thats great but as a business person myself I see a small flaw in your reasoning...what if when requesting that refund they say "sorry bro, no refunds and no cancellations allowed"? they can do that. artists just like regular business people can set policy's too.

well keep in mind I will be showing this before any work starts, if they don't think they can get it done in 9 months and they take it on anyway, then my policy supersedes theirs.
or if they tell me that they can't get it done in the time frame and i accept anyway, then it's my fault.

Another problem is that furrdom is a pretty insular environment and people talk. If artist X has a history of failing to fulfill his/her obligations, fans talk to one another. One of the reasons I was able to pay off my car a decade ago was a handful of "name" artists were failing on their commissions and I swooped in and did them instead. Earned me the ire of those artists and the friendship of those clients.

i don't care how insular the furry environment is. business is business and if a business has policy's set in place then thats the one thing the customer has no control over. if they don't like the policy they don't have to do business with them.

I'm not an artist but if i were my policy would be, up front non refundable down payment. no exceptions for any reason. If someone were to show me something like this journal i would turn down the commission because as a business person who knows how things really work, this would raise a red flag for me for me and i would be thinking this commissioner can go somewhere else cause frankly i wouldn't take the chance.

You and I are on the same page, then. I require 50% up front before I put pencil to paper, and the other 50% before I deliver a final product. This protects both me from doing work and not getting paid for it, and the client for paying for work and not getting it. That way, we're both motivated to complete the transaction.

excuse the lateness of the reply, i just saw yours
This journal is to insured that both me and the artist is on the same page, If the artist can not abide by what I want from them then their are more then able to turn me down without my feelings hurt.
what I want to avoid is the common situation of an artist taking money then never working on anything.
I don't care how many No refunds signs on their page, they don't do the work, they don't get my money.
if you went into a dinner that had you pay upfront then they never brought you your food, you wouldn't care what they policy was either.
there is an implied contract when commissioning. you give money, they give art.
if one side breaks the agreement then it is souly their fault and they must make up the losses.
If they don't believe they can get it done in 9 months then they should simply politely say no, they may quote their own policy that conflicts if they wish, but knowing the dead line allows them to be fair warned about the consequence.

thats like walking into a gas station and buying cigarettes and demanding that you not get ID'd when its the store or companies policy that you do. The store is likely to tell you to take a hike! in fact right now this exact example is something i have to deal with every day i work! its the same principle here. You cant go around demanding that artist change their policies just for you. If they do it for you they have to do it for everyone. Some of these people here make their living on commissions.

Let me put this in other terms. If I were an artist and you came to me and i require a 50% non refundable down payment for instance, and you tell me that i have 9 months to finish it...if i don't finish it or im in the middle of working on it because it took me longer then expected because of the complexity of other peoples commissions ahead of you or something happens that pulls my attention away from it for some reason, and you demanded a refund...i would be pointing at my policy of non refundable down payment and say "sorry, my business, my policy, no exceptions, I'm the artist and what i say over rides what you say." your sol, and no matter how much you complain, not one artist is going to take your side on that...well maybe a few will...but thats it, just a few. That's how business works.

I'm not trying to be confrontational here but i know a little something about this principle.

the carding rule is due to laws not the store.
and if you agree to get something done and then fail to do it, you refund the money, it doesn't matter what your policy is you failed to uphold your end of the bargain.
especially since you knew the time frame.
A business only lasts as long as it has costumer, something artists forget about i might add, At the place I work we have a return policy, 90 days. if they wait to open the item, say a Christmas present, then find out the box was empty, we messed up and we allow a return and refund if necessary.
business is making the costumer happy not themselves.

as you can see I commission alot of artists, if you were an artist I showed this to and you took my money then failed to produce the picture in the time line and failed to refund me, not only would I blacklist you, any person who came to me about you would hear about it.
In my company they call that the "Tell 10" rule, an unhappy person will tell about 10 others.
and if that happens enough you go out of business.
alot of artists do not adhere to basic business sense.
and setting a policy of no refunds while not giving a person their rightful picture is not policy it's theft.
they are stealing your money and giving you nothing in return. and it happens to artists to, look at the red hatted guy.

basically any artist that doesn't issue refunds when they fail to deliver in a 9 month period of time should not expect to be commissioned by me, and I would suggest others boycott them as well, their "policy" then amounts to creating art when they feel like it without any acknowledgment that you paid money for them to move their a$$! XD

I wish I had seen this sooner - I'd have a few more pics done by now, or the money back at least :|

Having said that, one artist isn't answering my notes, so maybe it wouldn't have helped XD Nice idea though.

I know right?!
dang money stealing artists XD

I totally agree with all of this. Everything. I have felt the pain of being ripped off by an artist... and there is no excuse. No way to generalize what has happened. I have been robbed a total of three times. All seemed well until after they received my money... after that they dropped off the face of the earth for months without warning. I sent a couple of notes that politely asking for a status update. They would claim to have forgotten. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Second note received no response. I never got my art or my refund. Now I actually spend time in each artists gallery, studying their posting habits before I even consider commissioning them.

I kinda want to borrow this... seriously.

it's all yours! want me to send you a note with it in layout form?
take a look at this too http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/482607/

That would be great! I meant to respond to this sooner, but life has kept me busy.

Sent ;)

Received. Thanks.

anytime!