.

Yeah, that is a possibility sadly. Unfortunately there's no way to verify the reasoning, or their age, or even that they are the owners of the card.. at least I don't think so?

And yeah, it might be worth me contacting them again to ask them about that, see what they can tell me and see if it's even an option for me. With the amount of people I know are fighting against this, I am hopeful that some positive outcome will happen for us affected anyway. Paypal on the phone told me that I wasn't the only one affected by this claim and told me the same - that the more people fight it, the more likely Paypal will investigate the account attached to that card/bank. They couldn't tell me more obviously, but at least I know I'm not the only one officially. Which is both a comfort and disheartening all at once ahah.

Thank you for the suggestion though! I'll see about giving Paypal a ring later, and see if I will be able to get some compensation, even in the event this somehow doesn't resolve in my favour. Tbh, it makes sense I would be able to, because whatever the reason is I'm not the one at fault at all, so surely there's some safety net option. At least I hope so, especially for those affected by larger amounts than me.

His behaviour with you is very strange -- I can't tell if he's serious and very indecisive or trying to mess you around on purpose? And him constantly changing when he can pay you/needing you to put things on hold for him is already a massive red flag to me. I'm a patient person, but I'm not sure I could have continued with him as long as you did.

Thank you for posting this, definitely someone to avoid working with considering evidence seems to point to him being a