You should pursue any action that you see as necessary. When it comes to customs, the one thing I always make sure to emphasize is the importance of communication. I really hammer it home that if something comes up, I want to be updated. This is honestly why I'm pretty selective on who I order from. Like I have a set of creators who I've ordered numerous times from and trust, and I usually just stick with them. I will go outside of that group sometimes, but it's honestly not often.
Back in January, I had an experience with someone whose communication just absolutely stunk.
I contacted this girl asking her if she was still doing custom videos. She said "Yes". I said I'd get her a script in a few weeks. It got to February, and she messaged me wanting to know where the script was. I got a little side tracked. But a day or two later I got her the script, and she agreed to do it. I officially paid for the custom video in early February, and she was all set to shoot like two days after the payment was made. But she had to order some new lights because hers went bad. Waiting a little longer stunk, but I was told what happened and that she'd get to it when the lights came. After that, for nearly two full weeks I'm just completely ghosted. I don't hear anything at all. Well it turns out she went on a vacation to a fetish-related event. This girl does dominatrix work, and has clients for that. Which is fine. Make that money however you can. But with a custom being delayed, saying that you have a trip coming up that'll also delay the shooting of the custom seems like something that should be mentioned. So when I hear from her, she says that she hasn't forgotten about me and that she'll get to it "Next week". That response was on Feb. 27th. I was a tad annoyed that this person just vanished without saying anything, but I was just glad to get a response. I did mention to her that I'd prefer to be updated when it comes to something like this. But after that, I'm ghosted again. This time for almost a full month. This person had another fetish-related trip. And again, I'm not told about this trip at all. This trip though I actually found out a couple days before she was set to leave, which was gonna be around Mar. 9th or 10th. I messaged her hoping for some kind of update before she left, and nothing. I sent a couple during the trip, and nothing. I did space the messages out, but that's two trips that obviously pushed back the making of this custom. And I'm just left totally in the dark. On Mar 21st after being in the dark for almost a month, I finally heard back from this person. But I initiated two days prior. She wasn't back yet, and she was apparently heavily booked for this trip. Which is just more reason to give an update before actually leaving. So I thought that after she got back, she'd finally get to the custom. Well, wrong again. A couple weeks pass and this person announces another trip at the end of April. I message the person on Apr. 12th asking if she'll be able to shoot before she leaves. Later that day she responded saying "Yes". But then she revealed that she hasn't been able to shoot for a while because of a discovered leak in their studio, and the leak has led to the carpet being replaced and a new drainage system having to be installed. Now during all this waiting, this is the very first time I'm hearing anything about this leak that's making it so she can't film in their studio. And I went back and checked to make sure that I didn't miss anything. I checked our messages with eachother, and her main social media pages. Nowhere is there any mention at all of this leak that's hindering their shooting ability. Now to be clear, I never thought that she was lying about the leak. My thought was that she was doing a very poor job of passing on information. A little over a week later, she finally posted about the leak on one of her social media pages. Saying that she was told that it could be done the following week. So I'm thinking that at the absolute latest, when she gets back from this third trip is when she'll get to the custom. I messaged her a couple days after their post, because as usual I have to initiate, and I say that hopefully the work gets done this week so she can do the custom after she gets back. I got a response from her saying that the only reason she took my custom on was because she had other videos to shoot and she thought that she could just throw mine in there as well because it was short. She usually charges a lot more, I mean a whole lot more. Like her base price for any custom is a whole lot. But she took mine on at a much lower rate because it was pretty simple. Which was a very generous thing to do. But her bread and butter is live-sessions, and her clips/C4S store are mainly just her way of promoting her style when it comes to her live-sessions. Her words, not mine. And It's been quite a while since she even updated for C4S store. She also said that with her clips, she doesn't profit much after paying her editor. So she didn't feel like going through all that for a custom that's not as big as the ones she usually gets. She then made it official that was no longer interested in doing my custom at all. I get the feeling that she lost interest in my custom long before she actually told me that she had lost interest.
Now I did get my money back, and she even threw in a little extra because of all the waiting. And I did appreciate that. I also appreciated her being willing to take on my custom for less than what she usually charges. But that doesn't change the fact that this persons communication throughout this whole period was absolutely terrible.