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Gamble's definition of a Commission Service= Any party who accepts payment (cash or product) to work on your toy soldiers. This includes, but is not limited to painting, assembly and sculpting.

I'm interested in finding out how those of you who have used commission services decided to pull the trigger and send your money or minis off to get worked on.
If you've thought about using a commission service, but haven't yet, what holds you back?
If you're of the opinion that commission services are ruining the hobby, or that you'd never use one, please refrain from posting in the thread as you're obviously off topic.

What do you look for?
What questions do you ask the service?
How do you ensure completion?
How do you ensure deadlines are kept?

I'll attempt to round up responses in this post to come up with something that could be a useful resource to help avoid the pitfalls of commissions gone bad.

Thoughts?

I've thought about it only because my hobby time is extremely limited, but I've refrained for two reasons:

1) Expense... I am able to do myself despite extremely limited time.

2) Lack of control... While the models may be built and painted in accordance to my instructions, fact is, the hobby process is out of my control, liberties have to and will always be taken by the studio. I can only hope to agree with them after seeing the final product.