I feel this needs its own thread at this point. As for giving advice, I started ordering custom in 1998 and still do this day. I cannot possibly count how many; hundreds and hundreds.

I see a huge trend here with those of you who have been burned on customers remaining silent. I have no idea why. Not only does that embolden the producer/model who's burning you but it also puts more customers in harms way. I'd be super pissed off if I got burned on a custom only to find out that several others were burned before me and stayed silent.

Let's get a few things straight:

1) No one's obligated to take on a custom project. Taking someone's money upfront is quite a big deal. What you're saying is that you have time to do it and your life is in the right place to take on the project. If you're slammed, depressed, or your life is a dumpster fire, don't take anyone's money.

2) A red flag should go up at the first sign something's wrong. The first time communication stops or the first deadline missed without any explication. You should reach Defcon 1 as soon as multiple excuses are being made. And producer/model who's not a scam artist will quickly refund your money when something beyond their control prevents them from doing the project.

3) Once you realize you've been burned, I have no idea why you're not plastering the details all over the board and social media. To me, at that point I've been burned, I need to warn others.

.which brings me to this; when have you been burned?

You pay on the 1st and the producer/model says they'll have the project done on the 7th. The 7th comes and goes but you get no communication. You don't want to pester them, so now it's the 9th and again, they have not reached out to you. Chances you've been burned at this point? 80%

Finally you reach out. They had to take their cat to the vet, their car got a flat tire, bad weather, and locusts. Chances you've now been burned? 90%. They set a new date that it'll be done, after the locust infestation is gone. Now it's the 15th.

The 15th comes and goes, again, without them reaching out. You've now been burned and should go nuclear to recover your money and warn others. Any excuse past this point is only an attempt to hold you off. At this point, anyone reputable would have refunded your payment.

So..what to do?

You can deal with it anyway you like. Some guys just sweep it under the rug and chalk it up to a deal gone wrong. They don't have the time or energy. That's fine. I'm not saying my method of dealing with it is the way to go or right for everyone. I take it legal. I send a very formal email to the model letting them know that at this point I consider what they did to be theft of services which is a misdemeanor crime in SC. I tell them that unless I get an immediate refund I'll be filling out a police report and file in small claims court. That, of course, if I can't reverse the charges.

I just got a custom yesterday that was done completely wrong. Here's how that should go with someone who's reputable: (attached) She did it wrong, immediately apologized, and is re-doing it today. What notable is that when I pointed it was wrong, her apology came instantly.

The UMD has a review system for customs, but hardly anyone uses it, whether the experience was good or bad. It would be much better for everyone if people buying customs left reviews of how the experience went. MM can build tools, but it's up to the rest of us to make the effort to use them, for the benefit of everyone.

What I'm mainly addressing is how to handle it once you've been burned, and a huge rather sad trend I'm seeing on this forum of burned customers remaining silent, thereby putting everyone else in harm's way.

I've only ever had one done, by Most wam, and they were very good indeed.

Which is why people should leave reviews. That would let the rest of the community know how things had gone and build up a kind of "reputation score" for each custom producer. Suppose a producer had 20 reviews, 19 good and one bad. You then know that producer has a 1-in-20 chance of messing up, and you can decide if those odds are acceptable.

Of course it's rather harder to re-shoot a WAM scene than the kind of thing in your example, all that seems to cost the model is time to re-do it, rather different if you've used $100 of supplies and have to replace them before you even can re-shoot.

We've done customs, though only occasionally, and so far had a 100% success rate. But we price high, set expeations at 3 months to delivery, and only accept ones that fit, or at least close to, our house style. Rainwear WAM for example wasn't something I'd originally thought of but given we already did girls in boilersuits and overalls it was a very short leap, someone commissioned one, we did it, they went away happy and we found it sold, and I found it did work for me, so since then we've done more of them, and they've been well received. But if someone wanted stockings and suspenders and melon-insertion, that's not our scene, even on our kinkier store. But I have just quoted a ballpark £400 for the food-filled transparent latex catsuit someone is asking about elsethread, as PVC, latex, and catsuits, are also things we already do. Probably won't get a bite but if someone wants that scene, that's the minimum price we'd look at. Like I said on one of the other threads, part of the problem is that WAM customs are often badly underpriced for the amount of work involved, in an unwinnable race to the bottom.

It's a good point.

If there is a tendency to keep quiet - it's probably only come from UMD attempting to encourage people who use the forum to discuss their custom experiences in a fair and reasonable manner.

We have had several cases over the years of unmitigated tirades which pretty much anount to libel; or, most commonly, hot headed members who, after having to wait a couple of days too long for a reply jump to the worst possible conclusions. Melodrama ensues before all the facts are in.

There are cases which are absolutely nothing less than scams - but many others can fall into a moral grey area which arise due to anything from honest mistakes or the result of mis/(non!) communication or laziness. Dishonesty might really be judged to be subjective.

But maybe it has gone too far back the other way and people are being too hesitant?

In the case of most grievances (not just dissatisfaction with details of visual narrative, but non-delivery etc.) the first course of action should be to deal with the problem privately and if - after a reasonable period and effort there is no redress a more public discussion may be entered into.

You may always contact one of us (Mods) to ask for our advice on how to proceed or to check whether or it it is the appropriate time to be vocal if you are unsure.

UMD offers no guarantees for the delivery of customs, nor does it offer a mediation service for external transactions but, in practise, MM tends to be very public spirited in wanting to ensure dispute communications taking place via UMD servers are conducted peacefully and reasonably.

I'd say just stick to the facts. I'm not saying you have to start at "so and so is a thief" thread 3 days after a deadline is missed.

However, you can give a head's up when you get the sinking feeling that something is horribly wrong. If you're a producer/model is it YOUR REPONSBILITY to stay in good contact with your client if there's an issue. It's not the customer's job to chase you down.

So if I'm planning on getting a custom from "Becky" (made up name) and in the mean time, two others on this forum already paid her, it's past the delivery dates and there's no contact, I certainly want to know that info.

It can be as simple as this: Hey, paid Becky on the first and she said delivery would be on the 5th. It's now the 8th and she's not responding to any of my messages." I feel that's a fair post. If that customer is lying, Becky is more than welcome to remit proof that he's lying and MM can delete that thread.

Maybe we should gather all of these threads and form a new "Group" for discussing customs?

A customs forum isn't a bad idea honestly.

I would love this. Lets customers get reputations as well, and could lead to more standardized ways of doing things.

This just prompted me to look at sticking up a review for my latest scene, but I can't as I already have for that producer. I do put something in the forum thread for my custom scenes when they go live here, and where applicable on external sites as well. It's worth recognising that there may well be 20 positive reviews and 1 negative but those 20 people might have had a hundred scenes between them!

Pricing is a tricky one, it is often difficult to predict how much time a scene will take (I've one in the works and I suspect it will be more work than it appears. (Al may well say most of mine end up as more work than they appear...)

There is another aspect to customs of course the expectation, the customer wants "ankle socks" (for example) and has a moan when the model wears ankle length socks that aren't the ankle socks they expected... If clothing is important then put in links to what you want.

I think this would be great! Anybody want to be a mod?

MM

I nominate Robby.

Sure!

I tentatively volunteer but would like to know expectations first to be sure I can do it.
I've done a bunch of customs with multiple producers.

I second that!

In the end if no one wants to, I guess "The Masturtater" can come back.