artists_beware | Help with thrown away commission (Reply)

Hey guys, I'm really confused as to what to do about this...

About 2 months ago I was commissioned to do a badge for

snowfox19. I did the badge, he paid, done deal. He told me to wait and mail his badge because he wanted to commission me for a few other things as well. No problem. He never did commission me for the other things, but questioned where his badge was, though he had never given me a mailing address. He changed his mind, he wanted his badge NOW. At the time I had no money and my friends were over for AC, so I told him after AnthroCon I would gladly mail his badge to him. He said no problem, though was a bit snarky about it ("You said ASAP but okay =P")

Now here's the problem. I had a TON of badges soooo graciously laminated by

huskie666 while at the con, and when she gave them back to me I put them in a box in my car so they wouldn't get lost whilst at the con. The day we got back from the con, my friends and I crashed and slept forever. While we were sleeping, my dad cleaned out my car and apparently threw away the badges in the box because they "didn't look like anything important". Several of them were gifts so I didn't care so much, but one of them was

snowfox19's commission!

I feel so horrible about this, I've never had anything like this happen to me. I've always been very timely in mailing out commissions and have never had any bad feedback on Furbid or in general as to arrival of commissions etc. I really just hate this, it sounds so unprofessional to say "oh, my dad cleaned out my car and threw away your commission". I'm sorry, I'm only 18 and I still live at home. I can't control what my parents do to my stuff, as immature as it sounds.

I don't have the money to refund him, and in a way I feel I shouldn't have to because I showed him the finished product. I told him it wouldn't be laminated when I mailed it to him, and he said that was fine, and I went out of my way to get it laminated and it gets thrown away. What should I say to him? I was thinking of offering colatteral, another badge, no problem at all. He hasn't been online for me to explain the situation to him...plus duh I know he's going to leave me bad feedback on Furbid.

I just really hate this scenerio, it makes me feel so immature and unprofessional. I hate saying "it wasn't my fault", even though it wasn't....argh.

Help? :(