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In September of 2023 I contacted koenvgraphics with an inquiry to get a logo made. I was quoted $700 for the logo, including a few revisions. I indicated that I wanted to proceed with the commission, and was directed to pay via Wise. I made the payment, and had been told to expect three weeks for turnaround time. In November of 2023 I emailed koenvgraphics asking for an update on my commission. This email was ignored. Meanwhile, I would regularly see koenvgraphics posting pictures of other icons they had made. I then sent them a message via twitter, which was again ignored. Eventually, in February of 2024, I responded to one of their twitter posts with an inquiry about my commission. I was immediately contacted. Koenvgraphics stated they had been going through a really hard time (understandable) and said they would still do the logo if I wanted. I indicated that I still wanted the logo and they agreed to do it. A few days after they agreed to do the logo again, they messaged me stating they were sick and asking that I understand why they haven't made it yet. I tell them that it's ok, and go back to patiently waiting. At this point it is March and koenvgraphics continues to post and repost various icons to twitter, but I have heard nothing else from them. I feel like they have intentionally scammed me. I post again a few times (admittedly in anger, and probably not the best way to handle the situation) under their posts once more. This time, I'm asking for a refund. My posts go ignored. I then send a direct message via twitter asking for a refund, which is again, ignored. I do acknowledge that I probably should have sent them another private message first, before jumping to posting publicly. However, they did take my money and then not do the work, and they have been at least keeping up the appearance that they are continuing to work.

Amtrask reached out to me and requested I make them a plush on Nov 14th 2023. We went back and forth a bit discussing this. They wanted a plush that looked like their OC, a human named Max. I said I would do this for $250. They agreed. However they said they had issues with their bank card. I said this was fine and we agreed on split payments. Here's the story of our transaction. Amtrask commissioned a custom doll from me and has received it. They were pleased with the plush and said quote "Max finally arrived today, which was amazing and such a relief! He's gorgeous!". They also received the fabric they requested. The only request I received was to send them more of the fabric from my sewing supplies, which I never agreed to. I explained there was a misunderstanding and that I sent them fabric for their clothes. Amtrask was unable to accept this and demanded I send them more of my fabric. While making the plush, there were various stages that went through personal approval with the customer. Each step before I continued I would reach out to Amtrask and they would accept the work before I moved on. This was a long and lengthy process. I finished the body of the plush and it was approved by the customer. Then I moved onto the process of making clothes. The customer requested the clothes be made as removable so that they could play with them. Since these are handmade items, the plushies I make can definitely be cuddled and played with but they aren't suitable for rough play since they do not have safety labels or certifications. I suggested that the clothes be sewn on. They insisted I leave the clothes as is. The customer then asked if I could send the leftover material fabric so they could use it for their own personal sewing. Since we are at the stage of discussing the clothes, I thought this would be fine since the clothes did not meet their expectations, that way they could make their own clothes. I gave them a quote for the fabric and they agreed to buy it from me. It was sent and received with the plush they bought. Everything they paid for is accounted for. The only reason a claim was filed was because I did not send them more of my personal fabric, which I explained that I never agreed to do. Their next message again demanded I send them the minky fabric I used for the body. They claimed it was something I promised. Again I explained there had been a misunderstanding. This time I decided to block them as our business had been concluded. They were happy with what they received and only asked for more fabric from me where I was not going to be sending them additional fabrics. In retaliation this customer went on Etsy and began sending me aggressive messages. They begin demands for 1/3 of the payment for the plush be returned to them and the fabric they paid for to be refunded. I respond to them refusing the refund since they received the plush happily. The only problems you will see arise after I refuse to send them the remainder of my sewing supplies. I also make a request for them to stop contacting me. In retaliation for refusing the fabric and blocking them, the Paypal claim is then filed at this point. They file two separate claims against me. The first is for the fabric ($15.33) fraudulently stating that it never arrived. The second is for roughly 1/3 of the plush ($83.00) now claiming it was not as described. After I responded to the Paypal claims Amtrask sent me messages on Etsy attacking my character, questioning my character for responding to their Paypal claims. After not getting their way, Amtrask begins to refer to me by my legal name instead of my artist name. This is a tactic (in my opinion) to intimidate me. I do not go by my legal name online, I go by Starful on every platform. The only reason they have my legal name is because on Paypal it is required. I also believe Amtrask attempted to gaslight me, making me feel as though these events did not happen as I perceived them to. Except I have proof that they were satisfied and thankful during the process of creating their plush. I will also explain after I accepted the order and after Amtrask sent me several messages with revised references, they went on my Etsy store and purchased two small plushies from me. I will include those as well. This is why they decided to move to Etsy to begin harassing me after I blocked them. We had no previous communication on Etsy. This smaller order was in November. Unfortunately if you block someone on Etsy they can still continue to send you abusive messages as much as they'd like. Some additional details about our transaction. These weren't necessarily blacklist worthy to me, they just caused me a lot of unnecessary grief during the process of completing their plush order. After I accepted the commission, I explained that it would take me some time to fill. I wasn't exactly sure how long, but I explained I had other orders and that I would fill their order last. I gave an estimate but still explained I wasn't sure how long it would take. This is not the type of order I usually take after all. While I worked on other orders Amtrask began sending me their reference over and over. The pictures had very little difference between them, if at all. They would also delete their previous photo that they sent me so it was hard for me to compare. I did not save any of the reference photos to prevent myself from being confused, I have the first image they sent me as well as the final reference photo. You can decide for yourself if there are clear differences between the first and last image to warrant the amount of pings I received to my inbox. This plush was sent internationally. Amtrask requested that I upgrade the post, but it had slipped my mind at the time. After the plush was sent, there was a period where the tracking did not update for 4 days. Amtrask began to send me many messages concerned their package was taking a while and that it was lost. I reassured them to wait and apologized for not upgrading their post. I gave them the estimated date I had been given. In their response they projected their feelings onto me and were unreasonable. I tried to reassure them after this. I reached out to Etsy two days in a row on the phone calling to see if I could get information for them to comfort them. Even after the tracking was updated they expressed worry that the package would not be delivered. [removed cap was here] - admin

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/829508.html It's really disheartening to have to come forward with this report, but after having patience and trying to negotiate with the artist, I have begun to feel like I had no choice on this matter, especially after many people have instructed me to come forward. I apologize for this post being very long; I wanted to make sure I included all the details I possibly could. Who/Where: Fursuit Maker: Frostcat-Studio / Ritz_Bitz / Ritz_Tweeting When I originally considered looking into getting my first fursuit, I had only heard of this maker through the recommendation of a mutual friend. From looking at their gallery, they seemed to have very nice work and I was given the impression that they could provide me with similar work. What: One Partial Fursuit ($1200) I had originally contacted Ritz for a fursuit in June of 2014 and on June 27th we agreed to a price of $1200 to make my partial, which included a large tail and also a set of wings. Here you can see Ritz had offered to add a magnetic feature to the wings so they could be worn under a shirt with a harness and I was charged and extra $170 for this addition. ->The email can be viewed here <- (Our conversation is very casual as we had been united through a mutual friend) On September 20th 2014, I confirmed my slot and placed my 50% down payment. -> Link for Proof <- (Ritz real name has been blanked) Then, on November 25th 2014 I paid my remaining $600. (The screen shot shows a total of an additional $1200 as I also paid off the remaining $600 on the mutual friend's balance to help them out. That amount is not related to my entry) -> Link for final Payment Proof <- Explain: At first, Ritz kept very good communication when working on my fursuit and seemed interested in making it "just right". She replied to my inquires often and kept reliable contact with me, even sending me work in progress images from time to time. While I would get pictures, I never really was sure what I was looking at in terms of what she had been doing; I was never given any explanation and was issued vague descriptions, which is possibly my fault for not speaking up on but I had never commissioned a suit before and felt I should place my trust in the maker to do their job. The first red flag that came to me was when she would inquire about my second payment and instead of contacting me directly, she would ask the mutual friend to remind me on her behalf. This really struck me as odd given the mutual friend was not working for Ritz and my contact information was established prior. I ended up ignoring my gut on this issue given the mutual friend was close to both of us and since this was a friendly transaction, I considered it to just be another casual aspect of the entire affair. Ritz proposed the completion date (By Further Confusion 2015) and said that having it complete by this time would be no issue, so I planned to attend this convention so I could have a good time fursuiting for the first time. Overall, the anticipation building for this costume was immense as I would be flying in from Florida to attend the convention in California just to have a chance to wear it for the first time. On January 4th (approximately 10 days before the convention), I was shown images of my completed fursuit via Twitter and Skype. The images were not close ups or anything, so from first appearances I was excited. While it wasn't the quality I had expected, I was still excited to have a costume regardless. I should take responsibility for my qualms with the quality as when browsing her gallery I had not noticed the suits that stood out to me were all built on headbases made by other fursuit makers when mine would be built from scratch; That being said my expectations for what I would receive were not completely accurate and it was my fault for not researching further. Regardless, I told her I was happy with it visually and was eager to wear a fursuit for the first time. Overtime, I ended up coming into a disagreement with the mutual friend who had connected Ritz and I for the commission and we began to grow apart. I didn't think it would effect my commission with Ritz in anyway, but later on I would find it was quite the opposite. (This is only important to note as it will become relevant later on.) Originally, the suit was going to be shipped to the mutual friend and delivered to me at the convention however due to (what I can only assume to be) rising tension, the mutual friend opted not to deliver the costume to me. Given I was flying in from across the country, I asked a friend from Southern California to have it shipped to them instead since they would be driving to the convention. The friends who ended up having the fursuit shipped to them did not open the box in any way until they found me at the convention and I opened it myself. January 15th When I made it to the convention, I met up with my friends from Southern California (I was also rooming with them) and they had my fursuit box in the hotel room waiting for me. At first glace, I was already very upset. The box was very poorly packaged and looked very ragged. I would have thought it could have been mangled by the postal service but it seemed the degrading box was actually taped up in areas where it was falling apart and that tape was laid beneath the original packing where the shipping information was. It was very clear that Ritz reused a battered and trashed box to ship my $1200 product and my concern began to grow before I had even seen the costume. Upon opening the box, the first thing that was staring at me was a foot paw that was falling apart. The box had just been opened and the suit was already damaged in quite visible ways. Thankfully, I had a room full of witnesses that helped me gather pictures of the unboxing. Here is a visual collection of the damages that we discovered. -> The footpaws were separating from the shoes (That I had to purchase myself and ship to her) before they were ever worn. -> The bottom Jaw and horns were crooked and the head was barely foamed so it would lose it's shape when not worn. -> The seam in the fur on the direct center of the muzzle was popped despite never having been worn yet. -> The balaclava was not attached with only a few tiny dabs of hot glue and separated from the foam and also has various holes in it. -> In fact, the Balaclava had MANY holes in it. -> The fur on the hand paws was poorly shaved and some of the claws were upside down. -> The shave job was uneven and jagged. -> And in some places, the fur was shaved all the way down to the backing. Now, as you can imagine, I was not very pleased to open the box and discover the suit was in such a mess after never being worn. Some of the mistakes I saw were very common from beginner suit makers however I was given the impression that Ritz was NOT a new maker and had enough experience to warrant the $1200 price tag (which could buy a partial from many makers who would not have made these mistakes). On top of all these issues, I discovered that the set of wings I had ordered for this costume did not feature any magnetic attachments at all. Instead, the wings were sewn directly into a harness made from elastic straps, making it impossible to wear them without having the harness worn on top of my clothes. This was also very upsetting given Ritz had offered to make this feature for me and charged me an additional $170 for it, yet never once mentioned to me during the construction process that they would no longer be doing the magnet idea. I immediately decided to contact Ritz as she was at the convention and perhaps she could do enough quick fixes so I could at least wear my fursuit; I did fly in from across the country just to wear it around afterall. I didn't mind waiting on fixing the other issues, but I at least wanted some help fixing the shoes. I decided to contact our mutual friend to get in touch with Ritz because I had no other way to reach her at the time. We met up and I explained what the problems were and she agreed to get the feet fixed. We went to Ritz's hotel room and she did a quick hot glue job on the paws with me standing there. It was not very thorough but it seemed like it was enough to keep them together for the time being. I also had the chance to ask about the missing magnets and she explained that there were no magnets strong enough to hold the wings in place (which isn't true since you can order some that can hold up to 75lbs!) so she opted to sew them to the harness without informing me to meet the tight deadline. After Ritz "fixed" the feet, I went back to my hotel room and decided to wear my suit as it was to try and enjoy the convention. The next morning, I went to participate in the fursuit parade and that was when the fur on my foot paws began to separate again; this time on both feet. Additionally, the buckram connected to the plastic to make the eyes began to separate and peel from the plastic. This was also when I noticed that the plastic has been hastily cut and there were strands of of debris going into the space where my actual eyes were. After the parade, I found Ritz again to show her what was happening with my brand new suit and she seemed very disinterested in my issues. When I brought attention to the issue with the eye popping out, both Ritz and the mutual friend (whom was with her the entire con) began to give me sass and snark about not being "too rough" with the costume then walked off without making any attempt to help me with the situation. I was pretty appalled at this reaction given I paid so much money for a costume to wear and was basically being told not to wear it if I didn't want it to fall apart. I had been just wearing the suit like any normal person would, I wasn't jabbing the eyes in with my finger or anything for goodness sake. It was at this point the mutual friend decided to get involved and began sending me text messages that said I was being rude and "mean" to Ritz for contacting her about these issues and the issues in question were not her fault. Why was the suit maker's friend getting involved and handling this situation? This had nothing to do with them so why were they acting as a messenger for Ritz? At this point, I was given the very strong impression that Ritz no longer wanted to provide me with any help for the costume, so in order to make it wearable I asked for the help of my friends (I was rooming with) to help me do minor repairs. I was forced to go out and buy a glue gun and ask a friend to cut time from her convention experience to keep the suit intact. During the time we spent fixing it, we also began to see even more issues with the craftsmanship. -> The zipper on the back of the head was glued to the fur instead of sewn and began to separate. -> The horns were discovered to have no foam to anchor them, explaining why they were crooked. I think the majority of my convention time was spent with a friend trying to repair this costume. We were absolutely sure not to modify anything, just attempt to repair the poor craftsmanship. After a certain point, my friend explained to me that we should stop repairing it all together because the state it was in just couldn't be saved at a convention. I attempted to contact Ritz once more via twitter DMs to try and show her the state of the suit before the end of the convention but she unfortunately decided to start ignoring me. I was polite and kind because I wasn't mad as much desperate to fix these issues. It was such a frustrating experience because I just wanted some resolution for this costume that I spent a large sum of money on and the person who sold it to me made me feel like they had zero concern for the situation now that the money was already in their hands. To make things worse, a few hours later Ritz began tweeting about me to try and detract from my issues, implying that I was picking on them because I had a disagreement with the mutual friend. This was just the end to my willingness to work with this fursuit maker anymore and I ended up sitting in tears while friends comforted me. One of my friends began discussing things with Ritz on twitter because it very strongly felt that she would not be dealing with me beyond this point and Ritz began stating that the problems with the costume were not actually there nor her fault and began to explain that the situation had very much been influenced by my falling out with the mutual friend. My friend then decided to take the conversation with her in private and they discussed the situation because Ritz still would not talk directly to me. During the private conversation with my friend, Ritz admitted to rushing my fursuit and stated that she could not afford to refund the costume but would work out a plan after the convention to make things right. She also stated that it was "shitty" or me to not want repairs at this point and called it unreasonable. I may be unreasonable for not wanting repairs, but I don't trust this individual with my money anyone given these problems would not exist if the care needed was put in to begin with not to mention the constant avoidance with my problems. I did not feel this person wanted to fix things correctly. After Ritz had conversation with my friend, it was decided that after the convention she would absolutely talk to me about the problems with the costume and find a resolution. (I can provide screen shots of this entire conversation if necessary, however I opted to leave them out initially as so my friend would not be dragged into the issue. I firmly believe this should have stayed between Ritz and myself and the constant involvement from third parties has really caused more drama than needed.) January 20th (2015) Two days after the convention, Ritz contacts me on Skype and begins trying to work out a situation from the suit. She begins by offering me two options; One is to send the suit back for repairs or I can send the suit to be stripped and turned into a different character that she can sell. She tells me that I can not be refunded 30% of the fursuit cost as the cost of the materials can not be returned. Despite finding that option to be very unfair (given I would be returning the suit to her so she could recoup her losses and the reason for refund was not a cancellation but rather the product was broken and the fault was hers), I agreed and stated that after all that had happened and the personal involvement of her friend causing tension I did not want it refurbished; I just wanted a refund. She also explains to me that she -can not refund me at all- until I return the suit and she resells it, thus leaving my money weighing on the uncertainty of weather or not the suit sells and if it does, would it sell for the $800 she says I am owed? She insists she will not refund money until I send the suit back, however that was understandable and we agreed. She also mentions at the same time that she will send $200 refund in "good faith" (that I have never since seen). I am kind and understanding with her and even apologetic for the situation that unfolded despite being at no fault myself. I wanted to make things right and I felt bad that she had spent the last few days tweeting about never wanting to make suits again. I felt guilty for the distress I put her through so I even said I would think about letting her repair the suit after she pushed that option on me constantly (despite saying I did not want it). She additionally admits to her friend's presence having effected her business with me and even the way she treated me as a customer, which sent even more red flags to me, but she genuinely seemed like she wanted to make things right so I did my best to return it. Her main concern throughout the entire conversation was her name and reputation, which seemed very off-putting given I felt her main concern should have been to fix the situation with my costume. -> Conversation can be found here <- January 30th (2015) About ten days after our conversation, I gave Ritz my final decision. I took note to how stressed she was over the decision and gave her time to come down from the ordeal. I politely explained to her that I did not feel comfortable sending her the suit and waiting for her to resell it before I would receive any money. I stated that I would gladly return the suit after I was refunded and left it at that. -> Link to Conversation <- The Next day, Ritz replies to me stating that she can not refund me for the amount I am owed until I return the suit in parts for her to resell and asks for a week to figure something out. She explains that she will use her tax refund to pay me the money I am owed and I reassure her that I can wait for a refund as long as it needs to be. My main concern is still that I do not want to return the goods until I am compensated for them. This is when her contact slows to a grinding halt. She openly begins to dodge my communication and puts me on the back burner and does not contact me in any way unless I put an effort into contacting her. February 12th I end up contacting her as it has been nearly two weeks since her last contact with me. Again, I am civil and I calmly ask what the game plan is for the situation. On February 14th I get a reply in which she states that her tax refund was small and she would not be able to refund me from that money. She also goes back on her word in stating that she would refund me and takes an aggressive tone, calling our agreed upon solution to be "unfair" and says that my failure to trust her is preventing me from getting my money back. Now, I'm going to throw some personal opinion in here but...how am I being unfair? She agreed to refund me and suddenly is changing her tune and even going as far as to insinuate that this situation is my fault for "not trusting her". The problem is, I already trusted her with $1200 to deliver a product to me in functioning order. She not only failed to do that, but she also insulted me, ignored me and went as far as to try and claim her faulty craftsmanship (which she admitted to) was -my- fault. Yes, I do not trust her with giving me my money back and I will not relinquish the costume until I am given a refund. I am not asking for both the suit and a refund, I am asking to be compensated -before- I give up the costume. The artist's financial issues are not my concern, what is my concern is the money that she had taken from me and will not return. -> This reply can be viewed here <- She has dodged contact with me and has put me in a situation where I am not sure if I am going to have this situation resolved. On February 17th, I contacted her asking for her to talk to me when I was online as I didn't enjoy playing message tag when the subject was so important. I tried once more on the 18th to reach out and beg for conversation on the topic and reaffirmed my stance about her taking back the product to resell. I even went as far as to offer my phone number to try and resolve the issue but she had left me in the dark, all while spending time on twitter and talking to other people on skype. I am fully aware I am being ignored and it's gotten to the point where I am getting ready to file a charge back on paypal if this doesn't get resolved soon. -> Proof of contact attempts <- (screen shots were taken on 2/18/2015) 2/21 - Ritz contacted me in response to my final message in which I explained that I felt that I didn't believe it was fair to charge me for materials when I would be returning the suit for her to recoup that loss and because the issue with the costume was not due to cancellation or error on my end. I admit that I did change my mind in terms of the refund I was willing to accept though the advice of many friends and other artists swayed my mind. I did agree that taking a partial refund for having zero product on an issue that was no fault of my own felt very wrong, but I may be out of line for having brought that up and changing my stance I take responsibility for that. She responded aggressively, again cursing at me and using profanity. I was given a "final option" in which I was told I will wait until she gets her tax refund after I return the broken merchandise she had given me before I will receive any financial compensation. I don't feel that this is ever a way an artist or suit maker should ever talk to or treat a client, but maybe I am bitter and misinterpreted her reply as more rude than it actually was. I politely asked her to calm down because her abrasive reply felt very flustered and asked her to give me a phone call so we can figure things out. She explains that she can't handle phone calls due to anxiety so despite it being a difficult work around for me (my work generally keeps me very busy) I understand her position and tell her I can easily wait for her to finish helping a friend move out. She asks me if I would "actually want to resolve this civilly" which struck me as rude given I don't feel I have been anything but? - > Conversation <- As of now, it is 2/27/15 and we have not resolved the issue at all. I feel like I am constantly being fed excuses, ignored and just treated very poorly in general and as a customer that paid $1200 for a costume that is barely wearable, I feel like this shouldn't be the case? I just feel like I'm stuck in a run around and I can't help but think I'm not doing the wrong thing? This is the first time I've ever commissioned a fursuit so perhaps my inexperience is what keeps this situation from being resolved? I'd be happy to take fault if I knew what I was doing wrong! I'm hoping that in posting this entry, I can warn people about this maker's shady business practices, lack of professionalism and lack of concern for their customers. I'm also hoping this may be the final nudge needed to get Ritz to acknowledge me and resolve the situation before I file for a charge back on Paypal. $1200 is quite a sum of money to be over drafted and I would absolutely prefer not to financially break this artist. I just want resolution, I want her to give me a game plan and show concern for the situation and give me a refund for the broken product she gave me. EDIT: 3/4/2015 On the day this entry had been posted, Ritz returned from attending an Anime convention and contacted me. She has posted the caps herself below, however just to be sure, here is the gist of what was said: -> Conversation <- While yes, she did offer to refund me $800, she also went on to bring up unexpected bills she mentioned on twitter and debts which made me feel extremely guilty in accepting any money from her when her personal life needed the money so much more. As I have said countless times, I am not out to be a bully in any way; I just want a refund for the broken costume I was given. Later in the day while I was at work, Ritz confronts me on skype with this: I wasn't even aware the entry had been posted at that point as I was on patrol at work (I am a police officer) and she begins getting aggressive on me, stating that she thought this was resolved and saying she was insulted. For one thing, this post was made days prior when I had not yet received any contact, secondly I would never consider this issue to be revolved until the money is in my hands and the fursuit was in hers. At this point, she offers me a NDA Contract because she no longer "trusts" me for having made this entry. Ritz is well aware that I have now requested a full $1200 for my refund because as others have mentioned here, I should not take a material cost loss when the issues with the transaction were not my own. The contract is incredibly damaging for me in which is states that I am unable to speak of the event in public or to third parties and states that Ritz may deduct from my refund if she is unable to sell the broken suit she crafted. I have screen capped the contract issued to me (I had to censor our names) and would like AB's input. -> The NDA/Contract I was offered <- (Ritz is the first party where as I am the second) I do not feel comfortable having to sign a contract to have the money I am owed returned to me; I feel like this is a form of blackmail in order to try and silence me if I want the money I am owed back, furthermore the amount offered is not what I am requesting. I want a full refund and that is what I am standing firm on, especially if Ritz is going to refurbish and sell the broken merchandise I was sold. I do not feel fit signing a binding legal agreement that states I am unable to make "any other online postings about the other party" I am additionally saddened by Ritz response here in the community claiming I have falsified any documentation in this entry and went as far as to accuse me of Libel and Slander within the proposed contract. I have not fabricated any of the content within this journal nor would I have had to should I received a functioning product to begin with. I also asked a few friends to review the contract that was presented to me, to which Ritz stated I should never do unless I approach a lawyer. I am in disbelief I was scolded for asking for input before signing a binding legal contract and that made me feel like Ritz knowingly attempted to shaft me. Additionally, while discussing the public image Ritz has gained from this entryI was suddenly confronted with Ritz's fiance (who could not bother to spell my name correctly). I expressed to him that I have no interest in talking to him about the transaction and want Ritz to be present. She returns and demands I resolve this tonight -> Conversation <- At this phase, I am done playing games with Ritz. I am tired of being treated like a bully or a bad guy when I have done all I can to be agreeable and helpful with this situation. My job requires a very taxing amount of my time and I can't be bothered to jump through hoops anymore. I have issues Ritz a final statement and that is where I am leaving it. I will not be accepting any amount under the original $1200 I have paid and if a resolution is not reached within the week, I will be filing a charge back OR if that fails I will be taking legal action. Ritz has proven to me that her reputation takes precedence above her clients and that is why I can not be bothered to be involved in her personal financial matters or give leniency anymore. -> My final statement to her about the matter <- At this point, this issue is not resolved despite Ritz claiming it to be so on social media. Edit 2: Ritz has now hidden her twitter from public view due to her initiating issues with people discussing this entry and claiming she was harassed. I do not support anyone causing her trouble on social media and I have not encouraged any of that behavior. Edit 3: Approximately one hour after I had amended this entry with the NDA they proposed to me, Ritz contacted me again and negotiated a refund. Her reply was as unprofessional as the rest and was of course not without an attempted guilt trip. She assumed my commentary about conventions and ski trips were about money when in reality it was about her lack of contact with me (in the cases where I was told she was too busy to negotiate with me). After accusing me of harassment and reminding me about her tax refund, I was asked to give her my paypal and complied. Despite constantly being told that she could not afford to refund me in full, I was suddenly sent the full amount of $1200. This left me a bit unsettled, however I wasn't going to ask any more when I got what I had requested. I have informed her that I would alter the entry and mark the situation as resolved. I will also be shipping the fursuit back to her this week and will edit the entry one last time to prove I have made good on my end of the bargain. I want to thank the Artist's Beware community for it's insight and help on dealing with this situation. This community is a valuable resource and I am glad to have been able to use it. As far as this entry goes, while it is now resolved I would still consider it a more than valid beware. I think the entry speaks for itself and down to the very end this maker could not handle a professional attitude. I also want to note that this suit will be refurbished and relisted for sale, so buyer beware in the future. I am very disappointed that things between this maker and I had to come to this. I was very polite and willing to work with them to accommodate their own situations if they would help me with mine and that refusal just made it impossible. Ultimately, it was not the desire to right a wrong that got me my refund, it was the desire to salvage their reputation that finally made a nearly two month long ordeal come to a close. If the maker had just shown the same concern for me as a client as they did for their reputation, this post wouldn't have had to be made. EDIT: 3/6/2015: The fursuit has been shipped to Ritz. I can provide a tracking number to the entry if needed and also visual documentation was taken to provide proof the suit was shipped in the most protective way possible, including the individual parts being bagged to prevent weather damage to eliminate any claims proper care was not taken.

Who: Holomouse Where: https://x.com/MouseHolo When: Apr 1st, 2021 & April 9th 2021 What: 2 digital art commissions This has dragged on for almost 3 years due to a combination of life happenings, and the fact that I was on my way out of things I had been involved with for almost a decade, and it sat on the back of my mind for a long time because of that. No WIPS were ever shown to me after multiple claims that they would be done. Initially this was for a 2 character NSFW MLP commission, but subsequent offers were made that I accepted (regretfully). Much of the details of things are blacked out to maintain my privacy as best I can. My first commission inquiry was in March 2021, and I initially made contact on Discord to ask if they could provide with quotes so I could get the money to pay them with later: After that exchange, they provided a quote of $135 for a two fullbody character piece, and I told them that I would get back to them after my next paycheck: On April 1st 2021, I paid for the first commission: Proof of payment: On April 5th, Holomouse messaged me on Discord asking me for $20 and said they would pay me back in a few days. They cited personal matters stressing them out and needing some help. This is unrelated to the art I paid for, but I did end up giving them $20 as a gesture of kindness. This also started the trend of Holomouse coming to me in private begging for handouts and money, and this happened multiple times: On April 9th 2021, Holomouse messaged me on Discord and begged for money, but this came with the offer of another 2 character art piece at a discounted rate of $110. I accepted this offer and sent the payment to them on CashApp. Told them I would give them the commission prompt after they completed the first commission: Proof of 2nd payment: On April 16th, 2021, the first commission had no progress, but I gave them the prompt for the second commission: April 20th, 2021, Holomouse begged me for another $50, and I declined. On April 28th, 2021, I poked Holomouse on Discord to try and see if any progress was made on the commissions. They sent back with an excuse: May 7th 2021, Holomouse came to me and said that they would be starting work on my commissions soon, but also begged for $25 at the same time: The next day on May 8th, they sent me a big message with a screenshot of a note that mentioned paying me back and other personal matters that they needed to tend to: Another 20 days pass, and there is no progress to show. Holomouse messages me and begs for money again, and shares an image of their bank account being in the negative as an attempt to manipulate me into sending them money. I declined: Another week passes, and Holomouse comes to me wanting to reconfirm the details of the commissions. I told them to scrap the details of the 1st commission and that I would give them a new prompt. Also told them to take the prompt of the 2nd commission and work on that one first. I would give them details for the 2nd after the first one was completed: On June 17th 2021, I poked them and gave them details of the prompt for the commission idea that was scrapped. It took them another 2 weeks to respond to this message: Now we jump to December 27th 2021. I poke them on Discord for an update and did not get a reply for another week. Things started to get very chaotic after this point, so my attempts at keeping up with this matter become much more delayed going forward: On February 11th, 2022 I messaged them and asked when they would be able to start working on the commissions. I got a response, but it was another fake out: Another 3 months passed, and on May 26th 2022 I poked them to try and get an update. This went nowhere: We get to September 21st 2022 and I poked them yet again. Took them 3 days to respond, and also went nowhere: More time passes and this sits for months with no updates. On February 12th 2023, Holomouse sends to me and says that they will be starting soon, and also wanted me to reconfirm what I had wanted. Blacked out section was a Discord screenshot of previous exchanges between the two of us: I changed the prompts for the art I wanted from Holo, and gave them references so they could start working. The references and details of these prompts are blacked out to maintain my privacy: Several months pass after this, and after confronting them on twitter I was mad because they had taken commissions and completed them several times in the times that I was waiting for the art that I paid them to do. They had deleted Twitter posts of their offerings, and also posts of them begging for money to the public. This is a screenshot of me responding to a deleted post of them offering new commissions to their followers. Note the username that it is a reply to: I had already contacted their other customers and clients that Holo had completed work for, and also clients that had waited for months for Holo to do art for them. There were several others affected, but this post is about my experience with Holomouse and not theirs. Needless to say, it was a big problem. After confronting on Twitter, this moved to Discord in private. They try to tell me that they will be starting to work on the art soon, and I was having none of that. This all went down on September 14th 2023. At the same time, I was trying to be merciful and set up a way for them to work with me and make it easier on themselves. They could pay me back partially with some art, pay fully in art, or pay me back fully. In their replies they mention that they owed back $2000 to other customers... We set up a payment plan to pay me back $300, and Holo also took an extra step and said they would fulfill the art while paying back the money they owed me: The next day, I gave them a prompt for art they said they would do as repayment: 3 days later they message and ask for a few clarifying details, and I provide those: September 23rd 2023, I message them asking if they will be sending the first $50 as a part of the payment plan, and I received an excuse: I message again after another jump in time, and get a delayed response: On November 16th 2023, I finally get the first $50 back: After this, I continue to get ghosted, and so I gave them an ultimatum after discovering from one of their other customers that they refunded them $95. The whole time I was coordinating with other clients of theirs to try and pressure them at the same time as one another, but this did not work out. Holomouse had already started to pay me back, and then decided to tell me that they are prioritizing other clients money before mine. I informed them that I would be making a beware post to this site, and they acknowledged this. As of now, they still owe me back $250, and they have scrubbed their Twitter account of recent examples of begging and some posts of commission offers. There are screenshots of many of these posts, but they have a fuzzy time format so they do not hold much merit. Holomouse has started to become active again on Twitter and has also started to stream on Twitch. I still want my money back and it will hopefully make its way back to me eventually. Holomouse is still likely going to continue to beg for money on Twitter, Twitch, and in private, but I hope this makes it clear how irresponsible and manipulative they are.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/851017.html This is something very difficult for me to do, but it needs to be done. This happened over the span of a couple years, so much is undocumented up until issues arose as I did not think it would be a problem. However, I feel there is more than enough after the fact. After much advice, I’ve decided to come forward and make a post here about this, mostly to warn people. I took my time writing this as I know there is no action I can take at this point and am very busy. WHO: Ritz_Bitz / Frostcat-Studio (and FA) / Ritz_Tweeting WHERE: Online, texts, emails, twitter, and at Further Confusion 2015 WHAT: One full fursuit (~$950) WHEN: Discussions starting in 2012, first purchase of materials March 4th, 2013, payment from a sponsor on November 25th, 2014, agreement of $200 of payment finalized with attendance at Further Confusion where the suit was delivered, and serious troubles starting shortly after. PROOF: Many images linked throughout explanation. EXPLAIN: This originally started as one of my best friends offering to build me a fursuit for a “friend” price. I had worn one of her suits once and got hooked on the fun it was. Over the years the details swapped around and much was discussed in person when I had lived nearby. Nothing was really set in stone for a long time and it was purely talk. March 4th, 2013 I purchased an order of fur and fleece for the project at Ritz’s request and had it shipped to her. I can't remember what happened, but she had to backburner the project. The fur sat around for almost 2 years before the project could finally be worked on, so there is a large time gap. (At some point I had also sent her DTDs of my feet for sockpaws, a pair of thick, long socks for the sockpaws, a tracing of my hand for the gloves, and extra fleece I had from a previous project based around my character.) June 2014 After attending Califur 2014 with my good friend (who I will refer to as Bob for this,) he started talking about how much he had wanted a fursuit after trying one of his friends’ suits on at the convention. He was hoping to purchase a fursuit and get it by Further Confusion that next year, and I referred him to Ritz as she was also doing my fursuit. When he found out my suit was on backburner, he offered to sponsor some of the cost for the project so it could be put into her paid queue so we could suit at Further Confusion together. I spoke to Ritz and she agreed to reserve space for Bob’s suit as well as mine and a guarantee for completion by the convention in January. I was happy to be helping her get some bills paid and to be helping Bob get a quality suit. Ritz had always told me steps she took to ensure her suits were durable and of high quality craftsmanship, so I had much trust in her work. June 27th, 2014 Bob contacted Ritz about a quote for his suit, also mentioning to her his intentions to sponsor a portion of my suit’s cost. Everything seemed pretty cut and dry at this point and Ritz waited for the payment so she could start the process of constructing the suit. Ritz confirmed that she can complete the suit by Further Confusion and states she planned to start work on my suit in August. September 20th, 2014 Bob placed a down payment to secure the slots. November 4th, 2014 I text Ritz asking when she will be needing my DTD. She answers asking it be sent the start of December. November 15th, 2014 Ritz has started constructing the head. She sends me a text asking about the eye color and shows me an early WIP of the foam sculpting, followed by more complete WIPs of the sculpt and what she planned for it. I was surprised she got the snout acceptably shaped in her style off the bat as it’s the most often misinterpreted part of my character. I praised her for this and asked one small request to the brow which she said wasn’t difficult to add, and informs me of things most people worry about in case I start to worry about similar things. November 16th, 2014 I receive an image of the progress she made as well as the change to the brow that I had requested. I was very pleased with the shape and happy it worked out so quickly with only that one minor change needed. November 20th, 2014 Ritz texts me asking that I bug Bob about making the second payment. It was weird that it was my job to ask him, but I overlooked this as this was a friendly transaction I had helped to arrange. We discussed the confusion, making jokingly grumbling about it as was custom of us when we spoke. We continued on to negotiate $200 of the suit payment to be taken out of what she would owe me for room and dealer’s table costs at Further Confusion. November 21st, 2014 Ritz texts me asking about the ears for the suit. It’s a little difficult to communicate, but I was happy with the shape and aware she only had two hands so just curious about the final curvature at the top. I jotted on the notepad what I meant and it was understood and she says it’s not hard. (This was laden with a very inappropriate joke and I have censored it out.) She also reminds me to send my DTD within the next two weeks. November 25th, 2014 Ritz contacts me asking about more details for the head. At the end I tell her she has my trust in recreating the mouth due to color limitations of fleece. November 29th, 2014 Ritz contacts me while at the store purchasing fleece for the mouth. We figure it out and even settle on the wings ahead of time to just be white due to the lack of proper shades available. I inform her I’ll be making my DTD the next day and shipping it out soon. November 30th, 2014 I ask her if she needs me to retape the dummy before sending it and inform her the lines were cut a little weird. (They were slightly wobbly in a few areas, but I had no issue matching it all back up for retaping.) December 1st, 2014 After seeing Ritz tweet pictures of the finished head, I contact her to question if it’s too late to add the fur tuft my character always has. I was a little upset that she didn’t offer a solution, but it was just a fur tuft. I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. It still looked good, which I made sure to communicate to her. I also inform her I’m sending the DTD the next day. December 8th/ 9th, 2014 I ask if she received the DTD in the mail yet. The next day she responds that she has. December 14th, 2014 Ritz texts me during conversation about how big the tail for another suit is, using my head and DTD as comparison. My DTD appears to be partially stuffed and looks fine. December 16th, 2014 Ritz texts me informing my my DTD split at the seams during the stuffing process. She claims every seam that was cut split apart because I didn’t use long enough strips of tape. I felt bad because I knew it would be annoying to retape. She says it can be repaired (it’s just taping seams back together) and she was working on it. This is very important for an issue later, as she tells me she’s going to stuff and pattern one half and mirror the pattern. December 20th, 2014 Ritz texts me asking if I want the feet separate or attached. We’d discussed it previously, but it was so long before I understood many things were forgotten. January 1st, 2015 After seeing tweets of the completed sockpaws, I text her in private to ask her if it’s too late to add larger claws. Again, this is something we’d discussed many times in person down to the shape and how she planned construction, but I understand forgetting. She’s clearly upset at the mere question of the possibility, so I immediately try to reassure her I’m just curious and not trying to upset her. I was very concerned as a friend that my question may have been upsetting to her, but from a client’s standpoint I knew it was very wrong and I began to worry about voicing my opinion on anything being wrong with this very expensive product. January 12th, 2015 After seeing only one WIP of the wings being completed on her twitter since the sockpaws were complete, I am now texted with the completed suit only a few days before the promised deadline. She first informs me that the magnetic wings wouldn’t work and that she had to sew them into the bodysuit. Not a big deal. However, I instantly noticed the padding on the legs looked… odd and lumpy. I also became worried that the bodysuit fit her as I’m a very small person. From the backview you can also tell the ears were not evenly shaven and have bumps in the structure already. It was days before the convention and I knew bringing up the issues would cause a very tense upset, so I kept quiet and informed her I was happy with the suit and we began talking about the fun we’d have at the convention that weekend. January 15th, 2015 The first day of Further Confusion for us, as soon as we set up in the dealer’s den, we went up to the room eager to suit up and go have fun. Ritz begins to help me put the suit on for the first time and issues already arise. The bodysuit is extremely baggy on me, which was odd considering I’d gained a lot of holiday weight since I had made the DTD. When it came time to put the sockpaws on, I noticed there was a hole in the inner sock, but shrugged it off considering it was difficult to get my feet into the paws. I had provided her with DTDs of my feet, so this was also confusing. We discussed it and since she only patterned the right foot and flipped it, it being my smaller foot caused the sizing issue for my left foot. The worst problem came when I tried to put the gloves on. They couldn’t fit past my second knuckles. She immediately became upset and, again, I took the blame upon myself and said it wasn’t her fault and that I probably traced my hand wrong. She gladly accepted this and it became the new “fact” of what went wrong. When putting the head on, I noticed a part of the zipper was separated from the fur of the head. An easy fix. We quickly discussed the issues. She explained she was extremely busy with personal suit projects she wanted to get done for Denver Comic Con and didn’t have the time to do these repairs and make new gloves. I felt bad and said I could probably handle it with the small amount of sewing experience I have. This seemed to clear things up and we went out suiting. I tried not to pay attention to the flaws and just enjoy the con. January 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 2015 We only suited up once more after that, and I wore the suit as a partial a third time out with her because the padding in the thighs of the suit were unsecured and chafed me to no end when I walked. Nothing stayed in place how it was intended because the suit was so baggy. Meanwhile, tensions rose during the con due to Bob’s suit having issues. Ritz was extremely upset by this so I absolutely couldn’t bring myself to say anything negative about my suit. In fact, I rushed to defend her despite having my own issues with my suit. Sunday night when we were going to suit a final time, tensions blew up, drama happened, and we cancelled our plans and stayed in the room. The con ended and I took my entire suit home with me with plans to try to repair it myself and save Ritz the time. January 21st, 2015 After coming home and getting unpacked, I finally had time to look over the suit and prepare myself for the work I had to do. I realized there was far more than I could handle and I was not experienced enough to fix most of it. A list of the issues in full is provided after my next piece of information. February 14th, 2015 The issues in my fursuit worried me. I wasn’t sure what was normal and what wasn’t. I attended the local furmeet this day and brought the head and paws (having issues easier to see in person) and asked some friends with more experience on the issues as well as asking advice on how to handle this delicate situation between my friend and myself. I briefly wore these to demonstrate some of the issues and interact with two young children. I got the advice I needed and confirmation that the flaws in my suit were not acceptable and not my responsibility to fix as she was paid to produce a suit in working condition that I could wear and enjoy. Many told me how clear it was that she rushed it and took shortcuts, which is no surprise given the circumstances. I needed to approach her on the issue and hope for the best. I couldn’t keep pretending it was okay, and I started preparing myself to for this rather difficult step. The Problems - The excess amount of fabric on the bodysuit is around 10-14 inches on the midsection. This can only mean when she patterned the half of the DTD and flipped it, she overshot the middle point. Even overshooting this by a few inches can cause excess (2-4x the length of the overshoot) and wouldn’t have been an issue had she taken the time to fully retape the DTD. The thighs have an excess as well, though not as bad. - I discovered the zipper on the head was glued on instead of sewn. This is why part of it was already separated when I received it. - The shaving on the head was very choppy. I had actually taken time to hand trim the face to smooth it out, but there was little I could do for the ears. - The ears were glued directly to the balaclava with no foam to anchor them or keep them stable. This causes them to flop around pretty badly. - Instead of being sewn to the rest of the fur of the head, the ears were poorly glued on. There are small open gaps at the side of each ear on both sides, as well as at the front of the ears near the fleece. - There are crinkles in the fleece on the ears where it was glued to the inside material. - The ears are anchored off-center. - The balaclava was spottily glued to the inside of the head and was already pulling off bits of foam. It is glued in such a way that it overlaps a portion of the buckram from the inside, unnecessarily limiting the vision further. - The gloves do not fit past the second knuckle of my hand. They’re also not hemmed at the edges so the fleece was left raw cut. - On top of the sizing issues, the sockpaws had a hole in the inner sock when I received them from being cut sloppily. - The sockpaws weren’t hemmed. In fact, the fleece was glued to the sock at the top. It began to fall apart with the small amount of wear they saw at the con. - The magnets she’d promised me and stated she could not get to work were left in the wings and sealed over with giant globs of glue. You can still see them and the gluey mess is left uncovered to get at the wearer’s back. - The wings were glued together and you can see the wire in some spots by peeking into the open spaces in the glue seams. (Originally we were planning on realistic wings with wiring, feathers, and vinyl. I told her “Just do simple plush wings like Telephone’s since it’s easier” later on. While the wings she made are cute and a creative middle-point, they’re going to fall apart because glue doesn’t last very long.) - The elastic loops on the tail were not sewn very securely for such a large, heavy tail and had begun to fall apart at the convention along with a small hole. February 15th, 2015 I have a short, rather comical discussion with another previous client of Ritz’s who also discloses that many parts of their suit are glued together. I feel this is necessary to disclose to help support my discontent with the quality of my suit prior to the next events as I am accused of "retaliation" later on. March 2nd, 2015 Unfortunately, I’d been very busy with life, so I had not yet been able to approach Ritz before this point. I don’t like to bring drama into this discussion of business, but this severely complicated the smooth resolution of things. We had not been speaking much as Ritz had blamed me for the drama at the convention and I was giving her breathing space. On this day, she reacted negatively to a tweet I had made on Twitter (she brings it up later) and the resulting misunderstanding caused her to remove me on social media. I contacted her concerned about her and trying to resolve the issue, only to be ignored. (I can provide screenshots, but would rather not as this is just drama.) In a panic, I discussed parting out the suit as a last resort as I was certain I would now not be given the repairs I deserved. It did not help when I saw photos proving similar quality work on other suits, leaving me more upset at what had been given to me. After speaking to many people and getting advice on this new situation, I removed the comments out of courtesy (despite never once mentioning her specifically) and went forward with their suggestions to attempt getting a rightful refurbish. March 6th, 2015 At the advice of many, I contacted Ritz with my intentions. I tweeted at her asking for an email to discuss repairs with her, being clear it shouldn’t be my responsibility. She replied with the preferred email. At that point I began to write a thorough email to her. This took me about a week to get finished up. March 13th, 2015 I finally sent my email. I noted not only the issues with her craftsmanship, but also with the customer service she gave me that led to increasing problems in the work that had upset me and led me to be quiet for so long. I leave the option open to negotiate a refurbish or simply work out a refund as it seems like it would be easier with her busy schedule that caused the burden of refurbishing to be placed on me in the first place. March 14th, 2015 I woke up to a rather hostile email back from Ritz. She immediately accused me of retaliation, being unreasonable, and picky. Our correspondence is plain to see and everyone I’ve asked said I was very kind. She accuses me of getting a suit “for free” even though she received a $600 payment from Bob, a $200 traded payment from me, as well as my purchasing $160 of materials. She then blames me for all the problems she possibly can, while ignoring half the issues that she can’t try to blame me for. She blamed the bagginess on my DTD, which she now attacks me for. I spoke to numerous suitmakers and they said 10-14 inches is definitely not due to retaping seams. (Also note the 2 day gap between the lightly stuffed DTD image and her telling me it split apart as vs. her story now.) The fact she still continued and even brought up personal drama with other clients as well as further wild accusations that, even if true, have nothing to do with the quality of my suit, is baffling. I’m not sure if she was trying to guilt trip me or try to scare me out of pressing the issue to resolution, but it was absolutely uncalled for. She even accuses me of being the reason someone was bringing up issues on another suit she worked on. The fact she finished it up with blatantly insulting me was the icing on the cake. I was also a little disturbed that, despite our cessation of contact on social media, she had still been checking my accounts. I immediately wrote her a response, on my phone, to address this unbelievable reply she had sent me. Admittedly blunt, but necessary, and deciding at this point I cannot handle a refurbishing process due to her hostility and request a refund. As she showed aggression about Bob having paid in a portion, I made it clear I could contact him to work things out how she’d like. March 17th, 2015 As I’ve yet to receive a response, I sent Ritz an email to remind her and request she handle the situation civilly. I make note that Bob is aware of the situation and we all just want to resolve this. March 29th, 2015 I had to duck out to handle life for a bit and figured giving her time to cool off was good. Sadly, I saw signal boosts that she was selling her leftover furs. I saw some of the very same fur used on my suit and contacted her immediately. It seemed like the 6 yards she told me to purchase was a lot and it was likely some of it was mine. At this point I was notably frazzled by this ordeal. She surprisingly responded, again accusing me of things I am not guilty of and bringing other clients and drama into dealings about a fursuit she did not make properly. She seems to even agree with the fact that the quality is bad and that I should be fine that I only spent $200 on it. Her logic in thinking because I only paid $200 along with $160 in materials means she doesn’t have to give anything back, despite that she took the $600 from Bob, and that is what he would get back, not me, in a refund. She claims it was wrong to take Bob’s money, yet she seems fine keeping it despite not doing her job properly for it. All she has done is avoided owning up and fixing mistakes she made on an expensive product while hiding behind excuses that drama somehow nullifies her responsibility in business. I made a final response to her as well, and that was where it ended between us. Currently: I have been refused repairs or a refund on a suit that was paid for and delivered in poor quality. It’s very clear Ritz has done a good job to avoid everything wrong with the suit she made for me and justify not fixing the issue and attacking me. She blames me for all that she can and resorts to bringing up drama instead of addressing why half my suit is glued together. I feel she has been trying to take advantage of the fact Bob sponsored part of the suit cost and her sudden grudge against me to avoid dealing with resolving the matter. She took a large sum of money for a product of a certain quality and did not deliver, and I’m honestly upset with how she’s treated me in this ordeal. The suit needs entirely new hands and feet, major tailoring of the bodysuit that includes redoing the legs entirely, redoing the tail's backing and elastic loops, completely redoing the ears and refurring the head with a new balaclava. Most suitmakers have told me it's not "refurbishing" so much as making an entirely new suit with some scraps. I basically don't know what to do aside from hope nobody else runs into the same troubles as I have with this suitmaker, but any advice would be welcome if anything can possibly be done at this point. June 16, 2015 Update I just took the head out of the storage box for the first time since photographing everything months ago. I've been getting advice on how to salvage as much as I can from the head to go towards making a new one, so I was needing to take a closer look at some things. A small clatter and objects falling out confused me, until I realized that the teeth have started to fall out with even this small amount of age and absolutely no use. The teeth are sculpey, I believe, and left unfinished. Some bases of the silver molars were unpainted, the rest of the teeth are just straight sculpey or whatever they are made of, no paint, and are all starting to separate from the beds of hot glue. This just adds to the poor quality product I was given and the work I am left to cover out of my pocket to fix. I honestly don't have anymore words to describe how I feel right now. February 2016 Update This disheartens me to have to even add to so long after the fact of this all happening, but I would like to update this to add a further warning to Ritz's poor business behavior if you happen to get on her bad side as I have with this ordeal. I placed an advertisement up on Furaffinity, in which I used a commission she had gotten from me as it was in my top 10 favorited pieces in my gallery and a great example. My Terms of Service states that I am allowed to use the work I create for people for portfolio and other purposes, and thus I had the legal right to use the image in an advertisement as it's a form of portfolio. I assumed this would not be an issue as I have personally gotten over the drama and moved on past this all quite a while ago, and had assumed she had done the same. She, however, saw this as an opportunity to attack me by approaching the advertisement organizer stating that her character was in my advertisement without her permission, essentially wanting it removed. This was orchestrated with a friend of hers whom also had commission work in my advertisement, also demanding the removal of their commission despite them having both agreed to and being bound by my Terms of Service. This alone was a nuisance, but in having to handle the issue, I saw that she had been publicly trash talking me, clearly stating her intention to try to cause a problem for me for the sake of causing a problem. At this point she obviously holds a grudge against me and I am being bullied for having spoken out about her practices, showing also that she has absolutely no respect to my Terms of Service that was agreed to. I am attempting to resolve the issue with the advertising organizer, but will be forced to avoid exercising my legal rights to display the artwork I created involving her characters in the future all because I want to avoid her malicious acts to attempt revenge for speaking up. August 19, 2016 Update After being urged by friends and seeking advice from the community on if I should add further updates, I'm sadly here again. While I'm relatively wary to share due to more fear of retaliation, I don't believe this will ever stop regardless of anything I do. I am urged to warn people the extent of the poor behavior that I have been subjected to for over a year since posting. Occasionally third parties will inform me of things that have been said and I honestly ignore 90% of things, but I had the displeasure seeing one instance myself. I have been ruthlessly slandered since the posting, and at this point been brought aware of possible threats of either legal action against me or potential harm to my person. (If it escalates any further I will contact law enforcement, but at current there is not enough to hold up considering the distance involved.) I have had absolutely ZERO contact with Ritz since the last email shown in the original posting here. Even during her attack on my advertisement, I did not say a word to her, only spoke to the advertising department at FA. I am going to point out ahead of time, it is EXTREMELY easy to figure out who is being spoken about (me) in all of these instances even if names aren't attached cause a simple google search nets you all the info you need. I already know I'm mentioned frequently by name otherwise anyhow. Onto the point, what I saw for myself... Was on Wednesday, June 22 in a Facebook group for Fursuiters and Fursuit Makers. A notification popped up onto my phone for a sale posting that was receiving many comments. I'm going to be 100% honest I was wildly curious as I'd heard she quit suitmaking (I'm only human), and I saw this exchange brewing that had apparently been what sparked it into popularity. I avoided the desire to jump in and say something cause NOPE I have zero desire to speak to her. I just screencapped away cause I couldn't believe what I was reading and figured it'd be taken down, which it was. Color guide for censoring (cause identifying photos/names): Black = Not involved or moderator names Ritz commented to alert Blue = Ritz Red = Some fursuiter who spoke up Yellow = Ritz's IRL friend https://www.dropbox.com/s/7nixak1x72bdqmb/Group1.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/j3j2m8mw22mswoo/2.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oeibrn7q6amudni/3.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/b189gvqz44ge3r5/4.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/y3527bkjzuev7qx/5.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/voe431whjd9eul3/6.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/feofjf0gk1tkdqy/7.jpg?dl=0 I don't even need to make commentary on how messed up this was. You all can think for yourselves. I avoided updating with it at the time despite people telling me to. I didn't want to deal with it. I didn't think it was that bad. Now here's what broke me on trying to ignore things. I was shown these earlier this week. Despite being from May, it opened my eyes to how serious things really were this whole time as I attempted to ignore it all. This is only HALF of a conversation someone had with Ritz's locked twitter, but it's very clear what's going on. I was shown this for obvious reasons. This was shortly before BLFC, which we both happened to be attending (I avoided her at all costs, and was apparently wise to do so.) Censoring: Blue = Ritz's locked twitter handle, Purple = Ritz's friend (Remember to read bottom to top in each for chronological order cause it's twitter.) https://www.dropbox.com/s/v36ao3uyd8d10r4/21.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/accjt9cl35ieovk/22.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/yf7mwvzbbwgyhc1/23.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8hq2cioflujxoz/24.png?dl=0 Let me point this out there. Whatever is being said on the other side of this conversation, her friend thinks I should be scared of her. This is NOT okay, and relatively alarming considering things I know about her that are not for me to share publicly. The suggestion of a restraining order despite that I have not had ANY contact with her whatsoever even despite her attempted harassment, is outlandish. Furthermore, the clear discussion of potential legal action because I caused her loss of income due to this beware posting is even more unsettling. This is bonkers. I don't even care about the disgusting and immature names they casually call me when this other stuff is going on. People are right, they need to know what she's doing because this is, and has been, crazy. Exercise caution when doing business with her, because you never know when you'll end up like me.

Commissioned art and YCH purchase on 5/24/2023 This Beware does contain NSFW elements, All communications were handled in discord After some difficult communication due to a language barrier, we finally came to an understanding and payment was sent These are the two payments through boosty, one of these is an error as boosty charged me twice. Here is the YCH that was purchased along side a REF sheet slot Here is the initial communication between me and the artist, it took a while to come to an understanding but we came to agree that its two ych slots and one commission if they are able to get boosty to send me a refund for the extra $200, knowing boosty from my perspective they is no way to really get a refund unless i want to get my account banned by doing a chargeback as in their eyes it would be considered fraud from some of the other cases i have seen They made an announcement on their discord saying that they are burned out due to them working on furry art and would prioritise working on working on human art if some of the people in their discord would like that instead So five months have passed from the initial commission DM's so i sent a DM in discord to see if they have a trello to see where i am in the queue, they apparently do have one but they keep it in private access and its supposedly in their language (even though i could work it out with a translator) in addition they state that the art would be worked on in november, After two months have passed including november which was the supposed date that the commission's was being worked on, so i sent another message to see what is going on... and no response, i waited until january to send another dm and still no response (image includes overlapping DM's from earlier images) I gave them a warning that if they continue to ghost me, i will be forced to look at my options such as posting an artist beware, after i gave them the warning they responded with this reasoning for their absence despite them streaming on twitch days prior Image includes another member of the artist's discord who also became frustrated with how long they are having to wait Due to the nature of this i decided to give them time to sort things out on their end and continue to wait, i waited a week as they would supposedly be working on art and sent another DM, they still did not reply, I then waited until this February to send another message and still no response still no message from them to as of typing this 2/26/2024 Here is their twitch activity for this month and prior They seem to be working on art for themselves such as emojis for their twitch discord and personal pieces it even seems some some of the newer streams are missing

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/900218.html WHO: Peridotkitty http://www.furaffinity.net/user/peridotkitty WHERE: Furaffinity.net and Skype WHAT: 42 page comic with a Cover ( $1500/$3150 paid ) WHEN: June2015- Present(March 2016) PROOF: All payments First payment (Jun 14 2015) Second payment (Jun 28 2015) Third Payment (Aug 13 2015) fourth payment(Sep 29 2015) Incomplete cover work(From Peridotkitty's Trello): [COVER] NSFW Incomplete comic work(From Peridotkitty's Trello) [COMIC WORK][COMIC WORK 2] EXPLAIN: I work on an anthology comic project with my fiance which is set to be published. Both of us work on comics for this as well as hire other artists. Artist hired receive a retainer fee( I pay this) to start them off before moving forward. With hiring artist we also gather funders to be a part of the comic. There were three funders for Peridotkitty's comic (names are hidden at mods' request) Funders were invoiced through my paypal (I work under LLC) and funds were sent to the artist.Payments for hired artist were sent monthly until the full project amount was paid unless the artist failed to produce enough progress in a timely matter at the funders discretion, that progress being a minimum of 2 completed pages per month. Now if certain uncontrollable life situations occured, we are understanding and funders are notified of what's going on to give the artist appropriate time to recoup and catch up. If the required progression does not occur, then a refund is requested. Bi-weekly check ups were also required in order to make sure proper progress had been made and to keep the funders happy. Help to the artist for anything was always offered and provided if needed including editing, storyboarding, and scripting. The Beginning---------------- May 2015-June 2015 Discussion was made with Peridotkitty about the comic and how it would work out through furaffinity and eventually moving to skype.( Sadly,my notes will not appear past 1350 notes but logs are available [1][2])The agreed price was $75 per comic page(total of 42 pages) and a cover for $3150. During this process the idea of funders came about. Three were found and the retainer was sent on June 14th and a second payment on June 28th [SKYPE LOG 1][CASTING JOURNAL]NSFW More discussion was made about the comic and the script completion [SKYPE LOG 2] [SKYPE LOG 3] Sent another payment on Jun 28 [SKYPE LOG 4] July 2015-August 2015 References of the cast were provided in Peridotkitty's shared dropbox folder for the comic during this time. Conversations were friendly but quiet for July as my fiance and I were prepping for Anthrocon. Peridotkitty was contacted a bit about the dropbox progress folder set up for the funders which we shared with them to see the project progression. [SKYPE LOG 5] Anthrocon came and went and there was little communication regarding the comic until August 6 [SKYPE LOG 6] [SKYPE LOG 7] Correspondence during this month became harder and I believe this is due to Peridotkitty's Patreon and her owing a lot more work due to it. I was understanding of this and explained this to the funders.Another monthly payment was sent to her. [SKYPE LOG 8] [SKYPE LOG 9] No major progress was made to her sketches. September 2015-October 2015 At this point we became worried. I started to inquire about whether she needed any assistance with her pages.Attempted contact was made and became more difficult.No progress other than the sketches for the first couple of pages were done and Peridotkitty suggested that her public trello should be linked to the funders to keep their minds at ease. [SKYPE LOG 10][SKYPE LOG 11] [SKYPE LOG 12] [ SKYPE LOG 13] On September 25th, project structure was being changed where the freelancers were to sign a contract. Peridotkitty read the contact and found it to be fair. There was a tiny error in the contract (Wrong comic title) but was edited. (Contract will not be linked unless requested).Terms of the contract required a minimum of 2 completed comic pages monthly, withholding of monthly funds if progress was unacceptable yet gave the artist a chance to catch up in a timely manner before being fired and requested a FULL refund. PeridotKitty was set to fax the form...but she was told to wait until further notice due to the high cost of collecting faxes from kinkos. [SKYPE LOG 14][SKYPE LOG 15][SKYPE LOG 16] There was little to no response from Peridotkitty during October regarding the project and the funders were starting to get more agitated .On October 15th, she sent me a message that she had gotten a job which would take away more of her time [SKYPE LOG 17] November 2015-December2015 During November I hired my assistant Carmel in helping with correspndence with the freelancers. Communication became more sparce and Peridotkitty was spending most of her time doing other commission work and streaming. [SKYPE LOG 18] On November 15th, I dictated a note to Carmel to send to Peridotkitty seeing as contact with her through skype was becoming a major issue. In the note it was discussed the worry of the funders for the lack of progress and that monthly payments would be withheld until proper progress was made.[CARMEL NOTE 1] November 18th, Peridotkitty got back to me about withholding funds. During this discussion she also talked about making turnarounds for the characters. (Please note that this is not part of the project but her own doing). She even mentions that she was still refining the first page of the comic after months. [SKYPE LOG 19] November 20th, Peridotkitty was contacted again about the contract and the possibility of mailing it.Peridotkitty never provided the needed information. Afterwards the skype conversation fell silent. Rook dictated to Tia more notes to her on November 27th and two in December. [SKYPE LOG 20][CARMEL NOTE 2][CARMEL NOTE 3][CARMEL NOTE 4] January 2016-February 2016 Funders were pretty much unhappy with the major lack of progress and were ready to ask for a full refund. Contact was attempted again on January 4th with no response. Another note was dictated for Carmel to send to Peridotkitty stating that this is the ultimatum to keep her job. She was to complete the first 3 pages of the comic by the end of January and the next 3 by the end of February. Peridotkitty got back to me on January 11th and requested color armor references for one of the character as not having that stopped her progress. [CARMEL NOTE 5][SKYPE LOG 20] January was a rough month for us due to personal matters and getting the colors took longer than we expected. They were added to the dropbox folder on [January 28th] and because of this she was given more time to work. She had to finish the first 3 pages by the end of Febrauary.But it must be said that during the month of January, all of her sketches for the first 3 pages were not refined as seen in her progress folder and in her trello. Not even inked. Flats were added to the cover but it still wasn't done. Peridotkitty gave more excuses which we tried explaining to the funders...but their patience was pretty much over. [SKYPE LOG 21][SKYPE LOG 22][TRELLO 1: COVER]NSFW[TRELLO 2: COMIC1][TRELLO 3:COMIC 2] The pressure was on during February and I desperatly tried to get in contact with Peridotkitty. [SKYPE LOG 23] March 2016 In this time frame of 9 months she added flats to the cover and did incomplete sketches for the first 3 pages. Not a single page was completed. We decided to terminate Peridotkitty on March 20th and asked for a refend. During this correspondence Peridotkitty kept making excuses that not all of this was her fault and that blame should also be placed on me . I was patient, I was understanding, and I defended her when talking to the funders and kept them informed of her life situations but the lack of major progress after months was enough.She had the resources to do what she needed to do but didn't. She mocked me for paying in advance, for not having a signed contract and my overall position.The question of a refund was not responded to. What ensued was the following conversation: [Firing note 1] Initial termination note [Firing note 2]Peri's response. She takes little responsibility for not doing the work and adds the blame on me. [Firing note 3] [Firing note 4] [Firing note 5][Firing note 6](Question about refund. Peridotkitty did not address this) [Firing note 7][Firing note 8] [Firing note 9]Peridotkitty's attitude quickly shifted [Firing note 10] [Firing note 11] Her last response in regards to a journal I made which has nothing to do with this transaction. [Firing note 12] My last note to her where I cut off communication. I honestly had to step away. All correspondence has since ceased. On March 21st I filed a claim with paypal. Sadly only $700 of the money could be disputed. The claim was [closed on March 23rd] as Peridotkitty told paypal that ALL work was completed up til March and that I was just being an unsatisfied customer.This was through a phone call and we are requesting an email of what she said to post here. Paypal did not contact us to hear our side when making their decision so I filed an appeal. March 24th, our appeal was also closed and none of the money will be sent back. I am not fully blameless and there are things that should have been handled better. I dont think there's much of a legal standing in regards to the new contract...but that doesn't justify keeping money for work not completed from 3 people.A partial refund would be fine but after her insulting responses towards me I felt that I wouldn't be able to get a decent conversation out of her. Funders were notified of the loss and have been understanding and I am more than thankful for this. This is a huge lesson learned.I accept any critisim on my part to help me in my dealings in the future. [EDIT]------------ March 23, 2015 I forgot to add the final note she sent me in response to Firing Note 12 [Firing note 13] March 25,2016 edit Firing note 3 above has the wrong link. Correct link is below. [Firing note 3] March 26, 2016 update---- Peridotkitty has posted her side of this situation here and on her FA . Apparently her fiance was the one who sent the malicious notes against me (Firing note 9 and onward). Whether I believe it or not is another thing.I have discussed with my fiance the possibility of a repayment plan and she has left a message to her. "Rook was unwilling to deal with you at all... seeing as how an apology about how you or 'your fiancee' acted at the end; I'm sure everyone here can understand why. I wonder why you didn't put those up there so your fans can have context on why he stopped communicating with you all together. But if you are serious, it isn't about paying him back, it's about taking care of the 3 funders. He is willing to let you set up a payment plan of a reasonable monthly amount to the 3 funders. You can contact me for their information. He says you can pay back one their 575 and the other their 600 for a total of 1175. And that he will settle up the remaining balance with the 3rd funder himself writing off that amount as service rendered. It's more than you've done but he's going to make a show of faith as well as responsibility. He would like you to publically keep track of the repayment to those two funders, he also wants them to get the full 600 and 575, so you would be on the hook for the transaction fee amount as well." March 26, 2016 update 2---- Terms have been agreed to and Peridotkitty has been given the funder' pages to get their paypal information.Monthy payments are being scheduled. Although these terms have been agreed upon, I will not mark this post as resolved until both funders are completely refunded. I will be handling the 3rd funder's refund myself.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/1013574.html WHO: ToBeABird/Bird/Pheonix/Otternonsense/PB_Willow/@StrawberryJemma on twitter. Old known aliases include CynicalSergal on FA WHERE: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/tobeabird where I initially contacted them and bought the commission. WHAT: 2 Sided Digital (Open Species) Bat Dragon Reference $40 WHEN: 5/6/16 May 6th 2016 to present day (ongoing) EXPLAIN: I specifically commissioned bird because they did the reference sheet of a character that I liked and I wanted something done of the same species. I had found the character through youtube, then found out they were purchased by someone, and actually stumbled on their FA page finally finding the artist behind the reference. I messaged them asking them to help me make a character of the same species. I asked for some basics for the character, it would wear a skull on its head, neck fluff like a bat, a long tail like a dragon, and big ears like a bat. They told me they didn't feel comfortable doing that because it would be copying their friend's character. Whatever I understand that though it is quite disappointing when generally most bat characters have all these characteristics. I was just thankful someone was actually going to be able to help make me a character from scratch with no images at all. I gave them some artistic freedom but generally its a bat dragon, it needs to look as such. The agreement (https://imgur.com/byYQg1X ) and the proof of payment. (https://imgur.com/b95ZIn9 ) Bird said in the messages the estimated time for the completion of the reference sheet would be finished in 7-25 days. So it should have been finished between May 13th 2016 and the very end of may, and if I'm being generous, end of June of 2016. Messages took place on May 6th 2016. The dates came and went, and I sat wondering what happened. I don’t feel like dragging their personal life through the mud, or trying to locate every single journal they posted about art delays, needing money or any other kind of inconvenience because there are many. I remained understanding and considerate during this time because it is the human thing to do. I am aware things can be delayed and people have home life and personal issues to deal with and it's fine because at the time the art was only a month late. Sometime in June or July of 2016 they did a stream on picarto and I saw the line art for the character they would be making for me. I saw them open the file of the old bat dragon reference they made for their friend, and they just edited the lines, as in directly opened the line art file for an older commission, and shorted the ears, changed the tail, the nose, the mouth, everything. The character didn’t look like a bat at that point, it just looked like a dog with wings. I do not have a copy of the line art because their queue/trello is no longer available. I didn’t feel like fighting them so I said the lines were fine but I really felt cheated. June came and went, July came and went, August was coming to an end so I decided to message Bird about the commission mostly to get an update if they finished or if I was able to get some things changed (https://imgur.com/A89OtmH ) this was mostly a message to remind them they had a commission due to me. Months go by with no update to their trello (which was available at the time,) I at one point in time they whispered me on picarto in October 2016 saying they hadn’t forgotten about the commission and they’ll work on it soon. Another time they said they would start working on owed reference sheets during a stream, and ended the stream earlier never touching any art. I sadly have no proof of these things because I never saved the messages and it was all on picarto so there's no actual saved evidence. I was never contacted again, nor did I contact them until they messaged me on my twitter in July of 2017 accusing me of sending my friends after them. (For the lazy, I don’t know who this person was, I never sent anyone after Bird, I solve problems on my own.) Bird's first message accusing me to of sending "my friends" after them https://imgur.com/ftj67RR the continuing messages https://imgur.com/ThYfcFM (obligatory "I know you've been waiting a long time," it was over a year at that point). Bird also asking me to find this person (despite me not knowing them) to get them to stop "harassing" him https://imgur.com/C5F0mHD . At this point I had started to scroll through the main feed of my twitter and saw Bird had tweeted these out https://imgur.com/SM68woa and https://imgur.com/Gp15wux . Whether or not they were actually about me I still made the notion to call them out for it since they previously accused me of sending people to harass them. Probably unprofessional on my side, but I also found it unprofessional to come after someone and accuse something they did not do. Also in the proof 4 they mentioned that my commission was 85% finished. https://imgur.com/sPv6Uzj and finally https://imgur.com/6m78KTM . Since the final message I had not received any kind of update about my commission being "85%" finished. I never received the line art and there were no updates to a queue, a trello or message to me. All updates from Bird of any kind seem to be journals about their personal financial issues. Their journals seem like a general place for them to ask for them to ask for money for overdue bills and vet trips or uber money. I had quit following their FA over a year ago because I was tired of seeing them open for emergency commissions and in stream commissions every other day but never actually show up with anything completed. If you just delve into their journals on FA you can see how chaotic and ridiculous it has been as a commissioner trying to get any kind of information from them. They have constantly locked, unlocked and deleted their twitter and since these previous messages from @pb_willow, they made a new one. I had to actually find their twitter from their fursuit business account in order to get ahold of them a year after they said the art would be completed in a week. I contacted them on twitter JULY 13TH 2018 The First Message https://imgur.com/PrvCE6Z My first message to them asking for a refund because I have been waiting over two years for this piece. The Second Message https://imgur.com/xTfAVy0 : Bird mentioning that on their FA journals (I stopped following them over a year ago) that their computer has died and they have debts to a cable company equalling over $500? They also mentioned to not contact them through this twitter and contact their art manager. The third message https://imgur.com/9ELAJAi They’re now saying they owe $900?) They said I need to wait Saturday to find someone to give them the time to use their friends’ laptop to plug their external hard drive into. I don’t know how long their computer has been broke, but why they didn’t get this done this as soon as they could makes me really skeptical of everything they’ve told me. If I delved deeper I feel like I would have been met with a ton of excuses. I told them I want either the art or the money whichever comes first, which sounds really rude, but it has been over two years. I do not trust this person to get me either the art or the refund. Every promise they had made to me has never been achieved. I feel like I have been lied to several times about this commission, and any time I have ever asked about seeing a work in progress I never see it, I am given a bunch of excuses among other things. I said I was going to message them saturday (July 14th 2018) but I gave them some time and messaged their manager (since they told me to) July 16th I messaged their manager https://imgur.com/vaPwZbF and never received a response. (JULY 23RD 2018) https://imgur.com/30j8Ww2 I messaged bird on FA asking for an update because their manager never messaged me back. I get a short message stating they sent me an update via twitter, which i can assure anyone, even if I could provide proof, I NEVER GOT AN UPDATE on twitter. Nothing else was in the FA message. Not even an update. Even if they did message me an update via twitter then they could have provided the update in the same message in FA as well to be professional. Instead I get a short and snappy message replying to me me asking about a commission that is TWO YEARS overdue. Message on July 23rd 2018 https://imgur.com/30j8Ww2 July 24th 2018 https://imgur.com/0Dctzas my patience has gotten very thin. I’ve not been given a real update, thus me lashing out. I’m tired of dealing with this individual. This is completely out of hand, two years waiting on a commission and I’m getting treated like I’m the one inconveniencing them. That Night July 24th 2018 https://imgur.com/6Vy6882 They asked me for my paypal email so they could send me the refund that night, later changed to when they wake up https://imgur.com/zmMAZLI to no one's surprise the refund never came. I gave them 5 days. (July 29th 2019) I messaged them to tell them I never received the refund https://imgur.com/UZixicK gave me some excuse about it being "summer in the south," (it's also summer in my state?) They have also seemed to forgotten that THEY TOLD ME THEY WERE GOING TO REFUND ME that same night several weeks ago because they no longer wanted to deal with me. But in this message they are accusing me of "not wanting to wait for the art." (Again it has been WELL OVER two years, I think we have gone above and beyond wanting to wait for this art.) It is now September 4th 2018, I still have not received the refund, only tons of excuses which is apparently the only thing I seemed to have paid for(?) I've checked their FA there's no indication that they've made an attempt to reach out to people to give them refunds or the art they're owed. I don't know how long it takes them or their friend to build a computer but over a month seems a little ridiculous (I know people work at different paces, but it took me four hours to build my computer and it was my first build.) Remember in previous messages they said they owe 14 people art that are stuck on their hard drive. I'm assuming since I messaged bird they have made zero attempt to try and retrieve these pieces for myself or for people by either a completed computer or by visiting a friend to use their computer. I have not been contacted to be paid back, this all started May of 2016, it is now September of 2018. Will Update As Necessary (September 9/4/2018) Most recent update (September 9/14/2018) Most recent update (September 9/16/2018) Sept 14th https://imgur.com/essiCtS (outgoing message) Sept 14th https://imgur.com/sTXgJvc bird’s message to me. I’m sort of dumbfounded and have zero idea of how to go about replying to this mess. This is where I get tilted and I’m sorry for that, this has been an emotional rollercoaster of all this back and forth nonsense. To recap: they had told me they “finished” the art (whenever that was) and I was never once notified before their computer happened to die. All this is riding on the fact we would not be having issues if they had either given me the art or refunded me when I asked a year ago. Several weeks ago they just told me they bought a computer (messages in the beware, but also here:https://www.furaffinity.net/journals/tobeabird/ in their journal where they also talk about going to IFC) So no money to refund people, but money to buy a new computer and go to conventions? JANUARY 4TH 2019 They sent me a PM in FA asking for my paypal and wanted to search through our notes to find how much they owe me, which I told them straight off the bat (eheh ) because i had a feeling they'd be searching for several months. In any case they finally sent me my refund today. So not exactly three years but close enough. Tired of ads? Upgrade to account with Professional package of service and never see ads again!

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/995528.html This imgur album may be easier to follow, but I will copy the relevant information in the proper template as well. https://imgur.com/a/vqw5xcR WHO: The artist is named Fr0stbit3 on Furaffinity. WHERE: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/fr0stbit3/ https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26222681/ https://www.furaffinity.net/view/27231252/ WHAT: Digital art, solo character NSFW commission, offered by the artist in pre-posed slots. WHEN: Initial contact was February 3rd, 2018 when the commission was accepted. Payment details were provided on February 4th, and payment was also sent on February 4th. On March 19th, email communication began inquiring about the commission, and then a month's deadline for a refund was communicated and accepted. On April 20th, I opened a PayPal dispute to reinitiate contact. The refund was refused, and the dispute was elevated to a claim. On April 24th, the claim was resolved in the Buyer's (mine) favor. On May 1st, the Seller/Artist, Fr0stbit3, reopened the claim to appeal to PayPal. On May 4th, the appeal was denied by PayPal. Fr0stbit3 proceeded to post an unauthorized image of my character, using the title and description to insult and defame me. I decided to create an Artists Beware entry. EXPLAIN: This began when I asked for a pre-posed commission slot Fr0stbit3 was opening in February. The idea was a line of dragon characters in pre-made poses would be completed individually for the buyers and then posted in a group pic at the conclusion. https://imgur.com/m6Yru9V This is my initial comment on the submission page inquiring for a slot. Page is still available as of 5/4/2018. I inquired after a slot for the "Dragon Wall", pre-posed pictures for dragon characters to be lined up in a group picture. [NSFW link] https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26222681/ https://imgur.com/cm67HUZ Here is the note after the comment. I provided references and my paypal information, he replied with the price and his PayPal information. https://imgur.com/Qst1p6l As you can see by the date I paid the same day (with tip!). The payment has since been refunded after I filed a dispute, which the following screenshots will show. https://imgur.com/8Kje8Iz About a month and a half later, I checked Fr0stbit3's Furaffinity page to see if he'd made any progress on the Dragon Wall. When I tried to navigate to the page from my note inbox, I got the error "user has voluntarily disabled access to their userpage", which was a big red flag for me. He has since reactivated his page. Worried that an artist had taken my money and run, I tried using his paypal address to email him, and to my relief he responded the next day. He assured me he would be providing a refund as soon as he could, but couldn't due to issues in his personal life. https://imgur.com/LHNOaEr I expressed my sympathy and asked for a deadline for a refund, and he said it could be up to a month, but he'd try to get it to me earlier. After this, I had no contact with him for a month. https://imgur.com/fF6AtiY This image is read from bottom to top. After a month of no contact and no refund, I reinitiated contact via Paypal by opening a dispute. Paypal's first step of the dispute process is simply the Buyer (me) contacting the Seller (Fr0stbit3). I explained what had already happened and informed him I had opened a dispute for this reason. He responded with "I told you to be patient with me" while simultaneously denying he had received any previous email from me. After that I realized that he was not going to be willingly provide any refund to me, was providing no revised deadlines, so I escalated the dispute to a Claim in order to have the transaction refunded. https://imgur.com/qkgo9uV He proceeded to send me several messages on FA, urging me to check my email. I did, and saw nothing, until I thought to check the email address I use as my Paypal. He also seemed to be confusing me for someone else named "Matt". https://imgur.com/YKjhrvO I checked my alternate email and found this from him, finding out that he'd gone back on his promise of a refund and went ahead and completed the image. I found this surprising, as he'd never even mentioned the possibility of him actually completing the commission, he'd only spoken about refunds. I also found it surprising that rather than actually send me the completed image to complete the commission, he'd chosen to hold it hostage instead. https://imgur.com/yBjpVIW For organization and clarity's sake, I forwarded the email he sent to my own email address, that I'd used to initially contact him, forwarded it again to him and then reopened our email thread, so that he could easily see my prior messages and stop having me confused for whoever Matt is. https://imgur.com/gK4yCmt I used slightly sterner language in response to his decision to hold the image hostage rather than fulfill his end of the transaction. I made it clear that he had communicated to me that the image was not going to be completed, and that I had been waiting for a refund. At this point, I had no interest in the completed image, as this commission had proved to be an extremely frustrating experience. However, I was very much looking forward for this experience to be over, so I made it clear that if he wanted the dispute to be resolved, he could just send me the image and I'd call it even. He responded as you can see above, with a pixelated/censored version, insisted that he could not trust me, and that he would only send me the file after I dropped the dispute, reiterating it with two emails in a row, making sure to mention in both that I could not be trusted. I was honestly surprised to see that he had done the image, but he still had not sent it to me, only a blurred version, so his part of the transaction was still incomplete. https://imgur.com/WnHAltB I did my best to clarify my position and made it clear that the Paypal claim existed because he had failed to provide what I had paid for, and that if he fulfilled the transaction, the claim would be dropped. But he doubled down, refusing to provide the image, and also claiming he never provided refunds. https://imgur.com/qqWOPKn Despite my better judgement, I tried to make the situation crystal clear about how the ball was in his court, and that he could either let PayPal settle the dispute or provide the full image to satisfy the claim. I did not have much hope for the results, and I was tired of arguing, and made it clear that it was my final communication. https://imgur.com/GTO96pO He then proceeded to be far more public, filling my shoutbox with messages. I provided a shout back asking him not to contact me unless it was with the image or a refund, via Paypal or email. I then blocked his Furaffinity account. https://imgur.com/KwZcvIF PayPal resolved the dispute in my favor, and they forced the refund. I was content to drop this particularly frustrating experience and move on, but I then received another email from Fr0stbit3 informing me that he would be appealing the claim and providing screenshots to PayPal, and also threatened to write a Buyer Beware against me. I was not overly concerned, as the screenshots demonstrate several times that he refused to provide the image he was paid for. https://imgur.com/7AfpLsB A few days passed and the PayPal dispute was closed, again, in my favor. Fr0stbit3 responded by posting the image to his FA scrap gallery, which includes a depiction of my character and my character's name, with the title "Scumbag Wall", claiming I had cheated him. I reported him on FA for harassment. At this point, the situation has concluded. I have received my refund and am happy to leave it at that, though I hope the submission he posted is taken down after my ticket is reviewed on FA. I hope this Artist Beware entry will help provide context for this transaction and help warn other commissioners from attempting to do business with this individual. PROOF: All screencaptures are in the following Imgur album, as shown above: https://imgur.com/a/vqw5xcR Update: At this time the submission he was using to defame me has been taken down and his FA has been suspended, along with another user who was posting death threats to my shout page. Their suspensions lasted about two days.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/977755.html WHO: SaltedDriftwood / LostSaltSpiral / LostVioletLotus / BraidedBurgundy WHERE: http://twitter.com/salteddriftwood http://salteddriftwood.deviantart.com/ (Account I did business with.) https://lostvioletlotus.deviantart.com/ http://twitter.com/braidedburgundy (Account refund was requested from.) WHAT: Two pre-made adoptables. Requested refund as "item was not as described." WHEN: First pre-made design purchased January 2017. Second purchased August 2017. Refunds on both requested November 2017. EXPLAIN: January 13th of 2017, SaltedDriftwood purchased a pre-made adoptable. They paid, I sent them the file. August 22nd of 2017, they purchased another. They paid, I sent them the file. This involves personal issues which do not relate to the transactions, but lead up to the paypal claims. SaltedDriftwood and one of my friends followed each other on twitter. My friend grew uncomfortable with them because of their own personal issues, and silently softblocked and unfollowed them. When SaltedDriftwood noticed, they messaged me, asking me why. I was not comfortable being put in that position, and declined telling them. They then liked a reply I had made to my friend, which upset him, on top of knowing SaltedDriftwood had tried to contact him through me, an unrelated party. I told them this upset both of us, and the reasons my friend wanted space between them. An argument broke out, SD removed me from discord, and I assumed that was the end of that. Today, I received notices from Paypal that SD wants refunds on the pre-made designs from August and January, citing that the "Items are not as described." I had missed a DM from them on Saturday, Nov 25th (I received the refund request Monday, Nov 27th)-- I do not conduct business on twitter, so I don't have a tab dedicated to my DMs on Tweetdeck, and didn't see the message. It was also filled with responses to the personal issues from the conversation on Discord. They are asking for a refund on items they received in January and August because of the personal disagreements, despite the fact the items were pre-made and they knew full well what they looked like before they bought them. At the time of writing I have responded to the claim offering a full refund provided they do not keep the design. I am waiting to hear back on that. They requested a partial refund on the design they bought from me in January. I told them I would give them a full refund on the condition they do not keep the adoptable, or no refund and let them keep the adoptable. I am waiting to hear back on this as well. I am aware I could refuse the refunds, but I do not feel it's worth it to prove the receipt of digital goods to Paypal, and would rather this be done with. As a note, I do allow for my designs to be traded and resold, and I do not need to be notified of any transfer. PROOF: https://sta.sh/2stt9cjsjhk?edit=1 Initially I thought I was unable to offer a refund on the condition of the item being returned, which was why I had asked them to de-escalate the claim-- I thought I was only able to offer a refund and let them keep the item, which I did not want them to do. I realised I was misreading the error Paypal was giving me, and responded with the Refund+Return offer. EDIT 11/29/17: They have dropped the claim on the design from January and approved my refund offer. However, I have no way of marking that they are returning the item from August, and I am now blocked from any contact with them, so I have no idea how to move the claim forward from here. I assume the ball is in their court to prove the item is returned? Which I'm not sure how to do, given that it's a digital item. Proof of attempt to clear up refund / of being blocked Proof of claim status I'm completely unclear on whether or not they still want the refund or how to proceed at all. EDIT 11/29/17 #2: A friend of theirs got into contact with me. SaltedDriftwood is now refunded in full.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/923369.html WHO: TheAquaticRebel (dA) -- Deactivated August 2016 -- New account http://kreayashion.deviantart.com/ Deactivated as well (August 28, 2016) -- (edited) http://loyderwo.deviantart.com/ New new account (Appears to have been abandoned) WHERE: http://www.theaquaticrebel.deviantart.com // http://kreayashion.deviantart.com/ // http://loyderwo.deviantart.com/ WHAT: $150.00 YCH fully detailed commission WHEN: May 27th, 2016 - August 4th, 2016 PROOF: http://ninjakato.deviantart.com/art/The-Aurora-Singers-YCH-CLOSED-611035951 (Original piece) http://comments.deviantart.com/1/611035951/4137225015 (Comment inquiring to purchase) http://ninjakato.deviantart.com/art/The-Aurora-Bringers-YCH-Comm-612444595 (Completed piece) EXPLAIN: In May of 2016 I opened a YCH with multiple characters which were $150.00 each 'The Aurora Singers' (YCH CLOSED). One was bought by someone and a short time later the other was bought by TheAquaticRebel. At the time I was doing commissions under post-pay -- Meaning I would be paid after completion. I had done this originally to save myself anxiety by feeling the need to rush to get a piece of artwork done because it had been prepaid. While TheAquaticRebel had offered originally to pay beforehand -- http://sta.sh/0e24dsjhdb6 I declined because I was pretty busy at the time and didn't want to run the risk of taking too long to get work done (I was in the process of packing to go overseas for a few months). Between May 28th and June 1st 2016 I had completed the commission and sent a note to let TheAquaticRebel know it had been completed and I was ready for payment to be made -- http://sta.sh/026ikm0uink5 I figured it had only been a couple days and I hadn't heard anything back from them to warrant a possibility that they wouldn't be able to pay. The other person who had bought the other half had paid promptly within a few hours after I'd sent the finished product. Unfortunately, that's when the situation went downhill and I received this as a reply -- http://sta.sh/085pjoiu0ra I had never heard of this happening but I asked around a bit and prodded Google.com for information of similar situations and ways to fix/repair it, not only to be paid but for TheAquaticRebel's sake as well because I imagined that situation is a pretty scary one to be in. A few people told me that PayPal doesn't shut down your account or delete it unless you ask them to under the pretenses that your account has been hacked/used by someone else without permission. Also, someone else pointed out the "PayPal bill" section which TheAquaticRebel spoke of -- PayPal doesn't send bills... They send business activity and payment histories monthly to show how much you have made/earned and how much you have bought in that month. Still, I gave TheAquaticRebel the benefit of the doubt and figured if anything they had a bank account and would likely offer to pay with that instead should their card take too long to arrive. The day after (June 4th, 2016) I sent a reply to their note inquiring as to when I could expect payment as banks usually only take 4-7 business days to send you a new card (even in the UK) and I was going to be unavailable for a week and a half or so as I would be traveling and thus unable to view my dA notes http://sta.sh/0rqa1qoxwye A week and a half's time seemed ample time enough to get everything sorted, more so when money and possibly identity theft was involved; I'd be chomping at the bit to try and get everything sorted! A day later I got this http://sta.sh/0bl5yxjjcnb as the only reply which seemed to be the tipping point for me to understand this person was yanking my chains. Their reply was so lackluster and 'meh' -- as if to say "I owe you $150/115£ but I can't be bothered" -- which really kind of annoyed me as I kept thinking of how I'd be in that situation. I'd be in slight hysterics because this is finances that were being messed with AND I'd owe someone 115 quid for work they'd already done. However, I digress -- I replied with as at this point I was beginning to realise the outcome was likely going to be dismal and it was looking less and less likely like I was going to be paid. Time warp to a few weeks later in which I hadn't heard any updates or gotten any notes from TheAquaticRebel about what was going on despite asking them to keep me posted. I don't know of any banks that take 2-3 weeks to send a new card and it's pretty easy to set up a new PayPal with a bank card (I use it myself and have had to change cards before). There had been no word from them so I sent them a note to inquire -- http://sta.sh/024dabpy0amk and funnily enough they replied the same day with -- http://sta.sh/07l9sx60i0e I had NEVER heard of PayPal doing this unless the person didn't have the amount in their accounts (PayPal or Bank) and even then, looking up this situation all I could get close to was a glitch that was a one time thing and usually sorted itself out after re-sending an invoice. However, after talking to other people about this -- I was curious for multiple opinions at this point -- they openly admitted that this just seemed like another excuse; a convenient one at that -- Fake a PayPal glitch. Regardless of my unease -- More so at the fact this all seemed phishy to me and I was not sure I wanted that kind of connection to something of that oddness -- I sent them my PayPal.Me link instead for them to send the payment. I got nothing, including no notification from them letting me know they'd even bothered to send a payment. So at this point I wanted some kind of visual proof of this situation happening, a screenshot if anything -- http://sta.sh/0s60gw7erao because I was ridiculously confused by that time. I couldn't find any direct information about this glitch being consistently replicated like TheAquaticRebel was claiming. Again, I got nothing -- no proof nor reply. August 4th, 2016 -- a couple weeks later I once again wanted to try and touch base with TheAquaticRebel on what was going on with the payment as I felt surely by this time they would have figured something out but at this point with the lack of proof that there was something wrong I was being told by several people to flip them onto Artists_Beware because to them they seemed to be nothing but a scammer -- http://sta.sh/01izcvl8v9et I got this reply -- http://sta.sh/018l60fboufu This is where there was the massive red flags -- mostly over the "PayPal won't do anything about it" because I knew damn well PayPal's support team are not that useless. I've had issues with my account before and any time I'd called them, no matter what the issue, they were always willing to help. They would pretty much always have an answer and if they didn't they would advise on ways and things I could manage things. The fact TheAquaticRebel spoke as if PayPal's people were like "Oh, you can't pay merchants for things? HAHA, OH WELL, nothing we can do :lol: Sorry~" The only thing; the ONLY thing I can see happening is them saying "The issue wouldn't on our end but your bank's as there's likely something going on with your account there. We'd advise you to call your bank and discuss it with them. For now what we can do is suspend any payments leaving your account within the last month since the time of the invasion until now to prevent any further unauthorized usage of your account and funds. If you are continuing to have issues using your account even after calling your bank and getting the OK from them that everything is fine, please contact PayPal again and we will investigate further." Which is pretty much what I got in an email reply when I inquired about the situation with PayPal's help team. TheAquaticRebel also made it out as if they were upset which their lack of cooperation really betrayed that -- More so when all they had to do was provide visual proof of what was happening as I even offered to give insight to help them. However, again... I gave them the benefit of the doubt and offered once more to help alleviate the situation -- This time by offering to bill their bank directly so it would be easier as there'd be no faffing about with PayPal as it was obvious there was issues with it -- http://sta.sh/029jxiy70vor I was concise but stern on the matter and I heard nothing back. A few weeks later I sent them http://sta.sh/019bmkyv12n3 and from then on I had heard nothing back AND they have since deactivated their account... So, here I sit -- Literally having to just deal with $150/115£ worth of work done never to be paid. However, if I can do anything I can warn people about this person. I gave them more than enough time and patience when dealing with the situation. I know it seems harsh but again, with the lack of proof and cooperation I feel genuinely put off and therefore I was told to place this publicly as a warning. I wouldn't be nearly as upset about $20 or even $40 worth of work as I could simply redo the piece but $150 is too much to just throw off without a warning. I'm well aware I should have taken prepay when it was offered, but I had my reasons for not doing so at the time -- Not to mention there might have been bigger issues if I had. EDIT-- (Apologies but they made a new account AFTER I had submitted this so there's some things to be added) TheAquaticRebel deleted their new account which was kreayashion after someone who'd seen my warning asked about the YCH. They then moved to the new new account loyderwo in which they noted me asking me to read a journal they'd written addressing the issue. The claimed to have been harassed before and after on Instagram -- which I should mention I never even knew their Instagram nor did I mention any other site they were on as I didn't even know of any others. So, if they were indeed harassed on there it wasn't because of anything I'd said. I had also not made this situation public until a few days ago when I was advised to make a warning in case others had had the same thing happen with her. It was only then that I had someone note me with other accounts she had made elsewhere but I did not mention a single one of them other than her dA. I was unable to see any comments posted on her page, or even if there were any as she'd deleted her account very soon after. I read the journal she'd written and it basically states they cannot pay me due to being hacked and their PayPal again being messed with so at this point I'm just severely at odds on the situation. I'm out $150.00 of work and I feel like I've been played. I know I should have asked for prepay; lesson learned. However, this just feels like she didn't have the payment even when she said she did otherwise she would have been okay to pay through her bank instead.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/917946.html WHO: Thatdangcat / Toradoshi WHERE: They have heaps of places to contact them, these are all the ones they have listed on their Furaffinity. All contact we had was via emails or FA notes. https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thatdangcat https://www.furaffinity.net/user/toradoshi/ https://beta.furrynetwork.com/toradoshi/ http://thatdangcat.deviantart.com/ https://inkbunny.net/Toradoshi https://www.weasyl.com/~toradoshi https://toradoshi.sofurry.com/ https://e621.net/post/index?tags=toradoshi https://twitter.com/thatdangcat https://www.facebook.com/ThatDangCat https://payhip.com/thatdangcat WHAT: Premade partial on Furbuy to be made into a digitigrade fullsuit. Purchased by myself and my partner as a joint commission with him doing the majority of the contact for ease of commission. WHEN: Premade was bought around 4/4/15 and stopped responding after 7/25/15 Premade partial was bought from Furbuy around the 4/4/15th, the furbuy page has long gone so not sure on exact date. 3/6/15 - Picture of the suit from the makers account, same image used on FB auction - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/16108694/ / http://sta.sh/024rc3ccl2xt 4/17/15 -7/25/15 - A list of all the payments sent - http://sta.sh/0s05lkb1rkh 4/8/15 - 4/11/15 - Details worked out with payment plan and details for suit http://sta.sh/011ulmr8x6gw Some progress was made towards making it into a fullsuit 5/15/15 - Hands and claws were started https://www.furaffinity.net/view/16558995/ / http://sta.sh/01hr2nqi3a14 6/12/15 - Padding was made https://www.furaffinity.net/view/16815559/ / http://sta.sh/01w4ocx52yro A full list of the emails + content http://sta.sh/2d1uiynbyjz?edit=1 7/25/15 - Where emails start going unresponded to http://sta.sh/09t98px9sjc Repeated unread notes on both their FA accounts http://sta.sh/013qhfpa8g9v 2/4/16 - 6/5/16 More unresponded emails http://sta.sh/01qcb3sj803y / http://sta.sh/0n78pdoevi 7/27/16 - After repeated ignored/unpened notes and emails I sent them a note from my FA account asking about a commission enquiry on the 7/27/16 which was replied to on the same day. I sent them a note saying they obviously weren't having any issues getting notes and to either update us, or refund us. http://sta.sh/0ukeca1eaq1 That note was read, and I have yet to recieve a reply but they have been uploading art to their Toradoshi account since then. http://sta.sh/010e0yogvhvy Obviously this has gone on way too long and we should have followed it up over a year ago. The suit was intended for my partner and myself to be able to wear. He was the one organizing and doing the transaction itself along with the details for it so the artist wasn't communicating with both of us, but the commission was for the two of us. Most of the details were run by me to agree with as well, but all emails and payments were sent by him. Unfortunately he's pretty new to the commissioning game and while I'd have bailed out and followed this up a year ago, he kept going in the hopes this would actually get completed. In putting together this AB I saw (He actually probably told me at the time but I forgot) that this suit had a timeframe of 2-4 months 😕 We're in the process of trying to contact paypal and his bank to do a chargeback on Toradoshi in an attempt to get our money back. I'm not holding out hope on a refund seeing my last note has gone unresponded to and going by their Trello https://trello.com/b/pQoLLQU4/tdc-commissions they have other people waiting on refunds (See Blue/white wolf head card) and no suit work done since November 2015, but with two new suits added this year. EXPLAIN: Bought a premade partial from Thatdangcat/Toradoshi on 4/4/15 and they stopped updating us after the 7/25/15. At first chalked it up to emails not getting through, so I bugged my partner to send them a note on their FA to their fursuiting account (Thatdangcat) and their main account (Toradoshi) which was being updated almost daily. Repeated unread notes and unreplied to emails I sent them a note from my own account, which they promptly responded to then stopped replying to once I asked about our suit. ADDED: Since writing this the artist has contacted us again http://sta.sh/0b7tpy16bg4 At the moment still deciding how best to proceed. *edited to fix spelling and unfilled dates* Update: so Toradoshi has been replying since all this, and we've decided to continue with the commission but with a 3 month deadline with weekly updates. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly now! [Editor's note: Update from 2/2017] https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/917946.html WHO: Thatdangcat / Toradoshi WHERE: They have heaps of places to contact them, these are all the ones they have listed on their Furaffinity. All contact we had was via emails or FA notes. https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thatdangcat https://www.furaffinity.net/user/toradoshi/ https://beta.furrynetwork.com/toradoshi/ http://thatdangcat.deviantart.com/ https://inkbunny.net/Toradoshi https://www.weasyl.com/~toradoshi https://toradoshi.sofurry.com/ https://e621.net/post/index?tags=toradoshi https://twitter.com/thatdangcat https://www.facebook.com/ThatDangCat https://payhip.com/thatdangcat WHAT: Premade partial on Furbuy to be made into a digitigrade fullsuit. Purchased by myself and my partner as a joint commission with him doing the majority of the contact for ease of commission. WHEN: Premade was bought around 4/4/15 and stopped responding after 7/25/15 Premade partial was bought from Furbuy around the 4/4/15th, the furbuy page has long gone so not sure on exact date. 3/6/15 - Picture of the suit from the makers account, same image used on FB auction - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/16108694/ / http://sta.sh/024rc3ccl2xt 4/17/15 -7/25/15 - A list of all the payments sent - http://sta.sh/0s05lkb1rkh 4/8/15 - 4/11/15 - Details worked out with payment plan and details for suit http://sta.sh/011ulmr8x6gw Some progress was made towards making it into a fullsuit 5/15/15 - Hands and claws were started https://www.furaffinity.net/view/16558995/ / http://sta.sh/01hr2nqi3a14 6/12/15 - Padding was made https://www.furaffinity.net/view/16815559/ / http://sta.sh/01w4ocx52yro A full list of the emails + content http://sta.sh/2d1uiynbyjz?edit=1 7/25/15 - Where emails start going unresponded to http://sta.sh/09t98px9sjc Repeated unread notes on both their FA accounts http://sta.sh/013qhfpa8g9v 2/4/16 - 6/5/16 More unresponded emails http://sta.sh/01qcb3sj803y / http://sta.sh/0n78pdoevi 7/27/16 - After repeated ignored/unpened notes and emails I sent them a note from my FA account asking about a commission enquiry on the 7/27/16 which was replied to on the same day. I sent them a note saying they obviously weren't having any issues getting notes and to either update us, or refund us. http://sta.sh/0ukeca1eaq1 That note was read, and I have yet to recieve a reply but they have been uploading art to their Toradoshi account since then. http://sta.sh/010e0yogvhvy Obviously this has gone on way too long and we should have followed it up over a year ago. The suit was intended for my partner and myself to be able to wear. He was the one organizing and doing the transaction itself along with the details for it so the artist wasn't communicating with both of us, but the commission was for the two of us. Most of the details were run by me to agree with as well, but all emails and payments were sent by him. Unfortunately he's pretty new to the commissioning game and while I'd have bailed out and followed this up a year ago, he kept going in the hopes this would actually get completed. In putting together this AB I saw (He actually probably told me at the time but I forgot) that this suit had a timeframe of 2-4 months 😕 We're in the process of trying to contact paypal and his bank to do a chargeback on Toradoshi in an attempt to get our money back. I'm not holding out hope on a refund seeing my last note has gone unresponded to and going by their Trello https://trello.com/b/pQoLLQU4/tdc-commissions they have other people waiting on refunds (See Blue/white wolf head card) and no suit work done since November 2015, but with two new suits added this year. EXPLAIN: Bought a premade partial from Thatdangcat/Toradoshi on 4/4/15 and they stopped updating us after the 7/25/15. At first chalked it up to emails not getting through, so I bugged my partner to send them a note on their FA to their fursuiting account (Thatdangcat) and their main account (Toradoshi) which was being updated almost daily. Repeated unread notes and unreplied to emails I sent them a note from my own account, which they promptly responded to then stopped replying to once I asked about our suit. ADDED: Since writing this the artist has contacted us again http://sta.sh/0b7tpy16bg4 At the moment still deciding how best to proceed. *edited to fix spelling and unfilled dates* Update: so Toradoshi has been replying since all this, and we've decided to continue with the commission but with a 3 month deadline with weekly updates. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly now!

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/1016815.html (UPDATED 01 December 2018) WHO: FarisBatwan (FBsuits) - http://www.furaffinity.net/user/farisbatwan & https://twitter.com/fbsuits WHERE: Initial contact via gmail, conversation/discussion also via Twitter DM's & Discord. WHAT: Digitigrade Fullsuit - Head, Hands, Tail, Bodysuit, Outdoor Footpaws and Indoor Sockpaws WHEN: Initial contact on August 22nd, 2017. Paid in full on Septeber 02, 2017. Initial suspicion that things were not progressing as planned began in June 2018, especially moving into July 2018. EXPLAIN: I commissioned Faris after seeing her gallery on FA and seeing a couple suiters at Megaplex 2017 wearing her suits. Initial contact was good, and she was pretty responsive to messages. I was assured that Megaplex 2018 was more than enough time to complete this order, and told that paying in full sooner would assure me an even higher place in the queue. (1) After I paid communication began to go south. There were days, even weeks in between responses in gmail. Faris claimed several times that messages were not arriving from me, or that she had sent something I had not received. I thought this odd, but we agreed to move off-site for communication to Twitter DMs, and shortly thereafter to Discord. Communication problems continued throughout the beginning of 2018, although I always (eventually) received a response after prodding her several times. I was given a "100% guaranteed" completion of the suit by July of 2018. After this passed she told me she been handling her Anthrocon rush, but I would definitely have a fullsuit in time for Megaplex. On June 04 I was promised WIPs "this week" which never materialized until July 22nd, after a LOT of prodding, multiple failed promises of delivery on various dates and times, and eventually having to get pretty harsh with her and threatening chargebacks/legal action. As this date drew nearer with no updates - despite me asking several times - things definitely started to seem amiss. The bodysuit turned into a maybe, but the partial was "100% guaranteed." I did receive photos of a completed head, hands, and tail, and a tracking number only hours before she had to get it shipped out. I paid a premium for Priority Express shipping, but had no updates on tracking past "Pre-Shipment" until I left for the convention on August 02, 2018. (2 - collage of missed deadlines) After I got back from the con I dove into this with Faris, trying to figure out what happened. After an excessive amount of prodding I finally got a screenshot proving she had actually purchased a label - for a Priority package only, that wasn't destined to arrive at my location until August 02. I called her out on it and she had an extremely implausible excuse - I decided it was best to move on from that since I was still out over $2000 at this point with nothing to show for it, the shipping costs only being a fraction of it. (4, 5) During August and September I brought up numerous complaints from other customers to her. They were always "lying" or "not telling the whole story," or "out to ruin her," but she was never at fault for any of it, according to her. On the 31st things came to a head and I had a discussion with her about the poor communication, repeated failures to deliver WIPs as promised, and other issues. I gave her a 30-day ultimatum - if I had nothing in hand by September 30th, I would be moving on to expecting a refund - voluntary or otherwise. I made it very clear then, and at several other points throughout September, that chargebacks and small claims court were absolutely on the table. In the meantime I attempted to treat the unshipped package as a USPS issue, although I'd never heard of the USPS losing a Priority package without so much as an acceptance scan - it seemed extremely implausible. I did almost all of the legwork to initiate claims/seaches with the USPS, including talking to my local office on September 4th. My postmaster wanted to talk to Faris. Faris told me on September 6th that she had called in and given him all the info he requested. I called back on the 7th to verify as I was at a point where I was no longer able to take Faris' word for granted. My postmaster remembered specific details of my conversation with him on the 4th, but had no memory of talking to anybody about the case on the 6th, just a day before. After confronting Faris about this I was basically just given the same story: she had really called. My postmaster said they get at most 5-6 calls a day and that he definitely would have remembered a call about that. (3) I had no choice but to just move on from this point. Dealing with the original package and the constant delays and excuses over the bodysuit was taking a lot of energy from me. On the 22nd of September she was still claiming "100% guarantee" of delivery by month's end. I was also told on this day that the only thing remaining was to sew the front and back together, and sew in the padding. On the 25th she told me she may have to work out Friday shipping with her. I let her know I was not happy about this but as long as I had a tracking number that showed movement before the 30th (an acceptance scan or more) I would consider that acceptable. On the 30th was my last message from her - she contacted me to let me know the back had to be sewn together, and then the front and back had to be sewn together. Somehow in the span of eight days /backwards/ progress had been made, according to her. I was told proof would be sent later that day and that she would be willing to work with me on a refund. I told her that a refund would be best. I contacted her again Monday morning, Monday afternoon, and Tuesday morning to let her know I was expecting her to work with me on setting up a refund, and that Tuesday afternoon was her last chance to get in touch with me. While I normally would allow more time than this for a response, her past track record with communication and near countless other clients waiting on suits, partials, and premades from her, I decided it was best to move on to legal options. At the current time I have a claim in progress with PayPal for a payment made for shipping & indoor sockpaws, and a chargeback with Discover for 50% of the commission price (she has a chance to attempt to refute both of these, currently). The other 50% was unfortunately paid via my PayPal balance which I have no easy recourse to outside of small claims court. Currently I have started that process and am awaiting small claims papers to be mailed to me. I will update this posting as more happens. I just felt it prudent to warn people that Faris is not a trustworthy person to work with. I don't believe she does anything maliciously - she's not trying to run a scam, but she is disorganized and doesn't have the integrity to tell her clients the truth when she gets behind or misses a deadline. For the most part she was polite and pleasant to talk to - but ultimately, I paid a four-digit sum of money for a product that never arrived, with suspiciously similar circumstances to multiple other clients of hers. I would feel remiss if I did not do my part to warn others in the community to avoid making the mistake I did. ~ 06 October 2018: I submitted a claim to the USPS earlier in September regarding the supposedly lost package. An initial payout was approved of $60.15. I thought that an odd number, so I appealed (Faris insisted she had purchased insurance for it, but never procured it when asked). Today I got a letter back with the results of the appeal — it was again denied, and as requested, they explained the $60.15 payout. No additional insurance was purchased to cover the value of the item at time of mailing. The baked-in insurance is $50 plus the amount of postage — meaning she spent $10.15 on the label for this, after I had sent her $107.30 for Priority Express. (6, 7) Faris made no mention of this when I confronted her with this evidence (I already knew she had spent less to do Priority vs Priority Express, via evidence she sent me, I just didn't know the actual amount). She is still insisting she purchased insurance, however, she says she doesn't have a receipt or any other evidence to prove it. She did say she was going to start making regular repayments later this month. At the current time she still owes me $839.85, pending the PayPal chargeback cases resolving in my favor. I am not holding her responsible for the $60.15 the USPS paid me. ~ 18 October 2018: Since posting this I've gotten in contact with multiple other people dealing with undelivered fursuits from Faris, conflicting stories and accounts, etc. I have evidence that Faris submitted, as approval images, the exact same fursuit parts for both hands and feet for both me and another client — and in the case of the hands, she even sent us both the EXACT same image, down to the pixel. See images 8 & 9. PROOF: https://imgur.com/a/uu8eRgf (1) https://imgur.com/BKYiNx9 (2) https://imgur.com/dqEMLK9 (3) https://imgur.com/xp2wZSl (4) https://imgur.com/TwD8QyU (5) https://imgur.com/6ToDOrQ (6) https://imgur.com/j1W8bPy (7) https://imgur.com/8CHFShz (8) https://imgur.com/1yzI5vc (9) https://imgur.com/RAxem7q ~ 01 November 2018: Faris has sent a small repayment toward the total amount she owes me. She says she is planning to make monthly payments until the debt is paid off. 01 December 2018: Next refund payment has been made.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/977067.html Who: Mithacal Creatures - Alaska business license 1052001 Twitter: @Mithacal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mithacalcreatures/ Website: https://www.mithacal.com/ FurBuy username: MithacalCreatures FurAffinity:http://www.furaffinity.net/user/Mitha/ Where: Furbid Auction - https://www.furbuy.com/auctions/1092553.html What: Fursuit head commission, won at auction. The auction was won for $575, and the agreed-upon price after enhancements, modifications, and shipping was $905. Custom features were to include custom eye cuts for better vision, whiskers, and a silicone nose. When: The auction was won on February 14, 2017, and lists a completion time of 5 weeks after full payment is received. Full payment was made on February 17, 2017, after some initial communication difficulties. Delivery of the head was delayed repeatedly. On July 12, after a disagreement about what features were included in the increased price, Mitha offered a full refund, then asked for a legal agreement to be signed as a pre-requisite for the refund. On July 13, Mitha refused to honor that offer, and said that only a 50% refund would be available. On July 17, after I had requested several days to decide what to do (which was also over a weekend), Mitha stated that she would be giving me a 50% refund in 14 days whether I wanted it or not. At that point, I filed a credit card dispute, which was resolved in my favor in September. Explanation & Evidence: The commission got off to a rough start when Mitha didn’t get my emails, but that’s on me. Eventually we made contact via Twitter, which is where we would do all of our subsequent communication. I sent Mitha a long explanation, including a web page with references and desired features. Screenshot 1 Mitha agreed to this, saying that she could “do everything I wanted” on my reference page. Screenshot 2 The features added $280 to the price of the head, which made the total with shipping $905. Screenshot 3 Payment was made immediately via credit card on her website, http://www.mithacal.com. Screenshot 4 Some additional discussion about fur kinds and colors followed, since I wanted to try making a body suit for the head and wanted to coordinate on the fur we were using. At the end of the discussion, I mentioned her move, something that she had been talking about on Twitter. No mention was made of it impacting the deadline. Screenshot 5 One month later, I check in. No progress, and we talk about fur choices, but don’t exit the conversation with an unambiguous decision. Screenshot 6 Another month goes by with no communication. It’s now April 23rd, with no WIPs. I check in again. Apparently Mitha thought that she was still waiting on fur choices, and after getting the go-ahead to use whatever she wanted, says that she’ll finish up the mask and will have updates in a week. Screenshot 7 At the time, she also asks me what color eyes I want. LED eyes weren’t part of my request list, but I had thought they were just something standard she did. Her last message says she needs to wait for them, but had said just before that she’d report progress in a week. Screenshot 7_1 Another month goes by, and it’s now May 30th. I have not yet heard anything from Mitha without me prompting her. She says she’s still waiting on the eyes from DVC. Screenshot 8 Amazingly, the eyes come in the same day! Or so she says. She also now says it will be another few weeks before there’s any progress to see. Screenshot 9 Screenshot 10 June 13th, and I finally get a communication from her asking me to choose eye backgrounds, and to say that the head is still a couple of weeks away from completion. Screenshot 11 June 21st , and I message her again for a status update, and to let her know that I was going to be out of town from July 1 – 10. She indicates that she’ll have the head shipped so that it arrives around July 10th. Screenshot 12 Screenshot 13 July 11th, and I haven’t heard anything from her, so I ping her again. Apparently there’s been a delay due to her wedding and honeymoon, which she didn’t mention anything about. I congratulate her, and ask for some WIPs, especially of the tear duct modifications. This is where things start to go very wrong. Screenshot 14 Mitha claims she never agreed to the modifications. I ask where she said that, because the last message I got from her about it, before I paid, was that it wouldn’t be a problem. She says she sent something saying she wasn’t capable of that kind of modification, and offers a refund if that’s a problem. I ask again to just point me where she said that, and after 24 hours of no response, I’m pretty fed up with the whole deal and agree to the refund. Screenshot 15 Mitha goes off, but agrees to the full refund. Fine, I just want to be done with this; I’ve seen scant evidence that my commission was even being worked on (nothing other than the eye backgrounds), and we’re now 5 months into what was promised in 5 weeks. Screenshot 16 And now things get really weird. Mitha wants me to sign some kind of contract – I was guessing a non-disparagement agreement – as part of the refund. But, instead of sending me something to sign and review, she sends me a contract that she signed, between herself and her dog breeder, over some dispute that they had. Real names redacted below, but they weren't in what she sent me: Screenshot 17 One, sending me this unredacted was probably a violation of her agreement with her breeder. Two, it’s really odd to send somebody a legal agreement that isn’t actually ready to be signed, and is in fact between her and another party, with all of those details. Because I've had some experience with contracts and NDAs, I’m going to get a lawyer to look at any contract I’m being asked to sign. I’m not trying to be aggressive here, and in most business environments when you say you need a lawyer to look at a legal document, that’s a sign of being sane and prudent, not that you're making a legal threat. Screenshot 18 The whole thing has taken a turn for the strange, and I’m asking her for options. I feel she’s had a really poor record of communicating with me, so I’m trying to be proactive about communication and expectations. Asking for a mailing address for legal communications is pretty standard business practice, and signing a non-disparagement clause is a lot different than a regular commercial transaction. As a registered business in the state of Alaska, she has to have a publicly-available mailing address, and it can be found very easily online at the Alaska Chamber of Commerce website (https://www.commerce.alaska.gov/cbp/main), so I'm not sure why it would be a problem. Screenshot 19 And then Mitha changes her mind, says she won’t be giving me a full refund, that only a 50% refund is on the table, and accuses me of threatening legal action, apparently because I uttered the word ‘lawyer’, after she asked me to sign a legally-binding document. Screenshot 20 I want to take some time to think about this, because none of my options here are good: I can lose $450, or I can maybe get a head that doesn’t have the features that I wanted, from a maker that I no longer trust. Since this is already months late, I didn’t think a few extra days would be an issue, especially over a weekend. July 14 was a Friday, July 17 is a Monday. Mitha feels differently, and by Monday evening is saying that she will give me a 50% refund whether I like it or not. Screenshot 21 I’m still not clear on what’s going on – do I still have to sign a document of some kind, even for the 50% refund? I’m not sure, and I don’t want to make a decision until we can hash this out. Mitha doesn’t want to wait though, and just after midnight on Monday she decides she’s going to keep half the money and not send me anything, no matter what I want. After 5 months of me waiting for her, she’s definitely not going to wait for me. Screenshot 22 To me, and to the lawyer that I had review all of this, this is a breach of contract on her part. What she’s saying here, as evidenced by all the previous tweets, is mostly false. She offered the refund first, I just took her up on it. She asked me to sign a legal document, I just wanted to do it safely by having a lawyer look at the contract. At this point, I’m pretty upset. Screenshot 23 Screenshot 24 After her message on July 18th, and blocking me on Twitter, I filed a dispute with the credit card company to get my money back. I’d received nothing, no WIPs beyond the eye backdrop photos, no proof of work done, and no product, and was only going to get half of a refund after waiting 5 months for something that Mitha agreed to do but later decided she couldn't, or wouldn't. Finally, on July 30th, Mitha unblocked me long enough to tell me that she was going to sue me in small claims court. To date, Mitha hasn’t served me with anything for a lawsuit, and the credit card company finalized the chargeback in September, so I have 100% of my money back. As things go, this could have been worse, but I think Mitha is somebody to avoid doing business with.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/892163.html WHO: Jace Wallace / Wakkawa WHERE: http://jace-wallace.deviantart.com/ & http://wakkawa.tumblr.com/ WHAT: $150 digital painting commission WHEN: November 26th, 2014; sketch received and payment sent December 12th, 2014 PROOF: Initial order: http://i.imgur.com/8VBVvr0.png http://i.imgur.com/szyi0dE.png Proof of payment: http://i.imgur.com/QV4EzFw.png EXPLAIN: Well, it's finally time for the official A_B post. I asked for advice back in June, and since the situation is more or less "resolved", it's time for me to put it all together and post this as a warning to others. I commissioned Jace at the end of November in 2014, the same day he put his commission post up. He's an art idol of mine and I'd wanted art from him for ages, so I jumped on the opportunity. He always seemed very professional to me, so a $150 commission seemed like a good idea at the time. The original commission post said they would be finished by Christmas (2014), and he sent me the sketch WIP on December 12th. http://i.imgur.com/Jy4btWg.png The WIP at this time: http://i.imgur.com/Vs5UUDe.jpg At that time, he said his plan was to send out more WIPs that weekend and have them finished the next week. http://i.imgur.com/TpYsWTe.png After that message claiming that WIPS would be sent out that weekend, I didn't hear from him again. In fact, he seemingly disappeared from the Internet altogether. Not too strange, possibly, considering it was the holidays. However, he had made a firm promise of a deadline, and with the commission being $150, I was a bit more wary than I normally might have been. I let the Christmas deadline come and go, but on January 10th I noted him asking for updates: http://i.imgur.com/keQ7LmU.png As it is still, it went unread and unopened. I continued not to see any activity on DA, Tumblr, or anywhere else. I was getting worried, mostly due to the $150 amount and the fact that I have been burned before. Since I hadn't seen him open my note, I decided to email him in hopes of getting an answer that way, on January 24th 2015: http://i.imgur.com/rvEROmB.png And I never got a response to that either. On January 30th, I sent Jace an email and a note on deviantArt telling him that I would be opening a Paypal claim. http://i.imgur.com/dDiUr7J.png As I say in the message, it was mostly to get the money back in case he was unable to access the computer as I didn't want to let Paypal's claim window come and go. Even with Paypal's claim window having been increased to 180 days, I felt uncomfortable enough to do it at this time given his complete lack of responsiveness. Jace must have seen the claim, for he mysteriously reappeared just a few days after I opened the claim. I received the next WIP on February 2nd, 2015. I cancelled the Paypal claim at this time, despite the fact that he made absolutely no note of it or that he had even seen it. http://i.imgur.com/S3umDjv.png The WIP he sent at this time: http://i.imgur.com/ZTqd2N0.jpg It was quite off putting to me that he made no mention of the claim or the wait much at all. But, then again, I felt a bit bad for filing the claim in the first place -- especially with his reasoning of mental illness. I figured, since he had given me an updated WIP, he would have the piece done pretty quickly. My response to him is here: http://i.imgur.com/kiuiFpu.png which he never responded to either. More radio silence. I sent him a note on May 15th, 2015: http://i.imgur.com/8gJHWmT.png to which I got no response. (I do believe he opened/read this note.) The next time I heard from him was in June of 2015, strangely and conveniently after I sent him a note telling him that I would be contacting my bank about the money (given that Paypal's claim window had then passed for me, by a few days) and posting an Artists Beware post about the situation. http://i.imgur.com/RXa81Ov.png (He was still active on tumblr during this time.) His response, with a slightly updated WIP: http://i.imgur.com/fwz0yd0.png The WIP at this stage: http://i.imgur.com/UHguQJN.jpg This was when I posted asking for advice on A_B. I was mostly just pleased to actually have him RESPONDING to me again, and at this point I assumed that if I went ahead and posted the A_B on him right then, I would NEVER get the piece. So I tried to get him to agree to a deadline. He then agreed to have the piece finished by the end of July, 2015. http://i.imgur.com/aIMFmDP.png http://i.imgur.com/YVLH7OX.png So, another month and it would be done. Obviously, that came and went. Surprisingly, he took the initiative to note me on his own on August 1st, telling me that his tablet had broken. (I had already seen him post about it on his Tumblr, which he was continuing to update regularly with paintings and posts.) Again, pleased that he was CONTACTING me and not ignoring me, I accepted his claim that he would have it done the next week. http://i.imgur.com/1Nk8ri2.png http://i.imgur.com/A3sUxI3.png Aaaand that didn't happen, either. He did not contact me again past that point, AT ALL. (I send him another note on September 3rd, 2015: http://i.imgur.com/BbhcdiY.png ) In fact, the only way I got him to contact me again was rather direct and annoying. On top of updating his Tumblr regularly while ignoring my messages, he had gotten into the habit of streaming quite regularly on his Twitch account. Sometimes games, sometimes painting personal works. I subscribed to the channel, and was receiving emails whenever he started streaming. At first I was just happy to see him working on something, and didn't interact with him. However, when he continued to ignore/"not see" my messages, I decided to bite the bullet and reach out to him during a Twitch stream. On October 25th, 2015, I entered his Twitch stream and inquired after my commission. He had his mic on, so I don't have a record of his responses, but here's the chat: http://i.imgur.com/jOrPowU.jpg Basically, he reassured me and told me a very long story about how he had gotten locked out of his DeviantART account AND the email account associated with it, so he hadn't been able to log in at all. He promised to email me after the stream. He sent me an email that night and he attached another WIP and claimed it was pretty much done, just needed to be cleaned up and tweaked. (Note: this was quite a small screenshot that didn't allow me to see closer details.) http://i.imgur.com/d7KZdbe.png My response: http://i.imgur.com/vW59uJl.png The WIP he sent at this stage: http://i.imgur.com/3kNQwSj.jpg And, again, that was the last I heard from him. I actually let him be for a while after that email, mostly due to how incredibly fed up I was at this point. Plus, he said it was close to being done, so I figured it wouldn't be long. Again, wrong. I emailed him on January 12th (3-4 months later) asking if he had any updates on the piece or on his situation. http://i.imgur.com/Lr2bYa6.png I got no response. He continued to be active on Tumblr, quite regularly posting text posts and art. So, on January 27th, I emailed him. http://i.imgur.com/1uUNoke.png Of course, I do realize asking for a refund at this point may seem out of line to some, but like I say in the email I figured it would be the easiest way to resolve it. I didn't want to wait around forever to get the finished piece and would have been satisfied with the file as-is and a partial refund, even 10% of 25%, ANYTHING so that I could FINALLY take it off my list and forget about the heartache. On January 28th, 2016, he emailed me and claimed the piece he had sent in October was the finished piece, minus the rendering of one hand. He then claimed he would send me the finished file as soon as he smoothed out the hand. As well as a quite P.A. comment about the fact that if this had been for a freelancing company, it would have cost me $2000. http://i.imgur.com/V2OP8si.png Half an hour later, he sent me the .psd of the 'finished piece'. It is almost entirely unchanged from the screenshot from October. And, to my dismay, it's quite rough and not as refined as the sample piece he used for his commission post. There's a part in one of the character's irises that bleeds into the eyelashes, really badly. The ear is a block of unrendered, unfinished painting. The male figure is very rough and untouched compared to the female figure. Overall, the entire thing is quite sketchy, quite unrefined, and quite unfinished -- when compared to his sample. At the very least, it is not what I would hope for after over a year of waiting for a $150 commission that had a much more refined example. Here is the final file he sent me: http://i.imgur.com/91E4qbU.png Note that it's barely changed (if at all) from the WIP from October. Over 3 months for that lack of work done on the piece. Here are some closeups of a few of the problem areas I identified: http://i.imgur.com/ePJmE2v.png http://i.imgur.com/FRBDd1n.png Again, here is the image he used in his commission post: http://i.imgur.com/t0PaIRP.jpg As it is, this situation is "resolved". I'm NOT happy with the piece, but I sincerely doubt he will ever give me any partial refund (the piece is, after all, 'finished' according to him) and I don't care to see how long it would take him to refine the piece more (I'd prefer not to wait another full year, really). And while I feel the end result is not in line with what he was offering, my complaint is about his unprofessionalism rather than the art itself. Art is subjective, and though I may not be happy with the piece, it is "finished" in his eyes. My gripe is his refusal to keep in touch, the constant ignoring of my messages, and the continuously broken deadlines. In the end, this is a beware to all other artists and commissioners out there. Do not commission Jace Wallace. I have no clue if he plans to ever open commissions again, but if he does, it's not worth it. This is hands down the most frustrating experience I have ever had with an artist. It's not even the year+ wait that bothers me -- I've waited that long before, I'll wait that long again. But EVERY time I attempted to contact him, I was ignored, unless I had made a direct claim that I would be pursuing action against him, or I approached him directly IN PUBLIC. (There were a few times when I commented on his submissions on DA or profile on DA, but he has hidden the comments at this point.) He set deadlines, and then he broke them with nary a word. He made excuses, avoided contact, and continued to be active on Tumblr regardless of the owed work. At least with other artists I've had this problem with, they disappeared entirely. With Jace, he was still active on Tumblr almost this entire time, just deliberately ignoring my messages on DA, Tumblr (where he was active, WHILE HE WAS ACTIVE) and via email. In the end, I feel disrespected, insulted, and disappointed - and I don't want anyone else to go through the same situation. EDIT: The final email he sent to me, after I submitted this A_B post and informed him I would be doing so.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/881485.html Who: Inu-Jean Where: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/inu-jean/ What: Digital art, two characters, finished here http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18266800/ (NSFW) When: Payment sent November 14, 2014 and image was completed on November 16, 2015 Proof: Payment sent and received: http://imgur.com/vZclyFF First Concern raised: http://imgur.com/tK7BMWt Second Concern: http://imgur.com/ULUzpNi WIP ask not responded to: http://imgur.com/sYuQBbv Major Concerns raised: http://imgur.com/nL9iJ6S Artist's Update Journal: http://imgur.com/tGtnutU WIP Promised: http://imgur.com/Jg9bLQc Removed from queue: http://imgur.com/VZx6C0o Art Stream discussed: http://imgur.com/sXO0kdj Very major concerns: http://imgur.com/vlKFaEc Responded to with a WIP: http://imgur.com/Ky09ACZ Explain: I would first like to say that I hold no ill will towards the artist, nor is this made in any way to defame or try to beat down on him. His work is phenomenal, but both I and my friend (who has had several great experiences with commissioning this artist in the past) feel it’s important for people who may want to commission this particular artist in the future to know that there may be issues during the process. Neither of us believe any bad intentions were made on the artist’s part, but things certainly spiraled nearly out of control and became an almost perfect storm of stuff gone wrong in the commissioning process. However, art was finally delivered, and done so to both my and my fellow commissioner’s satisfaction. I have to admit, I do feel a bit uncomfortable posting this, but after learning that my fellow commisioner shared a similar situation to another commssioner during the same time frame, I think it's important that I do so. A friend of mine (Alex in the screenshots) and I contacted Inu-Jean for a 2-character commission in November of 2014. Specifics of the commission were worked out over the course of the following few days. We were a ways down from the images he was working on and knew there would be a decent wait involved, which did not bother us. However, the months went by, not a single update was given regarding progress until a (now deleted) update journal was posted to FA in late April announcing that the artist was taking on another batch of commissions. Concerned, my fellow commissioner messaged the artist regarding this, but he did not respond until being messaged once more several weeks later... Radio silence continues until June. A WIP is requested and the artist states he will try to get something done by the coming Monday, but no progress is made and no further updates given. I asked if WIP progress was made on Tuesday, but was not replied to. Radio silence continues until August when I write a fairly lengthy message to the artist, and he does post a proper update journal to FA. After this point, a public queue is posted, and visible work does begin on those above us in the queue, and everything appears to be on track and going well. However, during this time, the artist took on another batch of commissions, opened for a YCH, and began working heavily on Patreon reward art. A WIP is promised, and not delivered. Another almost 2 weeks goes by, we’re removed from the queue, and other work begins on art from the new queue. Concerns are expressed. Patreon art, the YCH, and later accepted commissions are worked on and posted. A brief art stream occurs where progress finally begins, albeit only for a brief amount of time due to unruly, very crude, comments from unruly members of the stream audience that did not stop for some time despite prompting from the artist, myself, and other members of the stream audience. This causes the artist to become frustrated and stop working. This last part is completely understandable given the circumstances, but did serve as a roadblock for further progress. Several more weeks pass with yet more art from Patreon or commission work from later batches is completed and posted, and the artist opens for yet another batch of commissions. Growing frustrated, my friend and I decided it’s best to express our concerns to the artist once more. Difficult working hours on the artist’s part are discussed, and are certainly understandable (2 am to 10 am. Yikes!), but the lengthy amount of time passed and lack of communication during the past year had made the situation less understandable. A WIP is posted in response. Work continues throughout the week, but after the expression of major concerns and a very brief discussion of difficulties, responses are curt, if present at all. Requests for minor changes are not acknowledged verbally, but are put in place in following WIPs. Finally, the finished artwork is delivered.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/992137.html WHO: Uriko44 WHERE: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/uriko44/ WHAT: Traditional Badge with Holographic Overlay https://www.dropbox.com/s/g231lznmaj02hfi/pe.png?dl=0 Finished Product before lamination WHEN: March 30th - April 19th EXPLAIN: Around March 30th Uriko44 opened for $20 USD Traditional Chibi Badges with optional holographic overlay. Myself (and a friend of mine) bought the chibi plushie badges. With quick excitement the arrangement was made and everything went fine. Payment: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f449aproox3qhc0/%23payment.png?dl=0 My email is unhidden because it is public knowledge. I do not mind it being there. I do not have the details of the transaction occurring due to a personal issue and deleting everything. However, I did receive a digital copy of my work completed before that and had approved the image as the image itself is not an issue. In fact, I deeply love the image (link 1). Once I received the badge in the mail I was to preoccupied with personal life so it took me a few days to be able to actually look it over. At this time I hadn't been online and disabled my main account to keep myself from going on and stressing myself. I noticed there were two (animal) hairs in the lamination. One near the front-most ear and on her dress (link 2 and link 3). So, I logged into my OLD account and proceeded to message them at my earliest convenience that I have received the badge but displeased with the fact there was two hairs inside my badge that were noticeable to the point of unable to enjoy my badge (link 4). They asked to see the images which I happily obliged. An issue occurred and imgur didn't want to link the two images together to be sent. There I sent them separately for them to be able to see (link 5). They acknowledge the first hair and apologized for it. However, what next threw me for a loop. They only offered a $4 USD refund or a $5 OFF next commission purchase. I was shocked and a bit almost upset as I didn't want a refund or a discount. Just wanted my badge fixed (link 6). I sent another image with the second hair with a zoom (link 7). So, understanding that markers cost money I offered with a bit more of a discount to have them just re-draw the image or if they could re-do the lamination. I wasn't expecting anything free just a bit more in the way of compensation for artist error this can be seen in link 6 of our discussion. Instead they tell me that they cannot offer more and I have the scanned version and just to print it out myself and links of this discussion can be seen in link 6 and link 7 as well. I don't own a printer and if I printed it out I would have to pay for it via a store. I explained to them that not only would it cost me money to print it out but to laminate it. As well I wouldn't be able to get the holographic version as I do not have the means to do so. That a $4 refund was not enough for damages made to my card. As well the quality of a print out version was not what I paid $22 dollars for. I made it a note that I feel this is not fair to me (link 8). Their reply was more that beware worthy on my end. They told me I have the artwork (ruined by animal hair, mind you) and the digital file. That my $22 paid was enough to cover that and to be happy as it was a good deal. As well they just blew me off and says just not to work with them again. They also made a comment of "feel free to do the work I had to do to find the overlay and make the work to your own standards" (link 8). I was devastated and with that attitude I felt they were not going to give me any sort of compensation. Luckily, I was able to go to paypal and force a partial refund of $8 USD as my friend told me I should have pushed for half all I wanted was my picture redone. This was never about the money and in fact I offered more just to have it fixed properly. Their TOS before my commission: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qhfjdvtpzbo5ds/ToS.jpg?dl=0 Their TOS after my refund: https://www.dropbox.com/s/suq18feeojhlqnv/%235.png?dl=0 However, this is a "resolved" post as the refund was given to me by Uriko44 after filing a dispute. https://www.dropbox.com/s/fi19x0qgua3ldgq/photo_2018-04-19_11-03-03.jpg?dl=0 PROOF: Link 1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26943017/ My friend's is the one with a Sesshomaru plushie. Link 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ctcr0xclls562q/4RNbzjJ.jpg?dl=0 Link 3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/68uwajc0t2vxltv/pZ2fKFw.jpg?dl=0 Link 4: https://www.dropbox.com/s/97k4l5q0cbyk94i/%231.png?dl=0 Link 5: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wkvaykv2w3d552a/%232.png?dl=0 Link 6: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwa271t0nl7iqka/%233.png?dl=0 Link 7: https://www.dropbox.com/s/47p9h1nnxy0gwez/vrjd3BW.jpg?dl=0 Link 8: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwcbxyttsk8yblb/%234.png?dl=0

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/985962.html (Update at 7th Jan 2019 for 21st April 2018: See Below) WHO: Faris Batwan / Fuzzy Bat Suits WHERE: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/farisbatwan/ / http://www.furaffinity.net/user/fbsuits/ / https://www.facebook.com/pg/fuzzybatsuits/posts/?ref=page_internal WHAT: Partial fursuit / paws (Initial payment $975, been refunded $350, $300, $186 ($139 remaining)) WHEN: Starting March 8th 2017 – Still ongoing as of 28th February 2018 EXPLAIN: Everything was fine to begin with as was usually the case. I ordered a pre-made head that came with a tail and custom paws, the maker was very eager for the sale and replied very quickly on FA notes until I payed via PayPal. [FA Notes screenshot] A couple of days later something happened in my personal life that meant I had a large bill to pay for, as things hadn’t been shipped yet and I hadn’t been told that the paws had started being made or received other notes so I tried to cancel the order. To which I didn’t receive a response for another few days, and was ultimately told that they had spent all of the money on new equipment as soon as they received it and don’t have any money to refund me. [FA Notes screenshots] We went back and forth in notes a few times before I was told that the paws couldn’t be refunded since they were custom and so was the tail, even though the tail was in the listing to begin with and there had been no photos of the paws sent to me to show they have been completed. [Telegram screenshots] I reminded them the tail was from stock and therefore not bespoke to me and then I still had the paws sent out to me since the quality of their work seemed excellent. There were no photos taken of paws that were sent to me at all, additionally I was told that they had been sent by priority mail. [Telegram screenshots] Up to this point I had been told a few times that they were having bad weather pretty much seemed to be on a daily basis that didn’t allow them to check emails/telegram/notes etc. I had also been told to contact them on Telegram as it was their preferred method and then after not replying to me for a long time they said they preferred email and would definitely respond within 48 hours which they didn’t unless it affected them monetarily later on in the year. [Telegram screenshots] I originally bought the partial, and ultimately just the paws, for CFZ17, but they never showed even after the delivery time frame was weeks in the past, remember it was supposed to be priority mail. I asked the maker to contact the delivery company about it and the maker waited weeks until they eventually did and told me that we had to wait until half way through July before a claim could be made for a lost parcel. [Telegram screenshots] July came and went after I sent a number of messages to no response, which is around about the time they changed their mind and said to email them since they no longer like Telegram. Time passes and I still hadn’t received a response from the maker so I filed a PayPal case on them since they wouldn’t refund me or respond to me after numerous attempts to reach out to them. [Telegram screenshots] I had an message effectively calling me a scammer and saying I was damaging the business and she couldn’t pay me anyways even if I won the case [Telegram screenshots] After a few messages they eventually agreed to pay part of the money owed to me, but not the full amount. [Telegram screenshots] I was however promised once more that they were going to sell some pre-made heads to be able to refund me the final amount due to me. [Gmail screenshots] The last communication I had was in November from the maker with no final refund or communication, I contacted them again in the new year at the start of February and also got no response. [ Gmail screenshots] Apologies for the length of this post and any incidental errors, it has been ongoing for a year now. PROOF: FA Notes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgo77onymfvhmwx/FA Notes Screenshots.png?dl=0 Telegram : https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1rldas9khzz0nx/Telegram Part 1.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/nj8fq4iakomlbdd/Telegram Part 2.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/sa5lvtq0kxud0ev/Telegram Part 3.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/2dozgo95j38b3mx/Telegram Part 4.png?dl=0 Payment Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kwt966haw4l53by/Payment Screenshots.png?dl=0 Gmail: Update 7th Jan 2019, overdue from 21st April 2018 Faris got in touch with me on 21/04/18 via email apologizing and stating she will issue a refund for the remainder when she can. I replied simply that I would like to be able to mark it as resolved and to let me know when she could refund the final amount. As of 7th Jan 2019 I have not heard anything further. Tired of ads? Upgrade to account with Professional

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/985732.html WHO: Corganda/Cori/Lei WHERE: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/corganda/ (also has http://www.furaffinity.net/user/lei http://www.furaffinity.net/user/corisketches and http://www.furaffinity.net/user/corcomics ) WHAT: Digital artwork WHEN: Initial date May 9th, 2015 02:11 PM, possibly before that. Is currently close to three years in waiting for longest owed pieces. EXPLAIN: Started with hosting YCH involving own character and drawn by artist. Artist provided initial cover image and sketch of updated cover image. Since then, have commissioned multiple pieces but have had minimal to no work done on them. Has reached over two years and no actual old owed pieces have been worked on. Artist has continued taking commissions for rent/bills/etc. and has made next to no effort in actually finishing owed work to artists. Have several specific regular customers that often pay up and get priority before other work is done. Artist does not allow any customer to view their Trello schedule ever, has not given any proper personal notification about delays (constantly posts “sympathy” journals on Fur Affinity) and has partner/manager respond to enquiries in rude and sometimes disrespectful means. Has REPEATEDLY stated they are not doing any comic-style commissions until queue is caught up to date, but has constantly done comic pages and is currently selling comic-style commissions. Manager/partner Nikki is the worst part of this. Her attitude towards customers has been atrocious. Has accused me of threatening them, not understanding their situation when I have made it abundantly clear that I have been tolerant and understanding. Accused me of doing “things” the past month when all I have done is contacted them about updates, owed work lists and even just any promise on having things sorted. PROOF: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16500320/ - initial YCH comic piece with starting date of concern. NSFW WARNING https://i.imgur.com/B2xNiV5.png - Payment for YCH. (Since my character was the main one my cost was higher than the slots) https://i.imgur.com/IcG8H3l.png - email proof about artist “halting” on comic commissions. https://i.imgur.com/kSMKGwK.png - email sent requesting fix to my owed commissions and their “detailed” response (follow up email I sent given the fact they gave no care to respond properly like an artist or manager should - https://i.imgur.com/LhbxWPD.png ) https://i.imgur.com/V9Oi4hh.png - email received after above. Often has accused me of not “caring” or being “understanding” when I have expressed multiple times in various platforms (Discord/Skype/Telegram) about having concerns for their living conditions. Will also point out they’re assuming I’m threatening them in any sort of way, when all I’ve been asking is updates and actual discussion to rectify the issue. https://i.imgur.com/eHXQi9n.png - email sent asking for list of owed commissions. Apparently it takes time to find information and send it in an email. https://i.imgur.com/UtCKRIl.png - discord request about work on owed YCH comic piece. Was never informed of any part – schedule placement or stream date. Have never been able to determine placement on their work schedule because it is disabled to public viewing. https://i.imgur.com/4UnmBH6.png - Most recent email response. All I have done is try and get any sort of update on the progress which has never even happened, accused of “dumping” them because I have been getting artwork from other artists like a normal customer and not being in streams. Sadly am unable to provide any further evidence. Email logs do not provide as much, unable to gather information from Skype due to the conversation being wiped through updates and Discord information does not go back far enough. SUMMATION: This artist was a very trusted person to me. The fact they have constantly sunk themselves into a continuously expanding hole of financial issues and RL issues has put their work on the biggest of declines – and yet they still keep taking commissions. AVOID THIS ARTIST PLEASE. Spare yourself from what I and so many others are currently dealing with. RECENT UPDATES 1st March 2018 · Feb. 28th, 2018 at 1:16 PM Initial time and date of the Artist Beware post being uploaded. I am making a mention of this because of the following that has transcribed since: https://i.imgur.com/OkOXfNo.png - Corganda’s Manager emailing me with an “apology” half an hour after the Artist Beware went live. https://i.imgur.com/nd5Buwz.png - Roughly eleven hours later a follow-up email was sent to me. Manager has continued “apologizing” and wanting to discuss correcting things. At this point I am fully aware they have seen the Artist Beware, and are now trying to bait me into taking it down. https://i.imgur.com/ofCaQsj.png?1 - Note on FurAffinity from Manager again (using the artist’s account I might add), with a word-for-word copy of the above email with an additional bit of text. Very pathetic they resorted to this. https://i.imgur.com/KisRRfR.png - Roughly three hours later the manager sends ANOTHER email. This was sent while I was sleeping, and conveniently I knew I had to check my emails and I expected another one to be sent by them. At this point I’d like to also share the following: https://i.imgur.com/l0P93bC.png?1 - Journal the artist made after deleting a giant long-winded “apology” about the delays, changes to the account, and that they will be emailing waiting customers to discuss the backlog. And finally, what I also woke up to seeing (time being roughly 8am): https://i.imgur.com/zQbwAcD.png - The artist streaming as of right now. PLEASE NOTE – the pink fursona in the Stream thumbnail is mine. The artwork in question they are drawing is the actual YCH comic. This is entirely a ruse to bait me into interacting with them and taking down this post. https://i.imgur.com/GjVOBsP.png - Proof in-stream that they are deliberately working on my owed items as means of baiting me. NSFW WARNING JUST IN CASE. https://i.imgur.com/M2aRl0Q.png - They have sent me a note on fA with a link to the WIP of the initial comic. (Most recent addition to update, WIP upload has since been deleted.) I am fully aware they have been alerted to this, given the rapid nature of their emails. I have updated this because this sudden burst of communication is leaning heavily towards harassment. Any further updates I receive will be added onto this entry. UPDATE: 2nd March 2018 https://i.imgur.com/Jcdlqv8.png — I have begun to contact and inform the four winners of changes that are upcoming, regarding this issue. From the WIP that was posted and then taken down, only one of the winners seemed to have more visual representation in the comic, whereas the others were drawn as simply floating genitals and a small chibi emotive headshot. Everything about the WIP has shown that the original idea was in fact disregarded, and this was designed as a means to not only "complete" the overdue commission, but to do so in a manner that violated the original agreement set in stone and went against what was the original concept. After conferring with a trusted friend over this matter, I have sent a final email to the artist. https://i.imgur.com/Q9eIcz1.png UPDATE: 4th March 2018 While I stipulated previously I would consider the matter closed, and would post a final update when the full refund was received, unfortunately that has not been the case just yet. https://i.imgur.com/jjhjhcf.png This is the response to my previous email. Immediately, this has thrown red flags in my face, and honestly a slap of disrespect yet again. Going by the format of the email, I can only assume the manager has sent this reply. It happens to be set out in previous email formats by her. Firstly, the fact they had the audacity to create an incorrect WIP in the first place, upload it, and THEN take it down because it was "to be done in the original terms" is pathetic. If they had any intention of actually sticking to the original terms, they wouldn't have MADE an incorrect WIP, let alone publicly upload it. I have replied with the initial payment due, and this will soon be closed on the matter. There will be a final update when the refund has been completed. Tired of ads? Upgrade to account with Professional p

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/974901.html Where: Furaffinity.net/user/sharpe19 What: Premade head, to be upgraded with a matching tail. When: September 2016 Explain: Sharpe was taking offers on this premade suit nicknamed at the time Alchemy https://imgur.com/fdz80W1. Sharpe did make it known that a new hood (neck/ears) would be made for the winner which I thought was too cool to pass up. I sent them an email private offer of 1800 with the request of a payment plan on 9/19/2016 https://imgur.com/6n2vueu.This was the highest bid at that time, and the payment plan was welcomed! I also inquired about a design (this is prior to being the “chosen” buyer) which Sharpe seemed intrigued by. She asked if a deposit of 800 would be doable https://imgur.com/BCS4ls6 and that my offer is very interesting to her. At this time, I also asked if at this or a future time she would be willing to make me a tail and maybe hands/feet as well for extra funds of course. She agreed to a tail and to possibly add crystals as well! By this time, I was notified that I WAS the buyer (I’m not sure where that message is... I literally don’t have an email or a FA note so weird) and asked for her Paypal to send the first part of my deposit https://imgur.com/ryQN3in. By now I had made my first deposit payment of 600 and was going to get the remainder the following day. I was waiting on Paypal to clear funds of a sale of mine to finish my deposit to Sharpe https://imgur.com/DyhGIzK and was able to put the remaining 200 down on September 30th Some time passed (about a month) and I had sent another 750 to Sharpe while awaiting my first check from my new job https://imgur.com/HlCaOS3. NOW all was going extremely smoothly Sharpe was very quick to respond and lovely to work with. I had 0 issues with communication. I’m going to switch from email to FA notes as I was assuming photos would be uploaded to FA instead of sent via EMAIL (what my previous makers have done in the past). I let a few months go past, I was off FA for a small break, but decided to send a poke her way to see where we were at with the commission https://imgur.com/Qy5NYzz. Now this is about 6 months after the payments were made. I know sometimes life gets busy and I am VERY flexible when people are up front to me with what’s going on… but this response was honestly a little awkward for me https://imgur.com/opSPYdv it appeared she literally had no idea who I was. NOW that being said our primary form of communication was through email, and I’m not sure how others work but for me I document peoples Emails/FA/DA/FB whatever methods of communication I can just so I can keep in touch. But I brushed it off as just simple confusion as to who I was! It happens. https://imgur.com/r0J7p5B this is just me clearing up which commission I was and getting a few verbal updates. Sounds like the Hood didn’t turn out as well and needed to be redone-reworked before progressing. Sure no problem! Quality over speed in my opinion! https://imgur.com/DaoaH0p first talk of getting some updates. They never came but that’s ok life gets busy I suppose. Now were onto June of 2017 where I again asked if we had any updates https://imgur.com/1SGuIdv to which I was responded with a note that seemed promising and that work was almost complete (unless I’m reading into it wrong, to me it sounded like all it needed was airbrushing) https://imgur.com/JYUUm4S. This got me quite excited so I decided to let her work and try back later if she didn’t get back to me first. Well now were pushing the “Almost a year” mark and I am honestly starting to get antsy as I had conventions I was planning to wear this to and really didn’t expect it to take a full year to complete a hood replacement and a tail. https://imgur.com/mix1MqY I was a little confused by the response as I thought we were almost done with things and apparently it was just a first test run? Of the fur? https://imgur.com/1BtiaAr and at this point I had given up mentally that this project would get done. Sharpe was spending (I follow her on twitter) most of her time working on personal costumes/cosplays/projects and I felt like I was completely tossed on the backburner. This is when I asked a SECOND time (because she either ignored or didn’t read) for an estimated time of completion https://imgur.com/CisL4Jc.She said it would be Most likely August, but for sure before Halloween. Finally, a date set I can stop pestering her! https://imgur.com/Z5F4JO9 Well were officially at/past the one-year mark, august came and went and so I inquired one more time to be sure were on track for Halloween https://imgur.com/tyrNaxi to which they assured me we are https://imgur.com/HH4PmBV.To me, and please let me know if I’m wrong, I was under the assumption my suit would be IN HAND by Halloween when I asked if we were on track… Is that wrong of me to assume? Completed Payments https://imgur.com/AnCPEK6 So the original plan was 1800 but I did not complete my final payment of 250 dollars. I was holding on to it until the product had either photo proof, or completion proof or SOMETHING because I have been burned MORE than a handful of times. Well Halloween is tomorrow. I have 0 progress photos, proof of work, I literally have only her word. She messaged me asking for my address, however when I did ask for photos I was met with a really odd response of “Depending on how late you’re awake” https://imgur.com/wXg9Yilwhat?? What difference does it matter how late it is... why is it SO hard for Sharpe to provide me ANY proof of work?? At this point I just hope I can get my refund as I have ZERO desire for this character anymore. I’m not sure if it’s just my expectations or what but a year of waiting with no progress updates proof or anything really left a sour taste in my mouth. I’m a very patient person but I really feel like my commission was not taken seriously or professionally in the form of timelines/completion. It just seems like my commission didn’t/doesn’t matter and that I was only a quick paycheck for someone to use. As of 10/29/2017 I was relayed it would be shipping out "this weekend" (the weekend before halloween) however it was not, and I still have 0 photographic proof of ANY work. Sharpe is a really nice gal, super communicative and will respond very quickly. I just think her time management is lacking. Personal and new projects took priority over my paid commission. I just hope I can get my refund promptly. Beware is only warranted for lack of time management and prioritizing issues. She makes great work, and she’s very communicative. I missed out on every event I wanted to wear this piece to and actually ordered a new costume in the meantime as backup for Halloween as I had a feeling it again, wouldn’t be completed on time. I hope Sharpe steps up her game on her time management and prioritizing pieces. Update 11/8/2017: At this time Sharpe and I have agreed on a full refund, she will be selling the suit (this is the current listing link https://www.thedealersden.com/listing/alchemy/129915) and the profits will be coming to me. Im glad we could come to an agreement. I will update as soon as refund payments are made. Update: 11/16/2017: I have received the first payment of 450 dollars, with an agreement on a payment plan that will total just over 1300 dollars in a matter of 5 weeks. I am currently at work, and unable to get a screenshot but I will update this post promptly.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/940141.html WHO: Piranha.Petting.Zoo on Instagram | Karkass on Furry Amino WHERE: https://www.instagram.com/piranha.petting.zoo/ (set to Private now) & Furry Amino WHAT: Piranha.Petting.Zoo/Karkass has been has been tracing/altering my art for her Commissions and Trades on Instagram and Furry Amino. WHEN: 10/14/2016 – First post of stolen art on Instagram 01/25/2017 – I was first notified about her. 01/27/2017 – She finished removing my art and set her Instagram to private so only followers can view. PROOF: So sorry there are a lot of links to evidence, she used roughly 23 pieces of my art as either commissions, trades or claimed them as her own. I’ll be as concise and organized as I can. I did my best to censor the proper information but please let me know if I missed anything! *Please note at this time she has removed all of my art and made her Instagram private so I’ll be including screenshot links. I hope this will suffice.* Their Instagram Gallery at the time I first checked (my art is circled in red) Direct Link to their Commission Information that uses some of my altered work as examples Screenshot in case they pull link access to it Theirs | Mine(NSFW) Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs 1 & Theirs 2 | Mine 1 & Mine 2 Theirs | Mine Theirs 1 & Theirs 2 | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs 1 & Theirs 2 | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs 1 & Theirs 2 | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs | Mine Theirs 1 & Theirs 2 | Mine Their post with my art in their Commission Que on Furry Amino | Mine My Messages to Piranha.Petting.Zoo: 1st @ 7:25 PM CST 01/25/2017 2nd around 9:00 PM CST 01/25/2017 EXPLAIN: A kind user on Twitter brought it to my attention on Wednesday, 01/25/2017, that the user Piranha.Petting.Zoo on Instagram was using my art for her commissions and trades. As seen above she has altered numerous pieces of my art for her commissions, trades, and a couple personal pieces for herself. Even further, her Commission Information, that was previously linked on her Instagram, uses my altered art as her Feral Fully Body, Headshot, Bust and Anthro Full Body commission examples. There is also a post up on her Instagram where she talks about at least some of what she's made in commissions. Given I did not see much if any art that was possibly her own work, I doubt the money she's talking about having earned was done 100% through her own talent. LINK I will say, initially I wasn’t sure if I should try and post a Beware or not. After I collected evidence I decided to message her directly to ask her to remove my art immediately and stop using it for her commissions and trades. I felt maybe if we could resolve it privately it’d be for the better. She never responded to my messages directly, but while I was working on collecting direct links to her posted art I noticed I started to run into “Page Not Found” errors. Upon refreshing her gallery I noticed she had removed a little over half of the images in question. I felt this was possibly a good sign, since she started removing them within about 15-30 minutes of my first message to her. A little over half of the images in question were removed quickly, but for some reason she stopped with a few remaining. I figured I’d give her some additional time to get them removed, I didn't want to get too aggressive with her if I could avoid it, and who knows maybe she couldn't finish removing it all right then. In the meantime I started to see if I could find her anywhere else to make sure she wasn’t just removing the art from Instagram, but continuing to keep it up elsewhere. I asked a friend to see if he could locate her on Furry Amino, since the user who brought her to my attention had also mentioned she had originally been doing commissions and trades there (this was prior to seeing her comment about what she was making on commissions there). My friend had an account on the app already, so I asked if he could just double check for me to be safe. He was indeed able to locate her on the app, and informed me of some posts she had there which prompted me to sign up so I could check for myself. She is on Furry Amino under the username Karkass, and it seems she made a post there about 15-30 minutes after I had sent my first message as well. LINK Her comment about current commissioners made me curious to check her Queue, and she does appear to have at least 2 commissions listed currently. One of which may be using another piece of mine. LINK It was at this point I started to feel Karkass was not necessarily removing the art because she truly felt she had done wrong, but only because she'd been caught. Especially given she still seemed intent on finishing these last commissions with "the same style". So I sent one last message to her on Instagram that evening asking her to please have the remainder of my art removed from her Instagram and Furry Amino by the next evening (Thursday 01/26/2017), and to cancel and refund any commissions she’s currently working on that use my art. She did finally finish removing my art from her Instagram on Friday (01/27/2017). Unfortunately, the piece in her Queue on Furry Amino remains up at the moment, so she has yet to honor that part of my request. Her post on Furry Amino that Friday further eroded my confidence in the sincerity of her actions. LINK It was after that last post, followed the next day by her locking down her Instagram to private for followers only, that I decided to go ahead and try posting a Beware. Her behavior through all of this really makes me worry she’s not truly intent on stopping what she’s doing. I could be wrong! She may legitimately be looking to revamp her style through her own talent and not by using my art or anyone else’s. I hope that's what she's doing, but I’m concerned she may now just be looking for someone else’s art to use, and/or she may continue to use mine. I really don’t know. I hope my concerns are for naught. However, I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone else, nor would I want her to continue to scam her commissioners and those artists putting in their precious time and hard work on art trades with her when all she’s doing is altering other artists’ work. This is a beware to artists and commissioners alike to be heads up in regards to Piranha.Petting.Zoo aka Karkass. She has used my art for her commissions and trades, and she may continue to use mine and/or other artists’ art in the future.

https://artists-beware.livejournal.com/910500.html Included are links to screenshots of the journals etc in case of deletion. WHO: soaru@dA (old account) / hatchimi@dA (new account/formerly Dollrot) WHERE: http://soaru.deviantart.com/ http://hatchimi.deviantart.com/ WHAT: Digital art - Pixel icons x4 - $40 total (+paypal fees) (92 total icons owed to others on her to do list) WHEN: Soaru had claimed to have been diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in early May 2014. We were all very understanding of her situation and that there would be delays with her commissions. ( https://i.gyazo.com/2d18a1584409cebc7fd6d15f3f87241e.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Carpal-Tunnel-Diagnosis-453965909 ) and then another notice to commissioners: ( https://i.gyazo.com/cda7fca79f835063a19bd737fd96fc10.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Attention-commissioners-454227201 ) I first noted soaru about the icon commissions on July 17th, 2014, then the agreement was made and I sent the payment the same day. (see screenshots in ‘proof’) Soaru had then made a journal on July 26th 2014 to state that she had unlimited pixel slots open for the summer ( https://i.gyazo.com/ff5ccf459452bb685191edc39e486352.png Journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/work-work-work-470968786 ) Unlimited slots never being a promising sign, but I am a patient person, and didn’t think much of it at the time. A few more updates regarding soaru’s recovery and commission progress were posted between August 2014 until August 2015 (I will get into these in my explanation below). The final update on August 25th 2015 was about her recovery and any updates for commissioners, and since then the account has been dead. PROOF: commission note paypal transaction EXPLAIN: As stated above, soaru had been diagnosed with Carpal tunnel syndrome. She posted a journal about it on May 14th, 2014 and continued updates on her situation. When soaru had opened commissions, I sent her a note expressing my interest, and the agreement was made on July 17th. I sent the payment the same day. On July 26th 2014, soaru posted a new journal stating that she had unlimited pixel slots open for the summer, ( https://i.gyazo.com/ff5ccf459452bb685191edc39e486352.png Journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/work-work-work-470968786 ). I didn’t think much of this at the time. On August 20th 2014, Soaru posted a commission update ( https://i.gyazo.com/1b08df12e524cd8658c41b2a8160a8c6.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Commission-update-476955835 ), stating that she was working very hard on completing her commissions right now. She asks for our patience due to work and having to take breaks because of her carpal tunnel. I was in no rush for my commissions and only wished for her recovery, as I really couldn’t imagine how awful it must be to suffer from carpal tunnel as an artist.. She adds “I did not forget about your commission, don’t worry.” The next update was on October 6th 2014. Soaru states that commissions are now closed for a good year or so. She tells us that she is very busy with work, so commission progress is moving very slowly, and apologises for the wait. I can appreciate that she is going through hard times, so a few months isn’t much to wait given her situation. “I will not update you on how your commission if coming along because there are too many of you to note. I assure you I WILL complete the commission as soon as possible. So please be patient with me. You will receive your commission when you get it.” And no, I have no idea as to when you will receive it, and for that I'd like to apologize. I also won't be providing any refunds. You will get what you paid for.” I’m a patient person and I could appreciate that taking unlimited slots as there would be a lot of people on her to do list, but looking back now, not receiving any kind of progress report on how your commission is coming along is a pretty bad sign as well as stating that you have “no idea when a commissioner will receive their commission.” But again I was willing to wait and a few months wasn’t anything to complain about given her life situation. (https://i.gyazo.com/83b4d48b277187c21701d02963b5f5f7.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Commissioners-PLEASE-READ-486724217 ) Between October 2014 and February 2015, there was no real update on soaru’s commission progress or her condition. Apart from posting a journal in December asking if her commissioners would mind if she used her new base for their commissions or not. (I requested to stick to the original base I had ordered as it fit my characters better). ( https://i.gyazo.com/934a152cd6297a6082aef184dc9e00f3.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Question-for-people-who-have-commissioned-me-498366584 ), though you could hardly call this an update. Finally on February 10th, 2015, soaru posts her public to-do list and an apology for the delay with her commissions. (https://i.gyazo.com/67931c13a0edf8575e38623994e9681c.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/TO-DO-LIST-UPDATED-PLEASE-READ-THIS-OMG-512941211 ) On this list there are a total of 96 commissions yet to be completed. At the time, I simply thought she’s stated many times she is working hard to get these done so over the course of months hopefully her list will get shorter and shorter, and she will get through these and can look past this tough time in her life. The next and major life update was posted on July 13th 2015: ( https://i.gyazo.com/8e096687c3b8c8bc92baef371ba68a41.png https://i.gyazo.com/7e8bc4738ff1ea001597797b8e525eec.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Life-Update-ADDED-546016180 [screenshot & link to updates journal linked at the bottom: https://i.gyazo.com/12e87e334c506d2f8477ef92f83e50d7.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/updates-447349674]). Soaru talks about how she realizes how unhappy a lot of her commissioners are with her services, her surgery and the date being under negotiation, and that she has been going through recovery. “I'd like to assure ALL MY COMMISSIONERS that I am not running away with your money. I WOULD LOVE to provide refunds to all of you, I cannot stress that enough. But I simply do not have the funds to do so. I know I've already asked you all to be very patient with me, and some of you have and I'm very grateful for that. I do not expect everyone to be understanding of my situation financially/mentally/physically, but you WILL receive your commission.” Her last update and sign of any activity on her account was on August 25th 2015. ( https://i.gyazo.com/0153602488fb599d70ff0bb7bad6a9fa.png journal link: http://soaru.deviantart.com/journal/Recovery-Update-556158826 ) A promising recovery update stating that soaru’s wounds are healing well, she still experiences some pain but it should disappear soon. She says she should be able to start commissions mid-September. She says she’ll be sure to post a journal update, as well as join.me streams of commission work, and finally that “You will also be provided with WIP's of your pixel so you know I'm actually doing your commission.” I cannot speak for everyone on her list but I have not received any kind of work in progress shots from soaru. Since then, soaru had provided no updates about surgery dates, delays, or any kind of work in progress to assure people that she was indeed trying to work on these commissions as she had been stating for the last year. Many of the comments on her page and in her journals talk about the lack of any kind of update given the situation and the wait for all of her commissioners. Soaru is even ignoring notes and comments from her clients. Many of the comments urged her to think about trying to refund even just a few commissioners to lessen her workload and to just resolve the situation as quickly as possible. Soaru also states that once her recovery is over she will be working her hardest to finish all of her commissions in response to another comment. I tried to note her back in January: ( https://i.gyazo.com/cf393ed24d2d8fe08285099283e79359.png ) to ask about changing characters since it has been so long that I had forgotten who I had even requested, but there has been no response. However, in my sent notes it is marked as read. Around late February, a friend and I (who is also on soaru’s to do list) came across a deviantart account named dollrot, but recently changed to hatchimi. At the time there was no evidence that hatchimi and soaru are the same individual, however we did find her art style to bear very close similarities to soaru’s. For some time we just kept an eye out since there wasn’t much posted to hatchimi’s gallery at the time and it could just be a similar style. Here is a comparison we compiled of all the similarities we found (style wise) : http://orig03.deviantart.net/d537/f/2016/154/f/1/comparisons_by_theangelofmemories-da4ubbh.png Over the course of the last few months we’ve tried to gather as much evidence as we can that links hatchimi and soaru as the same person. A few things we noticed: Her icon style is in the same style as her old one (they’re not made from the same base, but the way the eyes are pixeled have the same technique done on them, plus they almost overlap in terms of head placement over body) She still uses bases extremely frequently and they all have their toes pointing inwards with their hands by their sides with closed fingers. A similar technique with the way she shades her noses, and the highlights in the character’s eyes Handwriting comparison http://orig02.deviantart.net/06b4/f/2016/166/2/f/handwritting_by_royal_jelliefish-da6ck3m.png The first semi-concrete proof comes in the form of a work in progress shot from soaru, and something I noticed when I popped in to one of hatchimi’s picarto streams a few weeks ago. This is Soaru's wip screenshot with her file location atop the SAI window. notice the "C:/users/mew/desktop/file/cootiewootie.psd" Now, look at the location on this screenshot taken from Hatchimi's picarto stream. Same user name and location as to where the file is saved. "C:/users/mew/desktop/file/BASEA.psd" Along with the similarities of their style, noticing that they share the same user name and have the habit to save on the desktop is too much of a coincidence. Now, the evidence we have found that positively links soaru and hatchimi as the same person was something I noticed when hatchimi posted her artvsartist meme. She has since taken it down but you can still view it via google cache here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://hatchimi.deviantart.com/art/artvsartiste-611370644 screenshot: https://i.gyazo.com/ad467bb0d3af2f1e4794c2464916a57f.jpg A while back soaru had posted a self portrait to her deviantart, and looking at the two images it’s hard to think they’re two different people. Please note the same piercings and gauge in her ear as well as the facial similarity. http://fav.me/d8hcuq8 screenshot: https://i.gyazo.com/090fdf9f9535898df2d0febda19d16d6.png A friend had found soaru’s old paypal/email address through the icon commission transaction. Hatchimi’s current paypal does not contain personal information linking her to soaru, but with some digging with the ‘soaru’ email address, we have discovered it is used for her instagram account that has been up since 2012 and is still active: https://i.gyazo.com/b536e315ee2473202d9842807a0a1561.png When lined up side by side from the image from the artvsartist meme: https://i.gyazo.com/09f0a7f2270ec47712465a1e29420878.png The name that appears in the transaction for the payment to soaru from 2 years ago also matches the name on the instagram account if there is still any doubt that they are the same person. The evidence collected in this case was through a group effort from her dissatisfied customers I have reached out to. **Edit : 17/06/2016 We have posted jorunals on deviantart revealing our findings and to spread the word. my friends (who has been in contact with hatchimi to send her the beware post and to see if the situation could still be privately resolved) : http://royal-jelliefish.deviantart.com/journal/ARTIST-BEWARE-Soaru-Hatchimi-615658826 Hatchimi has also posted a journal with her defenses and some evidence of a conversation between herself and soaru through email, as well as a note she sent inquiring about commissions to soaru. http://hatchimi.deviantart.com/journal/Harassment-soaru-drama-615813488 Someone picked up that there is a tab open in this screenshot for 'msn canada' it isn't by any means concrete but it could confirm her location, and this could be another piece of evidence that links another similarity between them. http://orig06.deviantart.net/ce3f/f/2016/165/e/a/ccb568bad3054274b7fe6f00b4a87a34_by_hatchimi-da6aqen.png anoher edit: a user found a page in the waybackmachine that has her country listed as canada: http://web.archive.org/web/20151024030234/http://dollrot.deviantart.com/ So we can prove that she and soaru share the same location. A big question for me in all of this is that why now of all times would she choose to reveal this screenshot of her noting soaru about asking about commissions? Surely its a strong piece of evidence to support that the two are different people, so why wouldn't she send it to us sooner rather than this much later? http://img10.deviantart.net/289a/i/2016/168/6/a/proof1_by_hatchimi-da6mxv6.png (screenshot in case of deletion: https://i.gyazo.com/f95a0191f17fd6a7aa8e13112f34e47b.png ) At first it looks fairly normal, but someone commenting on the beware journal checked their old notes from before they changed their username, ane the previous username shows up in older notes, not the new on since hatchimi was formerly Dollrot until earlier this year, why does it say "Hatchimi said the following" and not "Dollrot said the following"..? Another commenter then claimed that it is possible to run a test on images which will tell you if the image has been edited, and the screenshot came up as edited in photoshop, so this tells us that the note screenshot is fake. Here are the websites one can use to detect a doctored image: http://fotoforensics.com/ http://imageedited.com/ Hatchimi is still denying that she and soaru are the same person, despite all of these new revelations, I will continue to update as more light is shed.