Commission issues

[friskecrisps.livejournal.com]

I'm having some issues with a few commissioners and stuff has yet to be decided so I'm still going to keep this anon until stuff happens. Anyway, I've commissioned a couple people for 15 and 30 buck commissions. I paid them about 6 months ago and I'm kind of at my limit here as far as patience goes. They haven't shown me any WIPs and they continue doing other commissions like headshots and some gifts for their mates.

For the 30 buck commission, I've tried asking for a refund, but the artist just responded back to me saying that they've already been working on it and that they don't have the money to give me a refund so I abided by that. But I later find out they want to redo the whole commission and as I mentioned before, they're doing all these other commissions and such as well as gifts for their mate and other close friends.

For the 15 buck commission, the $15 is a down-payment it seems so once I see a pre-approved sketch, then I pay another 15 bucks for the finalized piece. However this artist is just so damn lazy. He just finished a 2 year old commission just a few weeks ago and he's got a list of 20 people left to do and while I'm #5 on the list, he has barely touched the people's commissions ahead of me. So when I tried asking for a refund, he says he doesn't have the money and needs to keep what little he has for food and such. He's on welfare btw. But I think what ticks me off the most is that he just got a big project deal where he was paid about 1,500 to design a character he wastes 500 of it on an online game and the rest for a new computer.

Anyway, I know artists have lives outside the computer and such, but unless there's major issues happening, I don't see why they shouldn't keep working on commissions. When it gets to the 6 month wait time, that's when I lose patience. I love commissioning people. Don't get me wrong. I like knowing that my money is going to help artists get by. But it ticks me off that when i give them my money, I feel like I get tossed aside and that my commission is of little importance to them

Anywho, any suggestions on what I should do? Please and Thank you.