[PSA] sardiine | Commission Scam (Resolved 08/29)

Posted 2 years, 7 months ago (Edited 2 years, 6 months ago) by clintbeefwoods

edit: forgot to add header info. please remember that this PSA is purely to warn others so that they don't lose their money; it is not meant to incite ill will toward him in any capacity. i made this PSA because amounts of $100+ are really not a small deal in my personal opinion, and because this has been happening to me with commissions more and more frequently.

edit two: got some information on why sardiine was banned from the original site. apparently, it was for linking unsafe content on his toyhou.se to the children's website (source), and for repeated harassment (screenshot of harassing behavior). please beware when interacting with this user.

edit three: i was sent a PM by the artist with a link that he claimed was supposed to contain the files/images of the commission. while the toyhou.se pages does say [4] in the images tab, no images/files are available to me, so i am still waiting on this situation to resolve.

edit four (resolution): the images have been delivered and i have received the promised work from the artist.

Who: sardiine

Carrd: carrd
Active On: 
toyhou.se, deviantArt, ArtFight, discord (Sardine#8802), Twitter 
Banned Accounts:
sardine

What: Scamming/Harassment

hey there. i normally don't do these things, but i wanted the community to be aware of this situation so nobody else loses out on their money. the commission was originally started through an advertisement on another site, but sardiine was banned from that site and we moved over to toyhou.se to finish the transaction. i'll try to keep this to the point; most of our communication was done via discord until near the end. i have tried to reach the artist through multiple avenues/media contacts, but at this time it really doesn't look like i'll be getting my commission or a refund, so i'm giving up on collecting.

on december 21, 2020, i reached out to sardiine over discord and commissioned him for some artwork as a friend's christmas present. he said that his workaround time was about four to six hours (he even promised it would "definitely be done in time), but i was not super stressed about it being ready the day of. i paid $100 and sardiine confirmed that he received the money on the 22nd. i didn't hear from him for the next several days, so i reached out on the 24th and he said it would be done on the 26th or the 27th. i reached out an additional time on the 26th of january 2021, and sardiine said that it would be finished by the 22nd of february. i received no further communication from his end until march 31st, when i learned he had been banned. i told him that he needed to reach back out to me ASAP, because i could see him online and i was nervous that i was being scammed. on april 2nd, i sent another message stating that i couldn't afford to sit around because the time i had left to dispute the charge was coming to a close, and he responded almost immediately.

he sent me a progress shot, claiming he lost the previous work, and we set the new ETA for june 30th. at this point, he had all of april, all of may, and all of june to work on the commission. june 30th came and went, and i sent him a few more discord messages on july 2nd. even though i could see him active and posting, he did not respond whatsoever. messaged him on toyhou.se and other media on july 10th to see what was up and that i could not afford to wait on him any longer. again, he responded almost immediately with another screenshot and a promise to have it done by the 11th or the monday after. he sent me another screenshot of the face of one of the characters, and i was shocked to find that the only thing that had changed in 3 months was that pretty small area. i messaged him again on the 11th responding that what was done looked really good, and he got back to me on the 14th stating he had gotten food poisoning and would have it done "soon." i messaged him again on the 25th on toyhou.se and got no response. i tried to contact him on deviantArt, Twitter, and even ArtFight, but did not receive any messages back as of august 9, 2021. i also tried to contact him at the new discord he posted on his carrd, but he had me blocked. at this point, i feel like all i can do is let other people know about my experience and write off the artwork.

i'm especially frustrated because the entire time i was trying to contact him and he was claiming to have been not seeing my messages or having trouble finishing my work, he was posting ads for commissions and characters in a mutual server. i know he was online and i know he was even taking other work while this was all happening. please be warned when commissioning this artist, because i am pretty sure that i have been party to an almost eight month scam. i have linked my sta.sh below with evidence of all of the transaction proof, messages, and WIP images for posterity.

sardiine commission proof

TL;DR i commissioned sardiine for $100 and was led on for 8 months while he was taking other commissions. i never received a refund or the promised work. please beware when looking for artists to commission.

LemonBear

I’m so sorry your having difficulties!! I have also had troubles with this artist xc I commissioned them in the past for a $110 comm and it took them soooo long to show me any progress that I ended up wanting a refund. Below and behold when I threatened a charge back they immediately found the time to work on my commission :/ but I told them to stop working and insisted I didn’t want to commission them anymore. Anyway I only ended up getting a $70 refund (it was less than $70 because they made me pay for the PayPal fee 🙄)

I hope your able to get a refund too!

satosugusato

i've also been having issues with sardiine, i paid him 20 usd for a custom design commission back in february of this year, got one update with a wip and then got ghosted lol. i messaged him a few times on toyhouse and he never even opened them (i tested to see if the color of messages changes when they get opened by the recipient and they do. mine never changed color lol). so i tried to contact him on discord and still got nothing and then finally tried deviantart a few days ago. at this point i think that i'll just have to finish it myself, and maybe at some point he'll give me a partial refund, but even that is seeming like a pretty slim chance.

i unfortunately had to remake my paypal account to fix an issue with it so i dont have a screenshot of the transaction, so i suppose you can take my word for a grain of salt or believe me based on our conversation pointing to me having paid for it since he takes payment upfront.

payment is received by sardiine

he starts on custom commission a few days later

i message him two months later for an update (no response, he didnt even read it lol) (first message)

two more messages i sent three months after the last (didnt read these either) (second and third message)


clintbeefwoods

dandyboyo i'm sorry about paypal. otherwise, i would have suggested forcing a refund. i made a huge mistake paying via friends and family (stupid move, i know) so there's nothing i can do about it, either. my honest recommendation, especially with someone like sardine who's known to ghost, is to force a refund at the end of the alloted period if they haven't delivered the goods or services. i used to do commissions for a substantial chunk of monthly income so it hurts me to even put it on the table, but this has happened to me so often that it just seems like that's what you have to do now. it sucks. :/

i hope you get your money back.

edit: my style isn't even close to sardine's level, but if you'd like a chibi of the character you were trying to get done or something let me know. i hate it when folks get scammed and i'd love to help/get some current stuff on my portfolio.

KingHen

oh man that's quite a significant amount of money to be scamming people out of as well :/ Always always pay via the 'paying for goods and fees' option! it's actually against paypals terms and services to do otherwise, as is asking the payee to pay for paypals feels LemonBear!

also @op if you'd like a free doodle or something hit me up! like you said scammers suck, and that's not a small amount to be scammed out of :((

satosugusato

idk about op, but sardine sent me the finished piece and seems to have fixed the problem with the images not showing up (for me, at least). i don't really have much else to say, i'm just happy that its been sorted out lol im too tired for this