Why: Poor communication; didn’t fully explain the scope of the job when I expressed my interest in it; failure to properly credit me.
When: We initially began talking about this in the last week of May, and after a brief experiment, I began work on the 31st. Things officially came to an end on the 15th June.
Explain: GardenofRoses, now GeneCo (whom I know as Tenshi) was asking for someone to help her create her by-then relatively popular Blep Adopts. At the time, she was manually drawing every gene from scratch every time she made an adopt. This was wasting time and slowing her down; she was looking for an artist to create gene files she could easily recolour. I was willing to work as that artist.
The offerred pay was 15g per gene, making 45g per completed dragon. I knew this when I signed up and I was happy with that, as the adopts are very small and creating most genes is an incredibly easy task.
Because it was the most efficient system, rather than creating a “blueprint” gene, I was given an adopt to create - typically one that required all three genes to be drawn from scratch.
She would link me to a forum post containing a list of orders, or just send me images of dragons, and I would recreate their genes and colours on the base she gave me.
Sometimes I had to edit the base itself - for example, the guardian base was male, so to complete female guardian adoptsI had to remove the beard and reshape the chest.
I passed on all the .PSD files to Tenshi so she could recolour the genes as needed.
I had to constantly chase Tenshi down for payment. Her communication overall was spotty and escapist. Every time I asked a question, she said she’d deal with it later. Which, in itself, I don’t object to - I understand being busy. The issue was that there was always something else.
I completed 32 new gene files in all, and then bowed out due to wrist pain and anxiety of just how much work there was to do.
Why: User sells adopts, takes money, then ignores the commissioner while spending the money and dodging ETA/Refund questions completely.
When: I contacted and paid them trough PayPal on 4th of June - Still waiting on my order or at least a reply on the order from them.
Explain: I saw GardenOfRoses advertising their adopts in discord and sent them a DM about it.
They didn’t give me a clear quote for how much I should pay, so I sent them 10 usd instead of 1usd that they later tell me about. Upon them seeing that I already paid, we changed the order to include both the accent and all the apparel my dragon was wearing.
We agreed that the rest can be kept as a tip and they give me their estimated deadline for delivery to be “before June 8th.”
I have not heard from them since and it’s been total silence from their end for 2 months now.
Here’s an imgur gallery with all the screenshots of our discord conversation with some added info in each image: https://imgur.com/a/lWu9Lhp
Their old thread (my post on page 57/they ignored this one):
Sorry the long absence, I was all busy with my garden, I finally have some roses and they’re growing beautifully 💙 I’ll bring more pictures of them, because if you are here you will see roses lol, it’s out of discussion Btw this is my oc, Cecil, he is a spiritual being from my book. Almost identical to Agharrin, besides he is blonde and a lot more of an angry boy 💕 #gardenofroses #traditionalillustration #coloredpencils #coloredlineart #pennib #penandinkdrawing #redroses🌹 #mangaartist #draweverydamnday https://www.instagram.com/p/CYxCRnaLhzj/?utm_medium=tumblr
A Single Rose Can Be My Garden ______________________ Kenya Studio 2019 #rose #garden #redroses #gardenofroses https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsx4WAyleJn/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=xfu02a9omay2
Have you tried @ashcosmetics liquid matte lipstain in red carpet? Use voucher code halloween20 for 20% discount #gardenofroses #roses #liquidlipstick #liquidmatte https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpl2ceFnKPK/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=17626ijfbd0ug
Why: User takes on orders then doesn’t complete them, spends the money they received, and makes excuses for not giving refunds. Continues to take orders without finishing old ones or giving refunds.
When: My experience started on May 15th, 2018, and our last correspondence was on June 22nd, 2018. However, they continue similar behavior with other as of submitting this review on July 21st, 2018.
Explain:
On May 15th, I placed an order for a lair page worth of dragons from GardenOfRoses’ adopt shop. Originally, I had tried to order with USD, but was told that wasn’t possible because their Paypal was broken. (Something I suspect was untrue now since they immediately were in desperate need of Paypal orders after they took my order in gems.)
After a month, I decided to do a lair clean-out and I knew at least a few of the dragons I ordered would be leaving my lair, so I decided to request at least a partial refund. However, after looking at their shop and seeing their Discord activity, I noticed they had been working on orders placed after mine as well as taking even more new orders when orders even before me were going ignored. So, I decided to get a full refund and when I did my clean out, I would come back if their shop had gotten caught up. (As a side note, there is a note on their shop that says if they have started your order and you ask for a refund, they may refuse to serve you again, to add some context to the wording in my PM.)
I got the following PM back only an hour and a half later.
I was confused at first because I’m asking for a refund because I’m getting rid of dragons, and they were trying to offer me more adopts instead of a refund just because they were on vacation? It was extremely odd of a reply. So I just sent back that I need the refund and would wait.
On the 16th, the day they said they would be back from vacation, I sent a follow up PM
The next day, around the same time of day, I got back a PM of them admitting they didn’t have the money to refund me and asking me to wait another 4-5 days for a refund. They claimed to be almost 1000g short of my 5500g refund, but based on the number of orders they’ve gotten, they would have had to spend a few hundred thousand gems from customers’ unfinished orders to make that true.
I replied that I could wait because I wasn’t in a rush to get a refund. And began my wait.
As they said above, the refund was promised on Thursday. However, no refund ever came and on Friday, I sent a PM to ask about my refund again.
Only after I sent that PM did I get my refund.
A few days later, they posted that they were refunding ALL orders on their shop.
However, after someone asked to confirm all orders were canceled, they were told that there would be no refunds for Fest Currency or USD orders.
Before all refunds were given, they opened a new adopt shop in a new forum to try and raise the money to refund the old customers and offer to complete the old orders rather than give a refund. As of posting this review, one single finished adopt has been posted to this new thread.
I have had several friends who placed orders and had similar problems of being avoided, not receiving adopts, and in one case a friend was offered a refund, then when they asked about it again, suddenly, they were given a finished adopt instead of a refund.
Lots of links below in case you want to see more. I archived both of their threads up to the current point I’m submitting this, in case they delete them.
And here’s the imgur album in case my images won’t load. In the order they’re on this submission. This folder also contains additional screens from my friends who also had issues with their orders, and I’ll update it as I get more screens. https://imgur.com/a/28fQ9Fk
To browse, just click through the forum pages like normal. All the pages have been archived.
Old Thread Archive
Current Thread Archive
