Advice needed on a tricky situation!

[nxcritter.livejournal.com]

Ok i'm going to keep this kinda vague cause there are a lot of people involved..

Just a little over a year ago I opened up for a big car deck!

Like i'm talking each card in a standard deck of card has a character, each person get's their own  full deck of cards for every card the bought, plus a larger tarot sized card for a badge of the card/s so they would have this nice nice large badge in these really nice hard plastic card casings I found.

I was and still am excited for the project! Issue is..  Shortly after the project i got in a car accident and lost my unborn child, car i just put a new engine in really hydroplaned into a tree and my husband(driving), infant son and I hit a tree going about 45-50 and rolled over the barrier into the oncoming traffic.. Really nasty accident i had a major concussion, fractured sternum and buses in so many places including bones in my wrist they irradiated me 3 times to check for internal bleeding cause i was pined in car as it crushed under it's weight upside down. I was extremely emotionally distraught for close to a few months and was in no condition to work on anything... Once i was able to work my working computer had issues it was just one thing after another :/ Everyone understood who contacted me and I'm still grateful for their understanding. Now once i was all ready and able to start work like I got a new drawing unit and every thing for the project. I contacted EVERYONE yes i sent 50 ish notes out to inform all these people that Hey I'm starting work back up, please set up a time slot for me to work i wanna get this project under way type thing if you have any changes you want done let me know now.... Well a HUGE chunk of these people never even read the note or respond at all and it's been months and months now.

Now I have some of these cards completely done.Ton's of sketches and wips issue is What do I do about these people who have not replied or even read my message?

Now with my TOS you can find here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4556089/

Do i treat this as one large commission based on the fact the completed project is not complete with out all participants? or treat all cards as each individual commission?
I mean most of the slot's where only 12 - 25usd and just about all slot's that where bid on extremely hard are completely done... A good chunk of  these cards just need to be printed... I can't Print the decks till i have all the cards done...

I just don't know what I should do at this point.

Any idea's on how to figure this out?

I have few idea's on how to proceed but I could really use some suggestions on how to handle this one.

Thank you in advance for your time!

Comments

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

My take:
Treat each card as its own commission.

For those that dropped out, either offer their slots to others (open the commissions again), or fill them with random characters of your own/that you have authorization to use.

[tomoyoavalon.livejournal.com]

I agree with Gatekat, treat each card as a separate commission. If it were me, I'd message those people you have not heard back from again, stating that if they do not responded within X amount of time then they forfeit their slot and it will be opened up for others to claim. Refund any money that has already been paid if you still do not get response with in the allotted time and move on. You say something to this effect in your TOS already: “In the event of a special circumstance, personal crisis, or an exceptionally prolonged delay (1 year or more), a commission can be cancelled at any given moment at my discretion, and a FULL refund will be issued; or the commission may be cancelled upon request and a FULL refund issued as long as is stated above is taken into account.”

On a side note, I had to raised my eyebrow at this statement from the same section: “No refund will be given if you are slandering, or harassing me you forfeit your refund.”

Harassment or not, this is still theft. You do not get to keep money, that you do not earn. You immediately refund the offending person and blacklist them. You can also warn others not to do business with the person as well. I personally would not do business with you based on this clause alone. Who is to say what is and is not harassment to you?

[ravensmoon666.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. It doesn't matter if someone cursed you out and called you the most horrible things imaginable you ALWAYS give them a refund.

[sapphistscot.livejournal.com]

Thirded. I have to wonder what is classed as slander and harassment, would the customer posting an AB be counted as slander? It's not slander if it's true. You can't just go "well you're mean so I'm keeping your money and you get nothing lol". I would also never do business with someone who had this clause in their TOS.

[sableantelope.livejournal.com]

I also agree. Plus if you want to try an enforce unreasonable demands in your TOS you should at least know that slander is spoken and LIBEL is witten/published.

The term doesn't really matter anyways, contact law trumps TOS, especially when the TOS is unreasonable and therefor unenforceable. So no one has to worry, they can always demand their refund even if an artist tries to get away with BS in their TOS like that clause.

[nxcritter.livejournal.com]

I have fixed this since this.

I have overlooked the situation when I wrote this a while ago.

[nxcritter.livejournal.com]

OF course I know the difference between slander and truth. Let's say, somebody posted, "This person here, Nataya, did bad business and here's why: (examples)." I wouldn't think this is slander, but in that situation would try to resolve it. However when the same someone decides to rephrase the same situation like, "This prude ***** is so stupid and they are trying to cheat me!" I figure that's slander.

Much like in your own example is somewhat insulting in it's own, by placing words in my mouth and making me look like a thief. Trust me, I've been harassed up and down the internet and still refunded the ones doing it. Instead of making unnecessary fiction, you could just tell your opinion and explain why without making unnecessary insults and drama.

I changed the TOS statement from that, because it does not reflect what my business practice is about.

[nxcritter.livejournal.com]

I agree too, I have changed that portion to better reflect the right thing to do in that kind of situation.

[nxcritter.livejournal.com]

I will refund anyone who desires one, however, some of the commissioners have vanished off of FA entirely (disabled accounts). Of course there are many ways these people can contact me, I just don't know about all the ways to contact them.

[tomoyoavalon.livejournal.com]

I had thought of this later after posting my comment, actually. I meant within reason of course. If you still have their Paypal emails you can try contacting them through those if there is still a record of who was who. Other than that there is not much else you can do. If you can't get in contact with them due to disabled accounts or no alternate means of contact, that is not really your problem. If they come asking for about their slot at some future date, you can tell them the slot was sold to someone else (due to being unable to contact them) and that you would be glad to give them a refund. It is not fair to you to hold the slots indefinitely.

[dasakiv.livejournal.com]

Ah damn, so that's what happened to this, it would be a shame to see the entire project scrapped because some of the people have vanished..

I also hope that my note to you about my own slot didn't cause problems, I hadn't looked this site back up at that time.