Paintedfigs.com - High Quality Miniature Painting at the Lowest Rates on Earth
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| Handling Payment Payment: Who's in the driver's seat? No painting service will begin work for you until they receive at least a fair sized down payment for the work you want: no one wants to risk doing work for someone who won't pay. That said -- you should NEVER pay in full for a job before its done. If you pay in full in advance, you forfeit your bargaining power, and this can really change everything about how you may be treated even by the most sincere and well meaning painting services. Do not pay more than 50% up front. If they ask for more, politely explain to them that this puts all the cards in their hand, and you simply aren't comfortable doing business that way. If they persist, then, seriously, go back to looking for a painting service. This bargaining power is critical if you are going to guarantee quality and protect yourself from goof ups. Payment: MEQs (Moolah Equivalents) Cash is nice, but so are minis! Ask and see if your miniature painting service would be interested in taking at least part of their payment in minis. One-man, part-time operations will be enthusiastic about these, especially if they do what they do purely for the love of the hobby (getting paid is just incidental). Larger outfits with wages to pay will still want to see cash, but will likely be keen on taking minis at least as a partial payment. Some services make a business of painting these and auctioning them on ebay. Others will give them to their staff as morale building. And even the most hardnosed businesses will have a soft spot for some mini or the other. These people are hobbyists! Just ask, and see what they are looking for. Bitz are your other secret weapon, use these once you've found a service that you are happy with, and want to build a strong, long term, relationship with. Get a small ziploc together of the bitz you know you'll never use, and toss them in with your minis. Bitz are key to doing conversion work, which miniature painting services love to offer clients. Your unwanted bitz are a miniature painting service's gold mine. You don't want to use these as a form of payment, but as a gift they are fantastic good will builders. Your thoughtfulness will be appreciated, and don't be surprised if you find them offering to paint things here and there for you for free afterwards, and offering you other perks (like those twenty five laspistols you were looking for). Payment: Leveraging your cash to guarantee quality Lets say you've got past the "drawing board" and everyone is on the same page on how the work should be done. How can you be sure that your entire order will be painted that way? Part-time painters may become time pressured and be tempted to skimp on your work for "newer" clients. At larger services the person handling your account may only have a small role in the painting, and just because they prep a job it doesn't mean the painters tasked with the brunt of the work are on the same page with them. For something as subjective, human error prone, and QA-fatigue prone as miniature painting, you simply must have an iron-cast guarantee of quality. Here's how you do it. Up front, make sure that they agree to send you pictures of the finished job. Make clear that you expect these pictures to be large, and that you want to see images of every figure in the order, from at least two angles. It is best if you explicitly but tactfully mention that if these pictures do not meet your satisfaction, they will have to do more work. You want to be careful how you do the wording, because you can easily come off like an impossible-to-please, prima donna. If your painter is someone you know from your Friendly Local Game Store, forget the pictures -- you can see the figures for yourself. You definitely want to be tactful with a painter you meet face to face: be explicitly clear that you will want to make a "first review" when the figures are done, so that you can "see what needs to be done from there." When the big day comes, they send you the pictures or you go take a look. If its what you wanted, great! They are not only easy to work with, but they are highly consistent and have a good handle on quality assurance. If they are not what you hoped for, don't get mad. You knew this was a possibility, and you still have your other half of the payment. They understand that this a review, and that if you aren't satisfied you will tell them so. That said -- these are people who have put a great deal of time and energy into your figures, and if they resent your comments, things could get quite sour quite quickly. Take a good look at the pictures. If you are looking at the actual figures, ask if you can take a random sampling home to look at and give a good think. Once you've done this, write down as precisely as you can what else you'd like to see done, and what you'd like to see fixed. Breaking it up by parts ("hooves," "bolters," "hair") will be helpful. Give it a read through and make sure its not emotionally charged, and send. If they are professional, they will read through it all, and assent. You did the pictures in the beginning, and that commits them to providing you that quality. The deal was closed with both parties agreeing that a certain quality of work would be done, and it was quoted for. If the work was going to cost more than they had thought, they had their opportunity at the First Pictures stage to say "hang on, what you want will cost you more." They'll just quote this kind of work differently next time. If you are dealing with a smaller outfit, or even just a single painter, they will have less leeway to go back to workbench and do more work, especially if they have other work in queue. In this case, it would be sporting of you to pay a little extra for the hours they will have to put in to do the corrections. If you went with a small outfit, then understand this the reality of their situation, and if you prefer business at this scale you must be sensitive to this. If you are more demanding and would rather not find yourself paying more for a job that wasn't done to specs in the first place, then you should be looking at a bigger outfit that can more easily afford this degree of customer service. You'll notice that they key here is to hold on to the other 50%. If you forfeit this, you have no way to guarantee this kind of service otherwise. |