Now, over the years I've come to notice a slight trend in "Scams" going up, and "Intelligence" going down, what I'm going on about is comissions and the reaction that happens when something goes wrong.

The term "Scam" is thrown around like confetti in the furry community, it's sad to see, what's even more depressing is the fact that when the user in question is reported, the inevitable "Witch Hunt" begins, now I agree that users who purposely scam to try and get free work/money is something that should be reported and spread to others so that they can be warned of this persons intentions, what I don't agree with is the witchhunt that happens afterwards where the user is consistantly harrassed and targetted for being a "Scammer".

Now, I'm not defending scammers as some ..."People" have come foreward and said to me, no I'm definately against scamming in any form, what I am against is people wrongly stamping the term "Scammer" on someone that made a mistake, I know some people in the community will not believe this because they tend to live in a fantasy world full of gumdrops and rainbows, but we're human, we make mistakes and it happens.

Now, when it comes to the term scam it usually implies that the person is using trickery or deception to gain either free art, money or something else, this is completely different to the term "Stealing".

Stealing implies that a user forcefully took something from someone/somewhere, like when a user posts art made by another user, thats theft, if a user tricks someone into giving them art, thats scamming, major difference.

Now, a lot of people give me the reason of reporting users like this to "Warn other artists to prevent this from happening", but, as we can see this doesn't work because people do not have any safety guidelines in their terms of service or any safe methods of doing the work, or they get ahead of themselves expecting every single person to pay for artwork, this is a niave and moronic way to look at it, especially from a business standpoint.

Lets take a scenario here shall we?

Artist A offers comissions for X amount of $, customer comes forward and states they want this comission for $X and states they will pay them "When they get paid", Artist A accepted the comission and starts working on it before any payment has been made, Artist A then sends sketches/rough work (with watermark) to the customer, customer comes forward and states they do not have the cash to make this comission, Artist A then bitches on how they "Scammed" them and now spreads around that the customer is a scam artist.

Who is in the wrong here?

I bet over 50% of people who read this will say "The customer is wrong because he didn't pay for the work", right?

No, the Artist is wrong for starting work the person didn't pay for, therefor wasting their own time and effort.

How can this be prevented?

It's pretty simple really and i'll put it in nice clear to read text for people to read.

DO NOT work on any comissions until you recieve any form of preliminary payment from the customer

Why should you wait? It's simple really:

1) You reduce the chances of people scamming you out of art
2) Reduces the inevitable fallout from something like this (Such as witch hunts etc)
3) You look less of an idiot
4) The user who (If they are) scams you, will get -nothing-
5) You don't waste your time if the following is put into effect

If you state in your terms of service that a "Pre Payment is required for time spent on the comission" then they cannot report you for "Fraud" as its stated as a TOS for buying your work, ontop of that you make money and the user doesn't get the artwork in question if they don't pay the full amount, this also stops any form of "Scamming" as you do not work on anything until payment is made, if the user hasn't got the money? OH WELL, move onto the next person, rinse and repeat.

Something as simple as this will stop people from scamming you, it's not hard, it's easy to understand and overal it stops this mindless witchhunt mentality people get into when someone reports another user for their own incompetance.


Remember people, stupidity isn't an excuse for your own mistakes.