Actually, those kinds of models and producers - broke - are the worst ones to order customs with. True scammers get revealed rather quickly and the word gets out.

But this group - the "paycheck to paycheck" group is arguably worse. The reason is they get a lot of good reviews when everything is going great, but then when anything goes south, the money as been spent, you're not getting the custom or a timely refund until they "rob peter to pay paul" meaning they need another sucker to pay them so they can issue the refund. Then guess what, now they're jammed up again, depending on getting more money to now do that customer's project.

I've deal with this group of producers/models far too often. They ethically shouldn't take anyone's money, yet they do and cross their fingers. This is why I no longer pay upfront for customs. Shoot the video, send me screenshots when it's done, I pay, you send the video. If you can't pay the models upfront? You're broke and I'm not gonna be your next guinea pig.

The only problem with that is there's then no protection for the model against being ripped off by the customer. You specify the scene, they shoot it, they send screenshots, and you just vanish, radio silence. After a while the model sticks the scene on their download store for 5% of the agreed price in the hope at least 20 people will like it enough to buy. You quietly sign up a new UMD account with a random username, log in, and rip off the model for 95% of the price. This actually happened here some years ago, it's not just theoretical.

If someone asked me to do a custom with no payment until it was shot I'd tell them to go take a running jump, I'd assume they were a scammer. 50% in advance, 50% on completion is the fairest way I've seen to protect both parties. The deposit should cover most of the out of pocket costs for the model doing the scene, while the customer is only risking half their money in advance. If you can think of a better way I'm all ears, but anything that doesn't offer some protection to both parties isn't a solution. There are scammers on both sides.

I feel you on this but don't feel too discouraged. I don't think this is a massive problem that everyone is having or that you will have with your customers, I'm sure they'll be happy with your work if they agree to your pricing. I think it's just this same group of people creating all these forum threads. This is the 3rd or 4th forum thread on this issue, and it's the same 5 people complaining and having this discussion. They're not even responding to anything anyone else is saying or inputting on these threads either. I imagine they're (understandably) too upset about losing their money and for them the only solution is to publicly shame these people until they get it back. I don't think there's any other purpose to this conversation, because MM would have already been doing the things they're suggesting if those things would be worth implementing. I have to question how often this problem occurs with all the other members on this site for MM to even do any extra work on this.

I created a new group for customs scenes and started it off with a discussion about contracts. Come join!

https://umd.net/groups/group/custom-scenes

Messmaster

I've had models come at me with this; "then I'm at risk." My reply? "I'm sorry but you're risking your time but I'm risking my money. Money wins." I actually haven't had any issues with my system. The models feel it's very fair.

I will pay for supplies upfront.

Used to be maybe once or twice a week. But now that these threads are up, many people have come forward at once, revealing a larger problem. I am revising some rules and things. One of the requirements to stay on the list will be to actually respond to inbox messages and forum complaints about the customs service. And for me to get involved at all, I'll have to see a contract. I hate to require that, but I literally don't have time to fix all these outside situations where the parties themselves didn't even take it seriously enough to do a contract. I've never once seen a customs contract.

Messmaster

...and this is why you really need to get everything locked down in writing. Because if you get burned, you don't have many places to turn and even if you wanted to take it to small claims court, you may have a rough road with 2 emails and confirmation of payment.

You're going to play it like that with me and I have members messaging me who you still owe money to? I feel in your current position, an apology would go a lot further.

yes, they're going to play it like that AND also change their profile thought 6-hours ago to "24-years and still going strong."
hey, at least they've put a time stamp for how long they've potentially been getting people lel it took 24-years, but it's out in the open

THIS!! PERFECTLY understandable reaction from the models.
I think that's why the customer should specify a minimum-maximum time limit:
i.e. 30 solid minutes of this same thing over and over... then for 10 minutes
let the models do whatever they want..or what the producer feels would maximize interest
& sales from as many possible viewers as possible.
30 solid minutes WOULD feel like forever to the models, I'm sure.
I would think 20 minutes would be more reasonable for them to maintain
without feeling claustrophobic or uncomfortable for too long. Again, just guessing.

Also, I strongly believe custom-ordering customers should personally physically experiment with whatever messy materials they want to see BEFORE ordering customs. That is certainly what *I* would do before shelling out $800. In fact, I would want to buy the supplies myself and ship them to the producer. But, again, I don't know if producers DON'T want custom-ordering customers to do that.

The change was from WOTD buy 1 get 1 free to the current 24 year one, that has been posted in the past by the way. We only post the WOTD one when we are WOTD and now that we are not WOTD, we changed it.

i dare say if a custom was truly a custom, then if the customer and producer agree (and neither harbors any unethical motives) all shall be right in this small corner of the world!

Where has the $800 value come from? I am watching this thread with interest.

If I was charging someone $800 for a video, it would be the best video ever! I could not live with the guilt of not providing what they wanted for that kinda pennies.

In the UK, small claims court online is a doddle.... used it many times before, and it should work throughout Europe (but Brexit may have broken that). BUT... totally useless for a problem with a US based provider.

Do big producers like MessyGirl use the public's suggestions for video shoots? I know we write down every suggestion sent to us (although some are not really practical).

Maybe producers could list this weeks/months top 5 video custom suggestions (without mentioning names). The public vote and eventually that person will get his custom, but at a much better rate with better returns for the producer?

Or are the custom suggestions just too far out there as far as content goes?

I am probably being naive

Tara xx

I proposed a kind of 'customs cooperative' to MessMaster a few years ago. It was a no go on the UMD site because crowdfunding is not allowed on the forum. So this would have to take place externally. It's potentially complicated because nothing actually changes for the custom provider other than more people to deal with who have a smaller stake. My original idea was to act as agent so that the producer was shielded from that chaos.

Well I was thinking that said video would be released as a standard video release, nothing custom.
No crowdfunding angle to it. Just suggest the top five custom requests received and make the most popular one after a vote as a standard video release.
No different to voting for 'who gets gunged' or 'What do we use' votes that pop up all the time.

But.... people with particular fetishes are probably not going to get their video voted for I suppose.
Also, do producers rely on these private custom videos for decent lump sum incomes?

Difficult. I'll shut up now

Tara xx

Thank you for responding to my post, but it doesn't answer my question regarding the wam material. Is it a good idea for the custom-ordering customer to experiment themselves
with certain materials? Then, when they're ready to pay for a custom, either send the producer
a specific recipe - which I assume a customer would send to a producer anyway , but, my point is for them to physically test these substances themselves before ordering a custom to make sure they are satisfied. Or, even better, have the customer order and ship the wam materials themselves to the producer prior to the shoot? Is that a good idea?

Perfectly reasonable questions, and TBH everyone will have their own take on it, and everyone's revenue flow will be different. Here's my view, note other producers may have very different takes though.

We do customs and are on the approved list, and have been since it was first set up. However customs are only an occasional part of the business for us. They're much harder work and higher risk than just shooting our own content.

Suppose I've planned a general Saturation Hall scene where one of the girls, wearing tracksuit trousers and a crop-top, is supposed to be made to sit in a gateaux, stand up so we can see the results, sit back down in it, and then have custard poured down inside her trousers while sitting in the cake mess. But as this is part way into a scene, when the girls get to that bit they forget the order and the girl in the tracksuit has the custard poured down her trousers while standing up, and then sits in the cake, with leaking custard stains already showing through her trousers from inside. Now, if it's just one of our own scenes, I can let it go and let them carry on, if I really want the "custard poured in after sitting" I can always just book another shoot at some random point in the future, quite possibly with different models depending on availability, and make the instructions clearer next time. But if it's a custom and that's something the customer had specified had to be in it, then basically we'll need to re-do the entire scene from scratch, with the same models, almost immediately, and explain to the customer that the first shoot went wrong and we're re-doing it. Ok with our 3 months lead time this probably won't impact final delivery being on-time, but it's still annoying and means we've effectively had the costs of 2 scenes for the profit from one, and tied us up shooting very close versions of the same scene twice.

In terms of price, our customs usually come in between £240 and £360 (inc VAT), though something more elaborate or with more models would cost more, and those prices assume that we can then sell the scene on our store too, although sales there are a bonus and we'd never try and change anything in a scene to make it more saleable to a general audience, the initial custom charge covers all costs and a small profit so if it then sells more widely that's a bonus. We've only ever done one or two customs a year. Some of them have gone on to be fantastic sellers though, the Waterproof Mess Test with Veronica and Eliza is the stand-out example which has subsequently become one of our top 5% scenes by sales volume. A result of this is that we now semi-regularly do waterproof rainwear scenes, which wasn't something I'd originally thought of, though after we did the first ones I realised there is a lot of similarity in look between girls in rainwear and girls in boilersuits, which is something I love and hence we've always featured. So a side-benefit for that customer is that now they get other waterproofs scenes being made which they can buy from our store for just $15.

Regarding suggestions from the crowd, to an extent that's going to depend on how close to any given producer's "house style" those requests were. Advice I got from Rob Blaine back in the 1990s when I was first dreaming of becoming a producer, "Shoot what you love, don't try and shoot for the market." His reasoning was that way, even if what you shot didn't sell, at least you'd have content you could enjoy, plus if you focus on your personal "thing" you're probably going to produce higher quality content that will sell, instead of just phoning in something you don't really like in the hope of sales.

Example I'd give again is girls in boilersuits. Even without WAM that's a major passion of mine, which is why we shoot them, and it's now become a tradition that every new model at Saturation Hall does at least one boilersuit and wellies scene, several have done them several times. Because it's a passion, I know a lot about it, including how and where to get suits that will fit well on WAM models. And while they don't sell massively they do sell, there are other "girls in workwear" fans out there (to whom we are incredibly greatful for every sale if any of you are reading). Some years back, a few other producers did boilersuit scenes. But they only ever did one each, which is an indicator to me that they did not sell. Looking at them, I didn't buy, because they generally had all of the basics completely wrong - oversized suits that totally didn't fit (the standard smallest general boilersuit size used to be 36" chest and designed for a 6' bloke, so put one on a 5' tall UK size-8 model and it fits like a tent), plus doing things like leaving it open to show off the skimpy bikini the model has on underneath, which totally misses the point. My experience is that people who like women in overalls generally want to see women wearing well-fitting overalls properly done up, not falling out of them. As a result, people know if they want an overalls scene, or an overalls custom, we are the people to come to, because we undestand how that particular taste works.

This of course expands into fully clothed wam in general - we understand that it's the clothes getting messy that is the "money shot", something that producers and camera operators more used to filming traditional porn who've branched into WAM as a sideline often don't seem to get. In their minds, covered up == non-sexy, so they focus on the model's head and face, and completely miss her trousers or skirt getting the treatment. Seen that a few times from different people, most notably some AllWam scenes of a decade or so ago.

And this of course is where getting multiple people to agree on a single scene will always be tricky. Imagine 5 poeple agree to a model in skin tight leather trousers, knee-high leather boots, and a grey satin blouse, to be pied then slimed. Straightforward? Ok, what kind of pies, filling, crust or not, tin of not, all to the face or mostly to the face plus bum, breasts, and crotch? What order, head first, other places first to build up to the head? Sitting down or standing up? What camera angles, full face closeup, full height shot, kneed to head? What kind of slime, custard, cake batter, TV slime? If TV slime what colour? If batter what kind? How much slime vs how many pies? Slime poured over head, or into lap and then move to head pour? Should the model stand up and turn round and have her back slimed too? Boots-filling or not? Boots off and play barefoot for some of it, then put boots back on? Any clothes filling? Should she look up and embrace and enjoy the slming or hunch forward and head down like someone on a gameshow who's hating it? And so on. And then even if everyone agrees and it is shot, what happens when one of the people who funded it finds that the thing they'd just expected to be in it because it was obvious (to them) has been entirely missed and they feel they wasted their money?

The main reason crowdfunding a scene is banned here is because of the scam risk - it was bad enough when a scam model took one person's money and vanished, imagine how much worse if someone took 5 or 10 people's payments for a larger and more elaborate (and hence expensive) scene. However the issues of "ask any 12 wammers to describe the perfect scene, get 13 completely incompattible answers" probablty had something to do with it too. Of course there is the currently running project between a few people to create a wam-oriented version of the Cruella de Vil gunging from 101 Dalmatians, which has been allowed to stand. Will be interesting to see what, if anything, eventually comes out of that.