Greetings, everyone. After consideration and a lengthy period of time, along with evidence that there are still many people awaiting art, refunds, or contact from this person, I have decided to post this PSA to inform the public to be cautious and wary of engaging in business-related interactions with this person.
New cases will go into the first post below the original post (this one).
http://toyhou.se/~forums/thread/24144.beware-of-squidribs-th-fa-twitter-iprie-da-/1#post-575866
Update 4/8/17: I've received information from several people that Squidribs continues to shirk the art they owe to people in recent times. That is, they are offering their art services in recent times and are not completing what they have promised. I have also received evidence of a lighter case of irresponsibility and will be including it as well. Due to this new information, I will be modifying this thread to be more like the general PSA thread, to include various cases.
Update 1/5/17: After a brief period of promising communication, Squidribs is once again unresponsive to my inquiries on the status of the owed art. As such, I have submitted a beware on the artist to inform people of the potential danger of working with this person.
Update 12/9/16: Squidribs has begun responding to me after Fehnyr's tip led me to try contacting them again, and appears to be replying to other victims as well in an effort to truly resolve matters this time. Time will be the true judge of what the results are, however. But this is promising.
Associated Evidence:
http://imgur.com/a/cdLTU
Formerly known as Iprie on DA, Squidribs (FA/TH/Twitter: Squid_Ribs) owes a great deal of people owed art. However, many of them have never received word from the artist, and for those who did, Squidribs promised to finish and close the matter, but I have found that quite a few customers received initial contact and then never saw the artist again.
For now, I will detail my own case with Iprie. I won an auctioned adopt by this user and paid for it on November 30th, 2013. Due to the numerical amount of my bid, the adopt was supposed to come with an extra waist-up artwork of the adopt or any OC I desired. I also paid an extra $8 to hit the $50 tier to get an extra chibi artwork as well (http://imgur.com/86HHajn ). Note that the artist asked me to pay the paypal fees and at the time, I did not realize this was improper and dangerous behavior. The artist and I chatted briefly.
Several months went by, and in April 2014, I asked for an update, and was told that the artworks were still being worked on. However, the months passed by, with Squidribs remaining active on DA, submitting artworks and favoriting many things, even as I bumped my note to them twice more in 2014 (October (http://imgur.com/B93R1ZY ) and November), with the artist never replying to either attempt. I also left a comment on their profile that was also ignored, but it was obvious that Iprie was active, as they replied to a comment on their profile that was six days after mine. Around this time as well, you can easily see that I am not the only concerned commissioner; there were several others leaving comments asking for updates on the commission journals and the profile, with Squidribs responding only to a few (all on the commission journals (http://imgur.com/RFi2B0k ), none on the profile) and ignoring most (http://imgur.com/IrL6lcc ). Their last sign of activity appears to be around November 2nd of 2014, going by an artwork they favorited.
2014 passed by, and 2015 came. At this point, it had been 13 months since I paid Iprie, and had received no sign of wip and little communication, and what communication had occurred had all been initiated by me. I was suspicious, and investigated the other commissioners, questioning them, and found that many of them as well, had been left completely hanging by this artist, whom they had paid close to 1-1.5+ years ago, for art. Many had never received further contact from Squidribs once payment was made. There was even a PSA made during that time: http://stickypeach.deviantart.com/journal/Another-person-514511544
I believe Watolf made one as well, but if so, it has since been taken down. In any case, I realized then that Squidribs likely was not going to finish the large number of art they owed, to at least 11 people. Not without strong arming the artist into it, unfortunately. Discussing with the other affected victims, I managed to find Iprie’s twitter handle and email, and shared this information to the others, so that we could attempt contact and inform the artist of our displeasure in a civil and level-headed manner for their poor customer service and work ethic. This occurred in March 2015. http://imgur.com/xMehUfA
http://imgur.com/ocONS9p
http://imgur.com/tvKO2EJ
The artist replied and was initially very apologetic and seemingly genuine in their desire to work with the victims to resolve the pending orders, be it by art or refunds, or both. In my case, Squidribs refunded me the estimated amount for the art (not the adopt though, as we discussed through the emails), with the artist also promising to finish the artwork anyway (http://imgur.com/vnv5jYd ), while informing me they were working with the others to finish. They even had a friend log into their DA account to publicly post contact information for other customers. This was good progress. A few days later, I was sent wips.
Unfortunately, I then dropped the ball during this part of the process. My health went downward, and I finally got myself diagnosed and began treatment. This is no excuse for dropping contact, but it is the reason behind why I did not reply to Iprie until a long time later, around 8-9 months, in January 2016. There was no reply.
Then to my surprise, I spotted Squidribs on Toyhouse one day, in July or so. I sent along a pm, apologizing for having left our conversation from 2015 so abruptly, and the artist replied and apologized as well, explaining they had also been experiencing health issues and a heavy school load. They agreed to finish the artwork and we chattered about other things as well in the pms, but the agreement was made and we decided to use TH as our platform for conversation. http://imgur.com/yX3I6Gp
Two months went by, and I dropped in to check with Squidribs on the progress of my art, as I felt that was an adequate amount of time for them. They read the note, but did not reply. They were very active on TH and twitter and FA during this period of time. I later sent another note on TH, and that one was not even read. It remains unread still (http://imgur.com/8AZV2Yi ). Again, during this time, they have continued being very active, engaging in purchasing and negotiation of art and adopts on various sites (http://imgur.com/AU21nJN ). It became very clear quickly that they were ignoring me, particularly as I tweeted to them while they were on Twitter, tweeting to their friends, and also commented on one of their threads, only to receive no reply. http://imgur.com/AvRVqsc
That made me wonder; how were the other customers doing? It had been 1.5 years since I had last asked them if they received their artwork or not, had something changed? I have received replies from some, and the results were not promising: Excluding me, four of the people who had confronted Iprie in 2015 later lost contact with the artist (http://imgur.com/JkQ8BpP ), one person had never received a single contact since payment, and only one person had their case closed. At least one person has also left DA since then (with their account is gone) and they likely never received their art either. These are poor statistics. It was clear then, that Squidribs had lied in 2015 when they said they would work hard to finish everything and make sure everything was truly closed. Rather, it seems what happened, is they played along with the victims to get the heat off their back (particularly as I had quite a few customers email them, as is only proper and reasonable), and when it died down, they ran away. Which would explains why they have not been seen on Iprie for two years and are extremely active on Squidribs now. This is an unfortunate tactic victims have to suffer through, when the person who owes work acts “sweet” until the heat dies down, and moves to an undisclosed location in an effort to not be found again.
As you can see in my screenshots, there are a great deal of people still left waiting for any form of resolution to this unfortunate situation. It has been two years and a half now for some, and three years for others, such as me. And yet, Squidribs does not complete what they have been paid for to do in the past, while continuing to have plenty of time to inquire on TH about adopts, to make myos and to produce various artworks. http://imgur.com/LttWJAB
http://imgur.com/7mrx7zL
As such, I write this PSA to inform the public of the unscrupulous behavior of Squidribs, of their abysmal work ethic and customer service, and to warn people interested in potential transactions with the artist to be highly wary, or to avoid working with them altogether. We already have a great deal of people hurt by Squidribs, it would be best if no more new ones occur.
I will be looking into submitting a beware on this person to Artists-Beware as well, to further reach and inform the public.
Thank you for your time everyone, and have a good day.
Thank you as well to those who helped me with compilation of evidence and putting this together.