Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As I mentioned on the first page, I had them do a test piece for me (kroot hounds) it took about 3 months with several excuses for the delay before I finally got them...the paint quality was tabletop but not better than I could do myself so I never went back to them.

RiTides wrote:That's a good spot, MM... I've personally never heard of this website or the supposed "smear campaign". Have people dealt with / commissioned them before?

Like reds8n said, it would be very helpful for people to stick to the specifics of the actual commissions / cases (i.e. the facts...) if this is going to be able to stay open.

Personally, I'm very curious if anyone has experience with this company and can share! To me, this just comes out of left field...

I have personally had miniatures painted by paintedfigs.com, primarily because of their endorsement by the D6 Generation. The first time I had 10 Pulp City superhero miniatures painted. I don't remember how long it took, but I wasn't particularly concerned. I remember it was a long wait (two to three months) but I was very pleased with the results. Seeing the minis I had painted, a friend of mine was interested in throwing in on a group order. We packed up the minis and sent them away. Since I still have the emails I sent to Navin, I know exactly how long it took to get the minis painted. These were ten or so Infinity Miniatures and ten or so Malifaux miniatures. Again, I wasn't concerned about the long wait, but my friend was starting to get very concerned that he just threw money in a fire.

I sent the miniatures at the end of November and hadn't heard anything through to the beginning of March. I was starting to feel guilty that I had convinced my friend to use these guys who was feeling like he had been ripped off, I wrote a rather frank email to Navin. I almost immediately had a response with Navin very politely assuaging all my fears. I sent that email on March 4, 2010.

On March 9, I sent Navin another email, requesting the photos he promised in the March 4 email. That same day I received a link to the gallery photos.

We requested a few modifications to a few of the miniatures and by March 19, they were shipped.

I can't say when exactly I received the miniatures, but I don't remember it being much later.

To testify on my experience with Paintedfigs, no I didn't think they were particularly professional, not in the same way I expect my cable TV provider or local police force to be professional. They were probably as professional as a local grocery manager apologizing for the mistake of an apathetic clerk. Overall, I was -NOT- disappointed in the service I received from Paintedfigs, especially considering the good quality of the painting I received. Speed was not an issue for me, however, and I can see that anyone that desired a speedy turn-around (like my friend) would be disappointed.

Because of the anxiety I experienced in brokering this deal for my friend, I haven't used Paintedfigs since. I -would- recommend their service to someone else, but with the caveat that it will take multiple months to process your order.

mwnciboo,

The projects they have done for me in the past were years ago, so I don't think its appropriate to review them at this time. I was pleased enough with paintedfigs.com that I had planned to use their services again. With all of this controversy, it spurred me to take an action that spoke louder than words and send them an army project.

I hope this explains your concerns.

I'm seeing a Trend develop here. Slow turn around.

mwnciboo wrote:I'm seeing a Trend develop here. Slow turn around.

I thought the trend was a ton of very shade things happening in this thread.

OK...

Everyone, please endeavor to keep everything in here on topic.

References to 'popcorn' and/or pictures of popcorn?

These serve only to pour gas on a fire and they will cause you trouble here.

Mr.Pirate wrote:Would believe me if I posted on this thread in another year?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Is time the only credible form of trust here? We must learn to embrace others and learn to trust... Oh wait this is the Internet nvm

Hello,
I think from my point of view looking at the pics, and noting the lack of shading and highlighting (may just be bad pics), is they are not high quality paint jobs. Time is not the only judge of truth here, I see someone who has a low post count, and just joined when this came to light, it comes across a bit fishy, in the field I am in we call it professional skepticism, we are not saying you are lying, nor are we saying you are telling the truth, we are just going to gather evidence until it satifies the requirements. Then and only then can we make a unqualified or qualified statement on it. As for me I paint my own items and have painted two "commsion" forces, so this interests me.

Regards,
Carl

Anyone interested in hearing a bit more of Navin's story can listen to Raef of the D6G's interview with him here: http://d6ghollywood.podbean.com/2012/01/10/the-hollywood-gps-ep-1-navin-of-painted-figs-interview/

I enjoy painting and could never imagine requiring the services of a painting company, but I remembering admiring Navin's spirit and determination in the interview. Had I faced such a disruption in my own business I would find it difficult to deal with it with such fortitude as Navin has shown.

Seriously, if you are tempted to mock, I would recommend taking the time out to listen to the full story in the interview.

So far I have not heard a ringing endorsement, that is unusual. The community on Dakka is diverse, global and generally fair, we will point out flaws but we will always praise excellence. So far my interpretation from the anecdotal evidence provided is "Okay service, but you need to poke them as their time keeping and turn around time is appalling".

This does not appeal to my Anglo-saxon/germanic work ethic and falls way short of customer service in the UK and I know my American Cousins are very strong on the Customer service and think the UK is very weak in this regard, and I would be inclined to agree. If your customer service is not excellent, well it is poor. If you cannot deliver a bespoke service on time, but you took the money, you better standby for a slamming or to go out of business. GW is currently sitting on a PR disaster if Finecast doesn't get it's quality assurance sorted.

mwnciboo wrote:This does not appeal to my Anglo-saxon/germanic work ethic and falls way short of customer service in the UK and I know my American Cousins are very strong on the Customer service and think the UK is very weak in this regard, and I would be inclined to agree. If your customer service is not excellent, well it is poor. If you cannot deliver a bespoke service on time, but you took the money, you better standby for a slamming or to go out of business. GW is currently sitting on a PR disaster if Finecast doesn't get it's quality assurance sorted.

Yeah but Navin's own claims in his original post is that he has stood by and received his slammiing. Now he's claiming he's over the hill, he's not down and out, and that he can stand and deliver. His main point was although he may have been in error, that he's willing to take responsibility. Like I said earlier, I can't fault the man for getting back up and attempting to dust himself off.

I've cleaned out a lot of spammy images and meta-comments that we can do without retrpsoectively and looking ahead. I also want to repost Alpahrius's warning for your reference:

Alpharius wrote:References to 'popcorn' and/or pictures of popcorn?

These serve only to pour gas on a fire and they will cause you trouble here.

So please drop the "popcorn comments" and stay on-topic. Thanks.

This is a classic situation and unfortunately an unwritten rule of the universe, once trust is gone you literally have nothing. "Once bitten, twice shy" or alternatively "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." I wish him well, but I would not put my money where his mouth is, as if it went wrong it's not as if I didn't have fair warning.

Foolishness is defined as - Lacking or exhibiting a lack of good sense or judgment

I think this fits from all sides. Navin's perseverance is niether here nor there, you could argue that a serial killer shows perseverance.

mwnciboo wrote:This is a classic situation and unfortunately an unwritten rule of the universe, once trust is gone you literally have nothing. "Once bitten, twice shy" or alternatively "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." I wish him well, but I would not put my money where his mouth is, as if it went wrong it's not as if I didn't have fair warning.

Foolishness is defined as - Lacking or exhibiting a lack of good sense or judgment

I think this fits from all sides. Navin's perseverance is niether here nor there, you could argue that a serial killer shows perseverance.

MightyGodzilla wrote:...Can't blame a man for trying to get back up after he's fallen, but sending him my minis is a different matter....

Sounds like you and I agree.

In truth what you said convinced me that nothing is gained by kicking a man when he is down, but I'm not foolish enough to readily trust straight off the bat.

In answer to your question MWNCIBOO when I was at Painted Figs the building/painting staff were paid a basic of about $100 per month plus bonus, I think the highest paid guy doubled his pay.

You can download the accounts from http://www.discountfigs.com/

But Navin then sent me an email saying the pay numbers were wrong as he hadn't included a $3000 bonus he paid himself.

And in this forums post he said he cut salaries further.

So I would assume it is lower than $100 per month basic now.

dodginghitmen wrote:In answer to your question MWNCIBOO when I was at Painted Figs the building/painting staff were paid a basic of about $100 per month plus bonus, I think the highest paid guy doubled his pay.

You can download the accounts from http://www.discountfigs.com/

But Navin then sent me an email saying the pay numbers were wrong as he hadn't included a $3000 bonus he paid himself.

And in this forums post he said he cut salaries further.

So I would assume it is lower than $100 per month basic now.

First off, I don't care what he pays his employees. I'd imagine a lot of others here agree. It's not like he's got them indentured or stuck in modern day slavery. There are no Sri Lankan laws I could find on Google that said his employees had to work for him if they don't like their pay.
I also don't care what HE makes. So long as he's following through with his promises, he can rake in as much as he wants. Don't gripe to a bunch of Capitalists about him making too much.
You did, however, inspire me to do a little research of my own.

You said the average employee of his Sri Lankan business made $100 a month.
So, according to www.xe.com, $100 USD = 13,006.60 LKR (Sri Lankan Rupee)

According to this (http://indi.ca/2006/10/the-average-sri-lankan/), the average Sri Lankan wage is 17,109 LKR.
So, you're telling us that they paid their employees the equivalent of minimum wage.
Okay. Kind of sucky, I guess... but not horrible.

Then, you tell us that he pays bonuses and that it's apparently possible for them do DOUBLE their wages? So, they could make 26,013.20 LKR per month?
Wow! That's more than 150% of the average Sri Lankan wage. Where is the problem here?

In comparison, the median "one earner" income in Missouri (my home state) in 2011 was $39,332. That's $3277.66 per month.
Now, if we reduced that, by percent, to be the equivalent of what paintedfigs paid their employees, it is $2491.74 (or $29,900 annually).
I am sure there are tons of people who would GLADLY paint miniatures for a job that paid them that as a base salary and offered them the opportunity to multiply that by up to double.

Once you know the facts and can put them into perspective... all you did by telling us the scandalous wage he pays is HELP him.


Eric

Bottom line the whole thing stinks. I don't want to wargame with figures that have eaten a Barrel of oil travelling from Europe to the Indian Sub-continent and then onto Sri Lanka. Just to have someone stick a base coat on and send it back? Jesus even with efficient sea freight it's bloody ridiculous and flying it doesn't bare thinking about. This hobby is bad enough with Plastic, Resin and chemicals without adding this on top...Talk about Global warming.

@ magical memories It's easy to get in your ivory tower, especially when you are already top of the world pile, and say "Hey relatively you got it good" . Imagine if the UK was 100 times richer than you, and I was exploiting you and your fellow Americans paying minimum wage and cleaving a huge profit margin whilst treating you like crap? I don't think you would tolerate it all, it's not logic but perspective.

EDIT - Actually isn't that pretty much what the American War of Independence was about the UK treating you like crap?

mwnciboo wrote:
@ magical memories It's easy to get in your ivory tower, especially when you are already top of the world pile, and say "Hey relatively you got it good" . Imagine if the UK was 100 times richer than you, and I was exploiting you and your fellow Americans paying minimum wage and cleaving a huge profit margin whilst treating you like crap? I don't think you would tolerate it all, it's not logic but perspective.

EDIT - Actually isn't that pretty much what the American War of Independence was about the UK treating you like crap?

Top of the world pile? Do you know the value of the US dollar in relation to your own currency? Canadian? Australian? Indian? Japanese? The Euro?
Yes. Tell me again about the "World pile."

There's no Ivory Tower here, pal. Facts are facts. They pay their painters minimum wage for their economy and offer them the opportunity to increase it. Apparently, they can even double their salary. My point is that, no matter where you are, that's pretty damned good.

You want to know how *I* would feel if a foreigner gave me a job at a salary I was willing to work for and offered me the opportunity to double it? I'd double my damned salary and be ecstatic about it. So what if he's making more than me? If I've got a problem with it, I can go somewhere else or do my own part to get myself into his position. That's what this country was founded on.
It's not like paintedfigs is the only employer in Sri Lanka and he's making all their citizens work in his sweatshops. You really need to stop trying to over-dramatize it for effect.

As for the Revolutionary War... you've oversimplified it drastically and in such a way as to TRY to make it fit for this situation when, really, it's got nothing in common at all. Based on your last post, you don't seem to have a grasp on the situation at hand here or the facts surrounding the Revolutionary War.

Here. Educate yourself:
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/revolutionarywar/a/amer_revolution.htm


Eric

Hello MagickalMemories,

Thanks for your comment and I am glad you did some research, but the figures you quote are from 2006 and earlier.

The 2011/12 figures are closer to $450 per month for the average salary in Sri Lanka.

http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/article/average-salary-in-sri-lanka/30175901.aspx

I am the last person to complain about capitalism, MWNCIBOO asked a question, I tried to answer it.

Your all clever guys on here, so I would like to give you an example...

One of the sites I was commissioned to build, that Navin didn't pay for, was http://www.spacemarinespainter.com/

If you Google "Space Marine Painter" and indeed hundreds of other keywords the site crops up and gets tons of free traffic.

Now imagine http://www.spacemarinespainter.com/ with an integrated shopping cart, so you design the space marine chapter colour scheme yourself and then buy it and it will be painted as your image.

Navin thought he could do this better and so created http://www.spacemarinepainting.com/ which doesn't appear anywhere easily on the internet, you can decide which site you think is best.

When I started at PaintedFigs the previous months turnover was $3k while I was there it peaked at $18k. It was I who suggested the bonus system.

For me success in online capitalism is very simple...

1) If you offer services you need to be the best in your field and charge an affordable price.

2) If you sell other peoples products you have to be the cheapest.

3) And if you cannot do either of the above you have to spend money on a marketing campaign convincing people you are better than you appear. Your site has to be better, your customer service spot on etc

If you don't your cashflow will dry up / never start.

My issue with Navin is because Painted Figs isn't 1 or 2 he needs to do 3. Its unacceptable to me that his campaign was based on his companies problems being someone elses fault and that he lied and claimed I stole his money rather than concentrating on being better. Had he not done that I would not be here.

I don't need to read that..

"No Taxation without Representation" pretty simple really, Great Britain treated the Colony's like crap you rebelled. It's not very complex.

Top of the pile refers to you global power position, China (the great workshop) cannot exist without the USA (the great consumer). The US is the power behind the world economy, pure and simple. If the US does well, the world does well. Bad times in the US = Bad times world wide. If it wasn't the case then sub-prime lending wouldn't have affected us in the rest of the world so badly.

Countries exploit others, you can call it capitalism, or whatever but generally it's about exploiting cheaper labour markets to reduce prices so people in the Richer countries can have a high standard of living at a cheaper price. If you want to believe it's me being over dramatic, fine, but don't deny that an awful lot of things in the western hemisphere are made in sweatshops and it wouldn't surprise me one iota if this was the same. The argument of relatively you got it better than me, is a load of nonsense, I bet their water, living standards are not as good as yours. So if they do get 120% of what you get paided, relatively it doesn't translate that they have a better standard of living or goods or services or law enforcement, or political representation and they simply cannot buy those services with extra 20% so the whole thing is a falsehood.

Having been to Sri Lanka on my travels globally it was a nice place, nice people, but also had crippling poverty. Nice Elephant sanctuary there when we did a Port visit in Trincomalee.

@mwnciboo
The problem is that you're trying to compare their standard of living to mine. I'm not.
Whatever goods, services, law enforcement they have is not a product of whether or not we do business with paintedfigs. It has everything to do with the way their country is run. If we don't send our minis to paintedfigs, that won't change things. it'll just mean he can afford fewer painters, thus giving fewer people a chance to make a wage.
My point is that they're making minimum wage FOR THEIR COUNTRY with a chance to make 150% of the average national wage. That's pretty good in relation to the rest of their country.
My only comparison to the wage here in MO was to show it in numbers that people in my situation could more easily relate to. If you say, "Poor Joe's only making a hundred bucks an hour," it sounds like Joe's not doing well. When you find out Joe's in Sri Lanka and look at (a) the exchange rate and (b) the cost of living, it changes things substantially.

@dodginghitmen:

Hello MagickalMemories,

Thanks for your comment and I am glad you did some research, but the figures you quote are from 2006 and earlier.

The 2011/12 figures are closer to $450 per month

So, you're saying that he's now paying them $450 a month? Isn't that even better than the rates you were talking about earlier?
I fail to see how this supports your attempted accusation earlier that he pays them unfairly.

Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:
So, you're saying that he's now paying them $450 a month? Isn't that even better than the rates you were talking about earlier?
I fail to see how this supports your attempted accusation earlier that he pays them unfairly.

Eric

I think he is saying that the average wage has risen to $450, presumably meaning the $100 p/m paid to the painters looks less good in comparison to when the average wage was $100

I thought Dakka allowed non advertisers to post their commercial wares, etc.

Eric

Well, all I will say, is hats off for actually saying something, although posting it on a forum such as the glorious Dakka only draws attention to the failings, failings I had never previously heard about. That's my initial thought.

I personally think this thread should be left open, as a warning.

The OP doesn't sound terribly convincing. I understand that it's easy to make mistakes when you are starting a (first?) business, but it's important to reassure your customers and avoid chaos. It isn't very comforting to hear, "we have had problems but we aren't a scam, I swear!" Instead, you should be telling us why you had problems, and how you are making sure those mistakes aren't going to happen again.


In any case, the ramblings of "dodginghitmen" (and his tendency to spam his websites) prompted me do some research. Spacemarinepainter.com and discountfigs.com are both registered to an entity called "VRE" in the UK. Some google-fu led me to this negative review on Site Jabber:

http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.v-r-e.org


The accusation of e-mail harvesting seems to jive with the format of the two sites in question -- they both ask you to "register" to access additional features. This is quite fishy, particularly on microsites.

Paul does not seem to be a terribly ambitious fellow. v-r-e.org seems to be his business website, but the only example of a microsite he has created is spacemarinepainter.com!

However much legitimacy paintedfigs.com does or does not have, their reputation certainly is not improved by their association with Paul Burns. I'm not really sure I believe anything he says, but at the same time I have no reason to believe Navin's claims, either. Some transparency here would certainly help clear things up.

MagickalMemories wrote:I thought Dakka allowed non advertisers to post their commercial wares, etc.

Eric

I was under this impression as well, Whats the official line?

The hounds that I hired paintedfigs to paint.....after a 3 month+ wait and several nagging emails...



Not bad. I paid for the basic service and that's what I got; I could have done the same myself and decided to after the long wait so I never used them again.

This thread definitely rings alarm bells.

Agnosto: Those hounds at least look OK. Better than the Basic offered by some Miniature Painting services. Although if I was paying somebody to do it, I'd likely want it in a standard I could never achieve.

EDIT:
Found a recent work example by snooping around in the OP's post history and finding their youtube channel.
Not many videos recently, and hardly any to do with miniatures at least within recent months.
There was this. Post 16 Hours ago.

Medium of Death wrote:This thread definitely rings alarm bells.

Agnosto: Those hounds at least look OK. Better than the Basic offered by some Miniature Painting services. Although if I was paying somebody to do it, I'd likely want it in a standard I could never achieve.

I'm careful with my money to an extent; I wanted to try their service without throwing too much money out there so I went small and cheap as possible not knowing if I would even see my models much less painted to any decent standard. The only issues I had was the extremely lengthy turn around time and silly excuses for delays like "Your figs haven't come from England yet." after they had my money for over a month...

Medium of Death wrote:This thread definitely rings alarm bells.

Agnosto: Those hounds at least look OK. Better than the Basic offered by some Miniature Painting services. Although if I was paying somebody to do it, I'd likely want it in a standard I could never achieve.

EDIT:
Found a recent work example by snooping around in the OP's post history and finding their youtube channel.
Not many videos recently, and hardly any to do with miniatures at least within recent months.
There was this. Post 16 Hours ago.

There were some pretty big gaps on the land speeder that need filling. One of the razorbacks had tracks that didn't meet up well at the joints. These are things I'd expect from any paint/assembly service, even paying for what might pass as a basic job. Take into consideration that it likely took three months or more to finish these models.