Thankyou for this wonderful and useful topic!
Here goes:

name of the client: Fresh
Topic: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13129
case:
Made some work for him, finished saturday and sent to him,with no reply I contacted him again and got the exact following answer: "Yes, I have received, I found someone else for the job. I can not accept yours work in comparison, really sorry! :("

Honestly that is not how you deal in business.
First he should have waited and if he thought I was taking took long he should have contacted me to ask how thiongs are going or for an estimated delivery time.
Second he should have contacted me as soon as he found someone else.
Third if not happy with my work he should solve things with me first, as I am always willing to edit and change my work to fit the client´s needs and expectations, which I assume people who worked with me can say for my patience and effort.

Honestly I feel betrayed since I was not informed in time, wasted time and effort which I could have devoted to some other tasks, that was unprofessional and I can´t say someone with that atitude can be trusted. Saying sorry won´t bring back my wasted time.

Hope everyone stay aware of this before working with him :(

name of the client: Qemist
Topic: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13021
case:
Somwhere around that, he hired to finish his mech sprite which in turn was a biogger task than expected as yje mech he made needed some corrections, this took me a week of working and him directing, then he disappears and comes back with that: "Hello Ceci,

sorry for not replying to your mails. Right now I'm looking into a possible scam by someone who was helping me alongside you and I somehow lost trust in working with people on the net. Unlike you I did pay him up in advance and my apologees for not comming out clear as soon as possible. Hence my few harsh emails I sent a few days ago and not replying to your latest emails and works. I did tell you do hold it off for now and not to work on, and I hope you didnt waste your time.

If we decide to continue I am willing to pay up a advance (50%) but right now I want to sort out this scam.

Again, my apologees..

Thanks,"

Refarding have warned me before to hold on things, which he only did after my second day working, he never mentioned the real issue, instead hge came like that "If you arent able to do it please dont waste your time but let me know. I hate to waste your time and not be satisfied in the end. The air shaft thing on the "shoulder" looks really cool together with the lines you did on same the thing."

By that I assume that I should only have stopped if I wouldn´t be able to complete the task, which on his last e mail pasted above, he reconized I could and that he was harsh in doubting my skills from first drafts.

I got everything on my e mail if prints are needed for either cases.

why don´t make the same forum but with recommended/reliable clients/artist?

interesting idea..

Member: joblea

While talking to this member for some paid work on sprite animation and being told $130 upfront per animation i sent him the following email

>>>"i'm sorry but this isn't going to work out when you say its $15/h then
>>> charge $130 for one animation
>>>
>>> I guess you're just out of my price range, sorry to waste your time."

Which made him ask what price i tthought was fair i respectfully replied with this as i was embarrassed by the size of my budget as i'm still a uni student

>> Really its fine, i'd feel bad talking you down from $130 per animation
>> to the sort of prices im looking at.
>>
>> Like i said sorry it hasn't worked out

After this he started to send me abusive email from the hours of 12:10am last night and i'm still receiving them now at 12:30pm

Some of my favorite received e-mails include:
>>>WTF!!! YOU GO TO HELL LOSER!!!!

and

>>>HAHAHA LOSER! NO ARTIST WILL WORK FOR A BIG A-HOLE LIKE YOU HAHA GO f**k YOUR MOTHER ..HAHA

This experience is just one of the a few iv had while on this site trying to offer paid work to the community. It has reflected poorly on PixelJoint as a whole as well as its level of unprofessionalism.

I really hope my experiences are unique from others

Edited by burnz - 23 September 2012 at 9:49pm

I was linked with a portfolio and details of past works. Like i said it was one of a few incidents.

Others included someone producing something completely different than what was asked for then emailing me drunk and demanding payment when i didn't even agree to start the project and sure as hell didn't agree on what he decided to produce out of the guidelines

Others take well over a day to respond to messages on the site as well as answer emails when i respond to them within the hour (most the time instantly).

If there are any pixel artist on this site with a professional attitude i would love to meet them.

I've worked for you before and I've had similar problems to other people. I do some trial pieces, make loads of tweaks and then when I start discussing quotes you disappear.
To be honest it's not doing the samples for free that bothers me, I do it quite often and anything I don't get paid for I usually use at a later date, it's the lack of professionalism that annoys people.
When you finally got back in contact you said you had stopped replying because you didn't want to pay my prices, rather than just emailing me to tell me that or try to negotiate. So then i said i could drop the prices if i also drop the quality a little and you emailed back to say you were happy to pay for decent work... A complete contradiction to what you had said earlier.

That fact that this is the second or third time you've posted for help on these boards for the same project is enough to put anyone off.

You're missing the point here.
I didn't charge for sample art, I did it for free but the moment I brought up the subject of money you disappeared and didn't reply to emails.

Whats the point in doing samples for someone to get a job if you don't even know what you're going to be paid if you're successful? Thats like turning up to a job interview with no idea what the salary is going to be.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that have worked for you and things have gone well but if they don't go well you have to treat potential cleients with a bit more respect otherwise you end up having the problem you have now.

And for anyone interested here is the (free) sample I did. I was trying to match the style of the purple floor so made up a few basic tiles for which I could add extra detail to.

I never expected to get paid unless I was offered the job. I just didn't expect to be ignored.

Actually , thanks for joshua, I was about to maybe talk with him for a job. Thanks for the info i will just skip it

The problem for me is that I wasted a whole week working for you and only after that whole period you come to say my work was not good for you despite having said before that things were getting close to what you wanted, more than you disappearing it was the lame excuse you mentioned that "someone had scammed you so you couldn´t trust anyone to pay" now that is not my problem and it is not fair to screw others cause someone elswe screwed you.

Also regarding my work: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=10246
I believe that even I am not the best spriter in the world my work is quite decent, now take note that to reach those results some of my clients had to be patient and direct me and criticize and ask for changes, which I was doing for you even with your rude comments and remarks, so yeah, on top of time wasted you gave me a week of stress for zero payment, that is WRONG and don´t say otherwise.

I think it would be better if pixeljoint or these who already doing some of the job could make a SOP (standar operation procedure) of how client and artist should progress on these kind of work rather than pointing who to blame..

Hopefully it could be a guideline for both client and artist to minimize misscom or scammer..