General Thread for PSAs

I hope this is appropriate to post here since I'm a bit puzzled on what to do from here. 

A month ago I commissioned an artist for headshot and was told beforehand that it would be finished within 3 days. The artist themselves gave me a turn-around time of 3 but only sent a wip after 3 days. I was fine with it since I understand that people are busy. However, after confirming the wip was correct, there has been zero contact. I usually give an artist around a month before contacting for progress but when it came to, this artist seemed to have deleted their twitter and instagrams. I found this a bit odd but messaged them on their deviantart account 5 days ago regarding if there was any updates to my commission. I checked today to see if they had read my note and it has not been read. The artist has given no warning or update that they are busy or going on hiatus so I am confused on the situation. I am unsure of what to do from here, especially since it was only a $15 commission and its technically only been a month but was hoping to seek some advice!

Thank you and I will remove if this is not appropriate. 

PaperTsubaki

Hello! Just wanted to tell you that I also feel like it’s kinda heavily referenced? So I can see the concern!

Anyways, the original artist is called “moorina” on DA, but has long deleted old work and moved to twitter under the username “booniecake”. I too remember the art piece so I ended up doing some digging. ended up finding the source after deep browsing because there was someone who uploaded her artwork and actually gave credit on 2013 to a third party image site! /o/

So my husband who is on toyhouse, but not active, but is active on other platforms, got scammed by someone who commissioned him. Infact it was his first ever commission. It was a $40 commission(s) which they ended up never paying for. This all took place on telegram, but I would like to help him by posting a PSA about them on here, do you guys think it warrants a thread? 

Another friend said they attempted to scam them as well out of $70, but failed in doing so since she caught onto it.

4 other people have come out saying they were also scammed by this person, I'm beginning to believe this warrants a PSA

Wonderland Thank you so much for the advice! I've gone ahead and emailed them using the email from their paypal account and have my fingers crossed for a reply. I checked their deviantart for latest activity and it seems they last time they were on was july 8th (based off the last thing in their favourites) so perhaps they haven't been checking their media since july 8th. Although I find it odd that they've decided to delete their accounts and just disappear from contact..  If I receive no contact still after another month I will send a charge back. Thank you kindly again for the advice, it helped a huge lot!

I'd appreciate some advice on this situation if possible!! 

I commissioned a user for a reference sheet near the end of April, and for a while I was receiving regular updates and was really happy with the way things were going. However, out of the blue they were banned on the platform we were communicating on, and so we switched to messaging on here instead. Since then, it's been a huge hassle getting in touch with them, and eventually they stopped opening my messages at all. I can see they're active and uploading, so I know it's not possible that they just havent seen them. Because of the lack of communication, I threatened a chargeback at the end of June, which they did respond to and claimed the ref was basically finished. Despite that, I've received no further updates and havent actually seen progress since the first messages back in April. They're once again not opening my messages, and I'm starting to lose patience in this commission altogether. I'm just not sure where to go from here because I've already threatened a chargeback, and did get a response, but the situation still hasn't improved ):

P0CKETKNIFE more than anything, I would move forward with a chargeback. delaying puts you in danger of well...too much time passing and you not being able to do that. If they aren't communicating with you and haven't given you anything at this point then it's really merited. If they're not opening messages then it's really the better option than anything else - I'd take screenshots for general reference in the future of unopened messages as well as old account messages if you can and everything and then try and get money back. If they were responding or inactive it might be a different situation.

An update from my post on page 63

So the artist still has not replied, but today ( July 19, 2019 at 7:37pm GMT-7 ) Paypal resolved the dispute and gave back my $60.
jiminie and P0CKETKNIFE or anyone who has this same issue as mine, (i.e: irresponsible, unresponsive or unprofessional artist) I advice filing a dispute then escalating it to paypal, or request a chargeback. Provide screenshots of your written transaction/s in your dispute and Paypal would close it in your favor, that is IF the artist doesn't reply within the time limit paypal will give them.

PaperTsubaki

since the artist is contacting the tracer, I honestly don't think there's much you could do at this point. ; v; Giving a warning/advice for the person who purchased the commission so they can try and get a refund/etc would be good to do. Besides that, unless there's other work pieces stolen, there's not much you could do. Possibly just a mild warning to others? Just a 'be careful from buying from this person' etc.