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Okay so I've been seeing an uptick in artists just straight up not following through with professional obligations. For context, this artist has a backlog of TWO YEARS. I feel like this needs to be reiterated, but being a good artist does not make you a good business person. Some of you desperately need to learn how to run a business or operate as self-employed before ever even thinking about opening commissions. Just because you are using a middleman service like VGen doesn't mean you aren't beholden to legal standards for how you operate. Simply being disorganized can land you in a bunch of hot water. Artists need to remember that there's a culture of leniency being self-employed in that you set the rules for how you operate and clients tend to be pretty forgiving. This does not somehow absolve you of legal boundaries though. You have the privilege of being able to dictate the relationship with your client, don't abuse that. The practical reality is that art commissions tend to be too small to pursue any kind of litigation and are typically resolved via platform solutions like chargeback disputes. It's almost never worth it to pursue legal action via things like civil small claims. But make no mistake, you'd absolutely open to legal scrutiny by screwing around like this. Hypothetically if someone decided for whatever reason to pursue legal action due to a misrepresented timeline of your work turnaround time, if you can't disprove you didn't do it with fraudulent intent that case wouldn't be in your favor at all. Taking commissions with no realistic plan to deliver, is in fact getting heavy into what's essentially wire fraud territory. Intent doesn't matter if you aren't doing your due diligence to ensure you're doing things above board. ARTISTS, CODIFY YOUR TURNAROUND TIME IN YOUR TOS. Do not vaguely say, "I'll update you when I can but I'll try for XYZ" or anything even remotely close. You may think this gives you lenience since you have no real guidelines to follow, but it could also be used as evidence that you had no realistic intent to deliver if you keep it loose. A risky, yet sustainable (if done correctly) model is to take many commissions in advanced to secure income for yourself now. You keep a large buffer of time that you fill with upcoming commissions while the income given ahead of time keeps you afloat. Basically, you lump sum things to reduce to overhead of needing to take frequent commissions with short turnaround times if you need a more substantial cash flow.