Artist Beware: Underthedarkness
Dec. 31st, 2018 04:40 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
ravensmoon666.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
artistsbeware2_archiveWHO: Underthedarkness
WHERE: Furaffinity, Toyhouse, Trello.
WHAT: A 40$ full body flat and a 90$ YCH.
WHEN: 05/01/2018 for the flat colours and 05/19/2018 for the YCH until the current date.
EXPLAIN:
I will say in advanced I do not have as much proof of all of this as I'd like, we used to talk over notes for previous commissions but after she invited me to her Discord server we talked over Discord DM's. I never had her added as a friend on there since I could just DM her because I was in her server. While this was going on I had closed our DM conversation by accident as I close ones I am not currently using and only found out about her jumping ship after I went to message her and noticed she removed me from her server (or just deleted it all together.) I cannot open our DM's unless she is a friend or I know her ID which I do not. Everything below is mostly written from memory with rough date estimates.
I used to commission Under a lot and didn't have that many issues outside of her being very slow with commissions (From personal experience and dates I had noticed on her public Trello from other people commissioning her). Recently I had commissioned her for a reference of my persona and she did a really amazing job (I did end up paying her extra money to rush it though as I wanted it done soon) so when I saw she was steadily posting journals talking about how she was desperate for money and opening for emergency commissions I felt bad and had messaged her asking her if I could commission her to do a dragon-taur rendition of my persona. She said she had never drawn one before but she could try. I told her that if it was too hard for her and she ended up not liking it she could scrap it and chose another one of my characters to draw instead. She agreed, I linked her my characters to chose from if stuff went wrong and we exchanged details.
She had been posting a lot of journals still talking about how she needed money and posting YCH's. She was having a hard time selling this one YCH commission I liked a lot but I didn't have the money for. She had reduced it from 100 down to 80 before removing it later, and I ended up messaging her to ask if it sold. She told me no that she didn't think anyone was interested so she just removed her. I asked her if she could hold it till next pay period and she agreed. She told me I could either pay the reduced price or more but it was my choice and I met her in the middle and sent 90$
About a month later she gives me an extremely rough sketch (basically just the body roughly sketched and the top half being the anatomy skeleton shapes) I approved it and she went quiet.
I didn't hear much from her but kept an eye on her journals. She majorly had journals over the next few months talking about breaking up with her ex, losing her job, getting a new job, family problems etc. She kept taking on more commissions, even doing in-stream ones and not really working on her others.
Sometime in October I noticed the chargeback date was coming close and given her history with being slow on commissions and noticing how bad she "needed money" I was worried that she wouldn't get my commission done for a while and messaged her telling her I was sorry and I felt like an asshole but that I had to put my foot down despite knowing everything she was going through but I was going to be needed a refund. She messaged me telling me that she understood and that I wasn't an asshole but that since she had no money it would be a while, but if I gave her another month she would get the art done. I told her I loved her artwork and wouldn't mind waiting but if it went further than that I would have to go down the refund route, she said she understood and we went on. (My mistake as I should have started the dispute then)
Occasionally she'd send me a message telling me she would work on my comm soon, and halfway through the time she started working on the YCH and sent me a sketch. It barely had any work added to it, basically just went over the already drawn outlines and reduced the characters breast size (something I had asked as my character is supposed to have small breast and the YCH by default had large ones) I approved it and she went silent once again.
The date for a month had come and gone, I even gave her a few days longer just in case before I went to Paypal to open a case, I knew I was already too late for the first commission but thought I still had a day or two for the second one (I opened both anyways) and Paypal automatically declined them because of them being outside the date. I knew the only hope I'd get my money back was if I messaged her so I went and messaged her telling her I would need a refund. She said that she thought I would at least give her "till the end of the month" (when I asked for a refund the month before it was midway through the month, not at the end) and that she didn't have the funds but would give me a refund when she could. Not too soon later I saw she had uploaded a journal saying she would be refunding EVERYONE on her queue and that she was depressed and no longer felt like drawing so she felt this would be easier. She said she would be looking at how much she owed everyone and would post how much she owed everyone on a public list. She also started "spamming" her TH trying to sell her characters for refunds.
A few days later she posted a journal stating that someone had forced a chargeback on her and she was in the negative so refunds would take longer.
Halfway through December, she sent me a message saying she would be able to give me at least a partial refund in January and I told her I was happy she was keeping me updated and thanked her. She had also moved her refund list to her profile info.
12/30/2018: I was going through my Discord servers and noticed that hers was no longer on my list. I had a sinking feeling and went to check her FA and sure enough, it's disabled. I tried all kinds of methods to try to find our closed chat to no avail, I remembered a user that used to be a friend of hers/ on the refund list so I decided to message them and see if they knew anything/ at least knew her Discord ID so I find our messages.
12/31/2018: I woke up to a message from the said friend and they said they were pretty sure she deleted her discord as it no longer showed them as friends anymore and that she wasn't answering her text but if they found out anything they'd let me know. Before I could respond they then sent me another one saying that Under had blocked them on everything, including Twitter and Instagram and that it was heartbreaking as they were best friends. So I'm pretty sure Under has completely jumped ship. (I have these notes still if screencaps are needed but since it was kinda personal I didn't feel comfortable/ thinking it would be allowed)
I saw that her TH was still active so I left a shout telling her I was appalled and that I would be writing an AB/ trying to go through my bank.
PROOF:
Proof of payment: https://i.imgur.com/6bQZYYc.png
Announcing refunds: https://i.imgur.com/1QIy2fH.png
Chargeback journal: https://i.imgur.com/bN8Q3ZQ.png
Refund list journal: https://i.imgur.com/AiG3nwi.png According to this she owes people in total (including me) at least 1,271$
I honestly somewhat wouldn't mind just having the art completed but in the end, I'd rather just have my money back and be done with it. I'm very upset with her and myself as I knew better than to let it go outside the chargeback date but I did it anyway. I'm thinking about contacting my bank to see if there is anything that can be done from other transactions I've had with her but even then it won't add up to the amount she owes me.
Edit: I had a user on Furaffinity who is also involved with this whole debacle message me on FA because apparently Under forgot to remove them from their friendslist and they were still able to access her ID so I was able to retrieve my messages! I had actually screwed up in how much she owed me because I had forgotten that I had commissioned her for another full-body in-between the taur one and the YCH that she completed. The taur one she actually charged me 50$ to cover the fee so she actually owes me 140$ I also screwed up on the timeline as well because she gave me a WIP of the YCH BEFORE I asked for a refund, not during the month I gave her to do the work before asking for it.
Proof:
New Paypal transaction cap: https://i.imgur.com/mZ87x9g.png
Messages: (Warning in advanced, some of the images below are NSFW. I will mark which ones. I also cut out the parts of the convo which are literally nothing but me sending references and the other commission she did complete but I can screencap those if the mods would like me to.)
Discussion of the first piece: https://i.imgur.com/CPy9e2C.png
(Context, she's offered to do art for people who buy her adopts she wants via journal in the past. I've bought her two before in exchange for art and I had offered again when she was wanting a shark girl and since she wasn't sure she offered to just let me commission her normally.)
Discussion continued: https://i.imgur.com/9MQuBFw.png
Her sending WIP of taur piece: https://i.imgur.com/itbpqTX.png Nsfw for artistic nudity.
(Context, when I say slot it was because she had a journal open for emergency commissions because she needed money and she kept advertising the last slot she had open so I wanted to nab it to help, that was the commission she ended up finishing.)
Her completing previously mentioned piece and discussion of YCH: https://i.imgur.com/9mxd6si.png Nsfw for artistic nudity.
YCH picture (NSFW): https://imgur.com/7lJEcbI
Discussion of YCH continued: https://i.imgur.com/VkpgCbn.png NSFW
Discussion of YCH continued 2: https://i.imgur.com/RMFZAZK.png NSFW
Asking for an ETA since I hadn't heard from her in four months: https://i.imgur.com/4GI15ho.png NSFW
WIP she gave (NSFW): https://i.imgur.com/dDOAs4K.png
Asking for a refund: https://i.imgur.com/Ag58rdr.png (Nsfw)
After giving her a month asking for the refund again/ final messages: https://i.imgur.com/kvMFF4U.png
If the mods need me to screencap anything else or censor anything please do let me know!
Edit 2: After sending in a ticket on PayPal I received a reply saying
Dear [Legal name],
Thank you for contacting PayPal.
If you did not open a dispute within the timeframe indicated on the transaction details, you aren’t covered by PayPal Purchase Protection. However, you can still file a report online through the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3.
The IC3 was established as a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to serve as a means to receive Internet related criminal complaints.
The IC3 accepts online Internet crime complaints from either the actual victim or from a third party to the complainant. They will process your complaint if they receive accurate and complete information from you. When filing a complaint, provide the following information:
Your name
Your mailing address
Your telephone number
The name, address, telephone number, and Web address, if available, of the individual or organization you believe defrauded you.
Specific details on how, why, and when you believe you were defrauded.
Any other relevant information you believe is necessary to support your complaint.
You can file a complaint with the IC3 at www.ic3.gov.
To learn more about PayPal Purchase Protection, go to www.paypal.com and click Security at the bottom of the page.
It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing PayPal.
Sincerely,
Lavanya
Protection Services Department
PayPal
Copyright © 1999-2019 PayPal. All rights reserved.
So I will be contacting them when I get a chance and will keep this Beware updated.
WHERE: Furaffinity, Toyhouse, Trello.
WHAT: A 40$ full body flat and a 90$ YCH.
WHEN: 05/01/2018 for the flat colours and 05/19/2018 for the YCH until the current date.
EXPLAIN:
I will say in advanced I do not have as much proof of all of this as I'd like, we used to talk over notes for previous commissions but after she invited me to her Discord server we talked over Discord DM's. I never had her added as a friend on there since I could just DM her because I was in her server. While this was going on I had closed our DM conversation by accident as I close ones I am not currently using and only found out about her jumping ship after I went to message her and noticed she removed me from her server (or just deleted it all together.) I cannot open our DM's unless she is a friend or I know her ID which I do not. Everything below is mostly written from memory with rough date estimates.
I used to commission Under a lot and didn't have that many issues outside of her being very slow with commissions (From personal experience and dates I had noticed on her public Trello from other people commissioning her). Recently I had commissioned her for a reference of my persona and she did a really amazing job (I did end up paying her extra money to rush it though as I wanted it done soon) so when I saw she was steadily posting journals talking about how she was desperate for money and opening for emergency commissions I felt bad and had messaged her asking her if I could commission her to do a dragon-taur rendition of my persona. She said she had never drawn one before but she could try. I told her that if it was too hard for her and she ended up not liking it she could scrap it and chose another one of my characters to draw instead. She agreed, I linked her my characters to chose from if stuff went wrong and we exchanged details.
She had been posting a lot of journals still talking about how she needed money and posting YCH's. She was having a hard time selling this one YCH commission I liked a lot but I didn't have the money for. She had reduced it from 100 down to 80 before removing it later, and I ended up messaging her to ask if it sold. She told me no that she didn't think anyone was interested so she just removed her. I asked her if she could hold it till next pay period and she agreed. She told me I could either pay the reduced price or more but it was my choice and I met her in the middle and sent 90$
About a month later she gives me an extremely rough sketch (basically just the body roughly sketched and the top half being the anatomy skeleton shapes) I approved it and she went quiet.
I didn't hear much from her but kept an eye on her journals. She majorly had journals over the next few months talking about breaking up with her ex, losing her job, getting a new job, family problems etc. She kept taking on more commissions, even doing in-stream ones and not really working on her others.
Sometime in October I noticed the chargeback date was coming close and given her history with being slow on commissions and noticing how bad she "needed money" I was worried that she wouldn't get my commission done for a while and messaged her telling her I was sorry and I felt like an asshole but that I had to put my foot down despite knowing everything she was going through but I was going to be needed a refund. She messaged me telling me that she understood and that I wasn't an asshole but that since she had no money it would be a while, but if I gave her another month she would get the art done. I told her I loved her artwork and wouldn't mind waiting but if it went further than that I would have to go down the refund route, she said she understood and we went on. (My mistake as I should have started the dispute then)
Occasionally she'd send me a message telling me she would work on my comm soon, and halfway through the time she started working on the YCH and sent me a sketch. It barely had any work added to it, basically just went over the already drawn outlines and reduced the characters breast size (something I had asked as my character is supposed to have small breast and the YCH by default had large ones) I approved it and she went silent once again.
The date for a month had come and gone, I even gave her a few days longer just in case before I went to Paypal to open a case, I knew I was already too late for the first commission but thought I still had a day or two for the second one (I opened both anyways) and Paypal automatically declined them because of them being outside the date. I knew the only hope I'd get my money back was if I messaged her so I went and messaged her telling her I would need a refund. She said that she thought I would at least give her "till the end of the month" (when I asked for a refund the month before it was midway through the month, not at the end) and that she didn't have the funds but would give me a refund when she could. Not too soon later I saw she had uploaded a journal saying she would be refunding EVERYONE on her queue and that she was depressed and no longer felt like drawing so she felt this would be easier. She said she would be looking at how much she owed everyone and would post how much she owed everyone on a public list. She also started "spamming" her TH trying to sell her characters for refunds.
A few days later she posted a journal stating that someone had forced a chargeback on her and she was in the negative so refunds would take longer.
Halfway through December, she sent me a message saying she would be able to give me at least a partial refund in January and I told her I was happy she was keeping me updated and thanked her. She had also moved her refund list to her profile info.
12/30/2018: I was going through my Discord servers and noticed that hers was no longer on my list. I had a sinking feeling and went to check her FA and sure enough, it's disabled. I tried all kinds of methods to try to find our closed chat to no avail, I remembered a user that used to be a friend of hers/ on the refund list so I decided to message them and see if they knew anything/ at least knew her Discord ID so I find our messages.
12/31/2018: I woke up to a message from the said friend and they said they were pretty sure she deleted her discord as it no longer showed them as friends anymore and that she wasn't answering her text but if they found out anything they'd let me know. Before I could respond they then sent me another one saying that Under had blocked them on everything, including Twitter and Instagram and that it was heartbreaking as they were best friends. So I'm pretty sure Under has completely jumped ship. (I have these notes still if screencaps are needed but since it was kinda personal I didn't feel comfortable/ thinking it would be allowed)
I saw that her TH was still active so I left a shout telling her I was appalled and that I would be writing an AB/ trying to go through my bank.
PROOF:
Proof of payment: https://i.imgur.com/6bQZYYc.png
Announcing refunds: https://i.imgur.com/1QIy2fH.png
Chargeback journal: https://i.imgur.com/bN8Q3ZQ.png
Refund list journal: https://i.imgur.com/AiG3nwi.png According to this she owes people in total (including me) at least 1,271$
I honestly somewhat wouldn't mind just having the art completed but in the end, I'd rather just have my money back and be done with it. I'm very upset with her and myself as I knew better than to let it go outside the chargeback date but I did it anyway. I'm thinking about contacting my bank to see if there is anything that can be done from other transactions I've had with her but even then it won't add up to the amount she owes me.
Edit: I had a user on Furaffinity who is also involved with this whole debacle message me on FA because apparently Under forgot to remove them from their friendslist and they were still able to access her ID so I was able to retrieve my messages! I had actually screwed up in how much she owed me because I had forgotten that I had commissioned her for another full-body in-between the taur one and the YCH that she completed. The taur one she actually charged me 50$ to cover the fee so she actually owes me 140$ I also screwed up on the timeline as well because she gave me a WIP of the YCH BEFORE I asked for a refund, not during the month I gave her to do the work before asking for it.
Proof:
New Paypal transaction cap: https://i.imgur.com/mZ87x9g.png
Messages: (Warning in advanced, some of the images below are NSFW. I will mark which ones. I also cut out the parts of the convo which are literally nothing but me sending references and the other commission she did complete but I can screencap those if the mods would like me to.)
Discussion of the first piece: https://i.imgur.com/CPy9e2C.png
(Context, she's offered to do art for people who buy her adopts she wants via journal in the past. I've bought her two before in exchange for art and I had offered again when she was wanting a shark girl and since she wasn't sure she offered to just let me commission her normally.)
Discussion continued: https://i.imgur.com/9MQuBFw.png
Her sending WIP of taur piece: https://i.imgur.com/itbpqTX.png Nsfw for artistic nudity.
(Context, when I say slot it was because she had a journal open for emergency commissions because she needed money and she kept advertising the last slot she had open so I wanted to nab it to help, that was the commission she ended up finishing.)
Her completing previously mentioned piece and discussion of YCH: https://i.imgur.com/9mxd6si.png Nsfw for artistic nudity.
YCH picture (NSFW): https://imgur.com/7lJEcbI
Discussion of YCH continued: https://i.imgur.com/VkpgCbn.png NSFW
Discussion of YCH continued 2: https://i.imgur.com/RMFZAZK.png NSFW
Asking for an ETA since I hadn't heard from her in four months: https://i.imgur.com/4GI15ho.png NSFW
WIP she gave (NSFW): https://i.imgur.com/dDOAs4K.png
Asking for a refund: https://i.imgur.com/Ag58rdr.png (Nsfw)
After giving her a month asking for the refund again/ final messages: https://i.imgur.com/kvMFF4U.png
If the mods need me to screencap anything else or censor anything please do let me know!
Edit 2: After sending in a ticket on PayPal I received a reply saying
Dear [Legal name],
Thank you for contacting PayPal.
If you did not open a dispute within the timeframe indicated on the transaction details, you aren’t covered by PayPal Purchase Protection. However, you can still file a report online through the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3.
The IC3 was established as a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to serve as a means to receive Internet related criminal complaints.
The IC3 accepts online Internet crime complaints from either the actual victim or from a third party to the complainant. They will process your complaint if they receive accurate and complete information from you. When filing a complaint, provide the following information:
Your name
Your mailing address
Your telephone number
The name, address, telephone number, and Web address, if available, of the individual or organization you believe defrauded you.
Specific details on how, why, and when you believe you were defrauded.
Any other relevant information you believe is necessary to support your complaint.
You can file a complaint with the IC3 at www.ic3.gov.
To learn more about PayPal Purchase Protection, go to www.paypal.com and click Security at the bottom of the page.
It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing PayPal.
Sincerely,
Lavanya
Protection Services Department
PayPal
Copyright © 1999-2019 PayPal. All rights reserved.
So I will be contacting them when I get a chance and will keep this Beware updated.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 04:35 am (UTC)I went ahead and put this through, but could you please crop out the proxy in the journal cap from the individual talking about their commission.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 05:39 am (UTC)https://artistsbeware.info/beware/submissions/beware-underthedarkness-r127/
no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-06 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 01:54 am (UTC)I did send her an e-mail via the email attached to the paypal transaction, so I'm hoping to hear something back and, if I do, I will share it here.
EDIT: No response, and after some digging it seems many accounts have been shut down or changed so I did initiate contact through paypal, which basically now gives her a deadline of the 28th before I escalate it to a claim.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 06:16 am (UTC)If she does see this Beware or something and ends up messaging you to cancel the chargeback (because even if she has deleted it I'm pretty sure they'd still yoink it out of her back since it was connected.) do NOT cancel it unless she produces artwork, because once you cancel it you cannot reopen it.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 06:36 am (UTC)I honestly didn't have an issue waiting so long as I was kept updated, since I get being in over your head and needing time. But I probably wouldn't have even realized she had bounced for a few weeks still if not for these bewares.
Unfortunately, this whole experience though has made me a little leery of "help my friend by buying (blank)" journals, because that's how I came to commission her and it's kind of imploded since then.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 06:57 am (UTC)Also just found a journal from someone on FA confirming even they, someone who had been close enough they spoke on the phone, has been blocked on all things.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 07:08 am (UTC)mod comment
Date: 2019-01-09 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-10 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-15 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 01:41 am (UTC)Resolution
Date: 2019-01-22 02:44 am (UTC)https://sta.sh/0zn3enj8i8d