Hello all,
As my partnership is a new company, we did not do background search on this man (lack of experience, but we learned our lesson!)
I know other threads have been posted, but I wanted to try to help some of you in our situation (other threads are locked). This probably goes for other scammers besides Steven Davis.
He does use the email -. The story:
Steven contacted me with his portfolio. It looks impressive and we actually knew a few games he may have worked on. We were excited at his quality and price ranges for modeling, rigging, and animation. I asked him the time frame he could deliver the model we spoke about and he said 10-12 days. Pleased with this, we hired him and paid half of the money up front via PayPal (some of you say not to pay up front, but I find many artist require this in varying amounts which is understandable because what if a company does not continue with their order and you waste countless hours on a product).
As it neared 10 days, I of course asked for updates. He is VERY slow at replying sometimes 24 hours later, even on Skype. Finally, he told me sorry, the model is not complete because he has been āvery busyā and it may take longer than 12 days a bit. I was annoyed and asked him to please hurry this up as this is holding up development. He said okay will do. After about 15 days, I again asked for his progress. He again gave the same excuse that he is just so busy with things in his life. I told him promptly that this is not how you conduct business and he needs to deliver the product or we have an issue. I tried to even motivate him telling him we have other models (which we do) that need done and would hire him again if he can stick to a more dedicated deadline. He says okay he will do it.
Again, when I ask for an update and where our product is, he says he was out of town all weekend and complained about needing sleep as he got back late. Sob story? I was beyond annoyed. Finally, after 30 days, I told him if he does not give us the product we paid for I am disputing with PayPal and posting a negative review of him on several forums/sites. Suddenly, Steven said he will get it done ASAP. Of course, he only finished the model (almost, he didnāt make a clothing accessory we asked forā¦) and did not do the rigging and animations. So, we got what we ALMOST paid for; half of the payment up front was for the model and the other half for rigging/animations.
My advice: Do not use this man. He is a scammer and/or extremely lazy. If you do run into such issues as this, I advise you to do what I did and threaten recourse through any means possible. Some people said you cannot do anything, but a verbal contract is binding in the U.S. Just show screenshots of your emails/Skype Convos/PayPal payments/etc. and you do have a case. Consider making an order form for your project with the description of the product, all parties involved, the promise date of delivery, any stipulations that could break the legal contract, and have both parties sign the document and fax it. Of course, if you did not pay a lot, thereās not much you can do in a court of law because the court fees would be higher than the paid amount. I wish I had the funds to take him to court just to make an example out of such a person, if he did not deliver the full product (which he technically didnāt, he did not include a wearable accessory that was supposed to come with the model as specified in the order form I created).
Of course, do a background search as others have mentioned first!
Thanks for listening and good luck everyone!