Recently, as you may or may not have heard, I Started got into a quarrel to say with an artist (which has been yet to be resolved still) because I have not yet received the owed art from them. Well in my spare time I've been thinking to myself how this could have been prevented on both sides. Legally yes I am in the right as well as the administration on the site are on my side, seeing as the artist no longer has access to her account. But I've also thought of things I could have done better. I definitely could have approached a lot of it better. I've also been thinking a lot lately about how I could have better protected myself. I've been witness to both sides. I have a lot of artist friends ( Love you all <3) and when something happens to them they have something to fall back on.

Their TOS.

Now I was thinking a few days ago, as well as I discussed my thoughts with a friend of mine about this. Why can't a TOS exist on both sides? Why can't Commissioners have a sort of "Terms of Commission" to outline what they expect from a project. If artists in this fandom want to be treated like "professionals" why can't the "customers" have some way to protect against themselves.

In the real world (or a world I'm familiar with "retail") We have something called returns. They happen 100's of times a day. When a product fails to meet expectations they return to the origin of the product and ask for a refund.

Now hold up! I know what you're thinking. Commissioning is DEFINITELY different than returns at a store. And 99% of the time I would never ask for a refund. I've gotten plenty of art I hated but I wouldn't ask for a refund just because the nature of this fandom and my respect for it. but I wanted to use it as an example.

What I'm trying to get at is when I accept a commission from a artist I'll be asked (some not all the time, depending on the artist) to accept their terms and conditions. It's usually just standard stuff, refund polices, pricing etc etc. But why can't that go both ways? Why can't the commissioner devise their own policies? I want to type up something simple, just a few bullet points on what I expect from a product. Something like, I wanted a rough due date and listing how to contact me. A few very simple things just to have something in writing in case I have another situation such as the one I'm currently dealing with. If an artist is accepting money from me I would expect they could read 9-10 lines of text before accepting payment.

I know this may sound unnecessary to some. But I consider any and all transactions dealing with legal tender to be very serious. That's just how I am.

I'd love to get some feedback on this before I decide to make one.

-J