Alkraas

I personally am speechless at this. The image you received looks like a definite rush job. The linework is incredibly messy; the lines look moreso like a cleaned up sketch as opposed to actual linework as is present in their examples. The coloring too, is haphazardly done, very obvious on the tail. The attitude of the artist is appaling as well, especially the blatant guilt tripping over apparently prioritizing you over other clients. I'm sorry you had to experience that.

If the artist will ever see this, I'd like to offer genuine advice:

If you decide to charge an additional complexity fee (especially then), be sure to double or triple check the design while drawing; this way you most likely won't miss any markings.
Actually send out WIPs and make sure the client can review what they're getting, if this client had the chance to see a WIP, they would've definitely pointed out flaws just in time.
Don't delete files before the client has approved anything. Not to mention how incredibly unprofessional this was, it also makes things ten times harder for the client and especially you.
Among other things, general improving on professionalism will help a lot. As stated above, the guilt tripping as well as prioritizing clients over others leaves a very sour taste behind. Not to mention that you kept an additional fee without actually doing the work intended for said fee and then blaming that carelessness onto the client; I found that incredibly scummy, personally.

Since the seller tricked/guilt tripped you into paying via friends and family, maybe Paypal will give you a chance. I hope this can be resolved somehow, I wish you good luck!

@alecrimcarmim, it may be wise to ask for IDs, as I've heard many makers ask for them as well. They mainly look for age and full name, the name must be the same on Paypal or they will refund the money and blacklist the client. I heard from another that if they know they're dealing with a minor, they even call the parents to make sure the purchase is legitimate. I'm not a maker and I don't ask for IDs for art and I only heard of how other makers deal with these things, but I agree with Celestina that there's a huge possibility that you've dealt with a minor, considering how awfully they behaved. Hopefully this can be laid to rest now!

Man, what a mess. Just because they gave you a description and a moodboard doesn't mean they own the character OP's brand produced, nothing was even remotely paid for. Then to go on on and spread harassment and inviting others to join in on it, just to sell the design for pennies after...what? I can imagine that this is was a stressful endeavor. Good on you for not backing down.

[also probably off topic (apologies in advance, feel free to remove this if necessary), but to me it's also a red flag how they keep going on about "their" moodboard when they just slapped random pictures together, which most likely aren't theirs to begin with. It just strikes me as a red flag]

Wow this is horrible. I couldn't even imagine being scammed out of such a huge and time consuming project. Maybe you can re-use what you have as YCHs? Really sorry this happened to you 😕

Wow okay, I'm going to agree with OP that the character looks nothing like in the reference. Style is one thing, but to make a character slim instead of chubby, making the character have tiny horns and hands instead of huge, making the arms not muscular and more is not style change, it's just ignoring important key aspects of a character. I'd be upset too and unhappy about the art too, even more so that they doxxed your private email. If anything, they should've given you half the money back. Atleast that's how I see it, personally.

Holy heck. Exploding on you like this to a point where you can't even read or understand what they're talking about was so unnecessary, you merely asked for progress and they pulled unrelated nonsense into their...tantrum(?). I'm super sorry this happened to you, you didn't deserve this treatment one bit 😕

Geez man... What an incompetent merchant. Spends money not earned, lies in your face and has the gull to say "don't rely on me for a source of income". Thank you for standing your ground and knowing your protections and for warning others. Hopefully, you can find a competent maker for your stuff~

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.

Zelestin's phone number is visible on the Paypal screenshot~

Other than that, I'm very sorry this happened to you, OP. Sadly, you're far from able to dispute the payment via Paypal, since it's been much longer than 6 months. Here's to hope you somehow get a refund.

Honestly, some things here kinda rub me the wrong way, like the one message where they said that people asking them for updates stress them out...I can't really understand that logic to be honest, if you're taking commissions/orders, people will ask for updates if you don't give them out yourself. Then there's the fact that they didn't even know how much you paid either and had to ask you for that, and that they never showed you any TOS or material reciepts. Or the fact that they begged for the Paypal claim (I assume it's a Paypal claim that you started) to be taken down and that they vented about you on their social media.

There's a lot of their behavior that I find super questionable about their business ethic, tbh.

Yikes. I really looked up to them, oh well. The TOS alone is very frightening and super unfair to customers with the "Kill fee", them only being able to starts after 12-17 *months* and the already mentioned "a**hole clause". Absolutely no.

Seems the images for the emails are broken and display a 404 error, on my end at least!

Googling his Twitter handle, it seems you're far from alone in this. Perhaps if you can prove to PayPal that they indeed received the artworks, PayPal will let the claims end in your favor?

Honestly? The cancellation part was really weird to me. They said they'd cancel it but then later wanted to pick it up again so they won't need to refund you. ...what? Second red flag is that they spent the points before doing their part for some reason. It also sounds like they're a minor, another red flag since they often can't grasp the severity of transactions or customer communication.

Oh my yikes. Thank you so much for the beware. The amount of guilt tripping and aggressive behavior is appaling. I hope you can somehow get your money back.

I don't think this suit maker knows what a commission or work is, since they act so pooprly and don't believe they owe you anything. Very worrysome. I hope they can improve on doing much smaller projects for less people in the future.

That is very unfortunate.

They said they had to redo the badge due to poor lamination but isn't delamination a thing? Also pretty suspicious that you never saw te badge beforehand or that they never thought of contacting you on their own regarding their troubles ?

How in the world do they not know what badge your granddaughter ordered from them? I'm an artist too and I wholeheartedly believe it's their job to know what commission belongs to who. Even if a lot of people ordered one, they have to be organised enough to know which badge is made for who and what badge gets sent to what address.

The last time a badge got lost in mail for a customer from me, I refunded them the shipping costs. They also had a clear copy of the image and they were happy with the shipping refund.

From the sound of it, they also didn't ship it with tracking? I feel like it's important to invest in a bit of extra to pay for a tracking number so the customer can see where the badge is currently, that kind of transparency is important when money was exchanged imo.

I honestly wouldn't do business with either of you two. You both have shown unproffessional, even a tad aggressive behavior towards eachother. I also couldn't imagine doing business with a person who would post or vent about me on social media, which, you both have done to each other as well, even if those weren't direct callouts.

No thanks.

Yikes, already their tone makes me super wary of them. They sound super aggressive and quite annoyed, definetly someone to avoid.

That's quite a strange case. Would've been easier if the artist just asked questions if they weren't sure. I also find it questionable that the ref sheet was visible on the finished commission/ych file o.o