Followup To My Previous Posting regarding "tfxgroup" and "lizardman" [RESOLVED]

[ovni-the-ufo.livejournal.com]

EDIT: ISSUE HAS BEEN RESOLVED.

Thanks for the support and advice. The issue was unexpectedly resolved today (without my knowledge or prior contacting) when Krae finished the other two pieces of the commission. I won't commission them again, and I'm fairly certain they still gonna have time issues for a while, but the commission was completed.

I probably do owe them an apology, which I'll deliver in person...well, as 'in person' as you can get online. xD But anyways, this issue is resolved.

Per the guideline I saw earlier, I'll leave the entire original post intact. I just wanted to make sure it was visible up here at the start that this issue has been resolved.

On March 30th, 2010, I brought this issue before Artists Beware. http://community.livejournal.com/artists_beware/312121.html

 

Now, The issue has not been resolved. I have waited long enough, I guess. This time, I'm not going to withhold names.

On December 27th, 2009, I commissioned the group on Furaffinity known as "tfxgroup". Their userpage: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/tfxgroup

The group consists of the treasurer and site manager (for their private commission site) Lizardman, and at the time the artist of the group was Kraehi.

As I understand it, almost all my correspondence with the group is with Lizardman.

The terms of my commission were fairly simple:

A three-page transformation sequence, lineart only, for fifty dollars. It was to be completed the weekend of Christmas Week. The journal providing all details is here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1107465/

The important part:
 

"Twelve slots. $20 each. Single character, inked, with some tone work/shading. Krae will try to finish them all this weekend.

TFs, fantasy MMORPG fanart, L4D/L4D2 fanart, furry and a mix of any of these. No underaged or any content that Krae would find offensive. Look at what we've offered through our gallery to get a sense of what's allowed.

This time we will allow people to get multiple slots. 3 slots of the same character in a sequence will be $50 total."

As can be seen, I placed a commission, three slots for 50 dollars. It was indicated to me in a note that payment had to be made in full to reserve my slots.

On Feburary 20th, 2010, I contacted the group, wondering why I hadn't heard or seen anything about the commission. Generally, I'm used to being asked several questions when the commission starts, for specific details. At this time, I had forgotten the clause that the commissions were to be finished before 2010 started.

The response I received (From Lizardman) is that Krae was having issues in school. This indicated to me that they had not started on the commissions before the college spring semester started back up in early Janurary, and was disappointing.

March 16th, I contact the group yet again. At this time, I began inquiring if there was a refund policy in place or not. I never received a straight yes or no answer as to whether or not I could get a refund.

On March 25th, I contact the group a third time, this time inquiring again about the possibility of a refund. At this time, it was clear to me Kraehi was continuing to draw, as their store had been updated with fresh material.

Two days later, March 27th, I directly asked Lizardman via Personal Message on his own furaffinity account. This time, I got a response that Lizardman had informed Kraehi of my commission.

I did not believe him, so I brought the matter here, asking for opinions.

During the course of talking with this group here, I thought to go back to the original terms of the commission, to see when the expected timeframe of delivery was originally stated to be.

Having discovered the commission was by this time three months overdue, I again contacted tfxgroup, this time insisting that I would directly contact Kraehi (who I had thusfar not had contact with) if I didn't receive a refund or full discussion of the situation from Lizardman.

At this time, Kraehi contacted me, and was apparently appalled. As she stated:

"Hi, I am terribly sorry for all the confusion in everything that has transpired. I was quite unaware of all of your messages because my partner has not been doing his side of the work and keeping me updated. Also, i would like to point out that he has been accepting commissions when I am quite overfilled.

I am sincerely sorry for everything that has happened and i would like to speak with you through other means, I have IMs:

[IM addresses, including Skype, AIM, YIM, ICQ, and MSN]

I would like to resolve this matter with you immediately, and preferrably without refunding your. but if it comes to that i can. I have upgraded your commission(s) without question and i am willing to sit and work on them as I speak with you.

Again I am VERY sorry for what has happened, and if you can not reach me by any above, feel free to call me on my cell [cell phone number]

Krae"

The upgrade in question was that the commission would be colored for free.

We talked for a period of 3 days over MSN, hammering out the details of what I wanted, the commission itself finally being started on March 31rst, 2010 (the first page of three was completed that same day).

April 2nd, 2010 was the last time I had any sort of direct contact with Kraehi.

On May 10th, after a month of no contact with tfxgroup, Lizardman, or Kraehi, I was informed by Kraehi via offline message on MSN her laptop had broken but she had finally gotten a replacement.

I have not had any further contact with Kraehi.

Around this time, tfxgroup apparently hired new artists, as Kraehi had left the group. I had made my commission of tfxgroup, and was informed Kraehi would finish ongoing tfxgroup commissions that she had already started.

June 4th, 2010 (Yesterday as of writing this), I contacted Lizardman at tfxgroup, to try and figure out what the state of my commission was. Kraehi had apparently left the group, I had not had contact with her in a month, but my commission was still outstanding. I inquired again about the possibility of a refund.

Lizardman responded that Krae was still going to finish the commissions for tfxgroup.

I responded, again emphasizing that my commission was more than 5 months overdue (five months and nine days at the time of this posting), or 160 days, give or take the weekend that the commission was supposedly to be done over. Lizardman has not responded.

If Lizardman overbooked Kraehi, my issue is not with her, other than the fact that she has not been in contact with me for two months now.

I have repeatedly asked for my commission to be canceled and myself given a refund in full.

 

I would like it to be known publicly that anyone seeking to commission tfxgroup, and specifically doing any dealings involving money or art with Lizardman, can expect to be lied to, ignored, and essentially stolen from.

Comments

[darkheartsclub.livejournal.com]

cut please

[ovni-the-ufo.livejournal.com]

Huh?

[sarla23.livejournal.com]

I think they mean a LJ cut, but I don't really see the need for it.

[ovni-the-ufo.livejournal.com]

Oh. I rarely use LJ, so I don't know what a cut is. I'm assuming it's a 'tl;dr' type thing.

[onyxnineteen.livejournal.com]

naw, all you do is edit the entry and highlight most of your text and click the "lj-cut" button to hide it until you click on the full entry. Saves the 'friends' page from being stretched in an annoying manner.

[ovni-the-ufo.livejournal.com]

Ah. I dunno how to do that. xD; sorry.

[taasla.livejournal.com]

Hit "edit entry".

At the part where you want the cut to begin type in [lj-cut text="PUT SOME TEXT HERE, possibly a brief explanation of what's below"] then at the end of your post put [/lj-cut]

Just change the [] to < > like in HTML.

[spiffystuff.livejournal.com]

If you edit the entry, you'll also have to select that it's one of the 20 most recent entries in "artists_beware", not your journal

[sarla23.livejournal.com]

It puts a part of the entry behind a link so that all the text isn't visible and is easier to scroll by if someone doesn't want to read it.

[anjel-kitty.livejournal.com]

This. seriously.

[spiffystuff.livejournal.com]

Holy wow, that's awful!

I'd recommend also leaving a (polite) comment in the journal and main page that you are dissatisfied, linking here or to an FA journal about the situation or something.
Not saying people should TROLL them but if you, the injured party, left a note maybe this dude would get off their duff and refund you. At least other people looking at them would get a heads up (unless tfx just deletes them...).

It does sound doubtful that lizardman will refund you, though. Your other best option of not being totally ripped off is to keep trying to contact Kraehi, since she seems slightly more amicable to seeing that things happen, if way busy.

Uhg.

[leahtaur.livejournal.com]

I'd say only contact Kraehi, as spiffystuff said. She's the only one who actually seems to care in this situation.

[armaina.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I feel rather bad for Kraehi, I cannot imagine how it must be to be in a situation where you'd be responsible for commissions you couldn't work on. I mean, when an artist knowingly takes on more commissions than they are capable of finishing, that's their own fault. But, if someone else is accepting commissions far beyond what you can handle then what are you really supposed to do.

It's obvious that the group is very very badly managed if Lizardman is piling on commissions on the artists without making sure they can even do them in the first place. Honestly, if the fault was Lizardman's the pressure to be on him to refund you, even if it has to come out of his own pocket, because he's the one that caused this problem. It's rather pathetic to see him just dump everything on this artist. The TFXgroup certainly seems like something that should be avoided both commissioners and artists unless they make some major changes.

[spiffystuff.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree, but I have no idea what sort of compensation (if any) she's already received for the art... no idea what her arrangement with lizardman was and it's probably impossible to find out, but I would hope if she got NO money for these commissions she would have told the OP to seek a refund.
As it is she associated her name with someone who seems to be untrustworthy... at least she seems to want to make good on the commission and has left the group.

[armaina.livejournal.com]

Well technically the group was paid and not her. How much she got out of it, I have no idea.

If she's getting some sort of Salary, (monthly or weekly amounts) then the responsibility to either give the product or refund rests with the group itself. For example, if I were to work with a website company and had websites that I worked on, once I quit I am not responsible for working on them nor should they demand any money from me from my past paychecks and the company is responsible to finish anything left or refund. Now, I realise I can't exactly compare the two 'businesses' like that, but I guess that's just more of a thought as to why I think the fault should lie with TFXGroup and consequently, Lizardman.

However, if she's not getting payed in a sort of monthly or weekly lump sum and is instead getting money directly, then this begs the question, how would commissions like this fall under her radar if she got random large sums of money. (I mean, I know I'd be curious as to where it came from and for what reason) That would then mean she's been lying all this time to pass the blame. Or maybe she just really wasn't paying attention to her PayPal account at all.

[ichigoneko33.livejournal.com]

It most likely not, but is possible she just never noticed if money went into her paypal.

I use an email just for commissions and had a little form thing connected to it. At the time, I only used messangers for my private email, so never got notified. I barely checked my other email and actually had someone fill out for a commission and I didn't even know cause they didn't contact me. Now I check it all the time and have a messanger for it, but ya, maybe she just hasn't learned to check it much?

[lichdog.livejournal.com]

I don't understand artist groups much o___0;;

Really bad situation, and deservedly a good A_B entry. Yeesh, I hope this gets resolved.

[frazzled-niya.livejournal.com]

:( Def feel bad for Krae, sounds like her partner loaded her up too much with work while she possibly was still having troubles =\....

Miscommunication between partners in a group like that can be really BAD for business....And bad for the person stuck in the middle (that being you atm @_@)

Hope everything gets sorted out for you. If anything and you do get you refund back possibly approuch Krae and see if you can commission "her" to do it???

Clarifications

[iwrite forme (from livejournal.com)]

To clarify things...

The group was myself (Lizardman) and Kraehi. It formed as just the two of us, I would write, maintain the code and website, and handle customer service. She would draw.

We would open up commissions when we needed a bit more money. Which happened more often when Kraehi felt that she no longer wanted to do the group thing as a job, but had no other job and wanted money to go out, buy stuff on Second Life, etc.

I owe a few people some stories. They're way past due. And I don't take any more commissions due to that. But Kraehi was asked before any postings of commissions were made, and when they commission was requested, she was asked whether she wanted to do it. Kraehi was 100% on board with all the art commissions.

As I pointed out to many of the people who were still waiting on their art, I couldn't force Kraehi to draw. And unfortunately the money was spent on bills, fun, etc. When things were souring, I went to try to get some guest artists to take over for her, maybe finish some of her work, but I was running into problems with the artists not having enough time to do so.

In the end, after I kicked Kraehi out of the group, I offered to refund when I got money to do so, find another artist to fulfill the commissions, or allow them to have Kraehi finish them on her own.

I'm not blameless, but all the art-based commissions were offered with Kraehi's full approval. If she failed to come through, there was nothing I could do. If I could draw near her level, I would have been glad to have fulfilled them myself.

I'm glad things are getting resolved for this commissioner, but those who feel that I booked up Kraehi without her acknowledgment are wrong. I never took a single commission for the group that she didn't approve of.