Selling someone else's doll?

I agree it should be stated up front X months of no contact and I sell this sucker. If the doll means that much to you BE RESPONSIBLE and KEEP IN TOUCH! Even if you lose your net at home there's still the library!

 

i think it will be safer, when a customer pass the doll to the artist, the artist and the owner should negotiate and state the terms properly that, in the case if the owner runs away/lost contact for a period of time (eg. 4 months), the artist have the right to sell the doll away .
it will be good, if there is a hard copy signed by both artist and owner, it will be the evidence to show.

this gives awareness to the customer and the artist, and protects the artist (cuz there is the evidence).

 

I've never even thought of that!

But seeing as it's a very real problem I believe I would make sure there was some kind of written agreement (a contract if possible) involved, so that both parties were aware what to do in a similar situation.

 

that will be really really good. and i recommend that some artists on the forum should start doing that. it's up to individual decision to implement it.

because the artists will never know how unreasonable the next customer may get. the customer may give stupid reasons on not making payments on time, on running away etc etc, and this actually gives the artist a lot of probs (who have put in a lot of effort in making the costumes/face up, making loss etc etc). then the artist can use the hard copy of agreement and rebuke the unreasonable customer, that they actually agreed to some conditions, haha...then the customer have nothing much to argue about, once the agreement is shown...lol.

the customer should also must have the initiative to contact the artist once they are able to make payment etc. after a certain period of time, the artist should start to contact the customer about the doll.

if after another looong period of time, the customer has disappeared (gone with the wind...lol), den it is time for the artist to do something bout it. sell the doll, or maybe donate the doll ?! (lol,..kidding bout the donate doll part)

 

I would say years, but how many, I don't know.

Unless you have your customers sign a document stating the item is forfeit after a certain amount of time, selling it off, no matter how long after the fact, could be legal hot water.

 

I haven't thought about this before, but should something like this happen to me (very unlikely, because I don't take commissions) I think I should do my best to return the item to the owner after payment is completed. I'd first try to contact the client to get the payment completed before even thinking about selling something.
I wouldn't ask for phonenumbers, unless the client is in the same country as I'm not keen on making international calls, but having a shipping address in advance means I could send letters.

If after sending PMs, several letters, asking around if other people know what happened to this person, and having a paging thread here at DoA, there still is no sign of the client and several months (let's say 6) after you sent the first letter have passed, you did what you could and may consider the item abandoned. If you want to be compensated for your time and effort you spent on the commission, you can sell it, but I think I would hang on to the item if it does not take up too much space, because you never know.

Like in the example Kyrenea gave, sometimes real life takes over for months. I think it's reasonable to consider items abandoned after 6 months of non-communication from the client's side, but I'd just feel awkward if someone contacted me after a year about said item and I had sold it even though it was a reasonable thing to do. I'm glad nothing like that has happened to me.

 

Just want to state here, that as long as the commissioner sends a registered letter to the owner, they can be in legal ownership of the doll within 30 days of the letter being post marked.

It wouldn't be terribly ethical to do this within two months of losing contact with a client, but it is legal to do it within a week of work being finished.

So, legally, no, the customer does not have to agree to their object being forfeit after x amount of time.

 

Personally as a person who runs group orders. I would hold on to someone stuff up to six months, then start to wonder what in the heck is going on. I mean I could see unexpected life events, etc. I mean I would start to bug them after one month of waiting. I would PM, email, write a letter (assuming if I had an address to write to) anything to find out what is going on. I think the max I would hold any item is up to a year, because after that I would have thought that the owner would have responded to me by now or some sort of family member, etc.

Of course, if I found out that the person was currently active in the military I would totally sit on the item until that person comes back and is able to PM me. I've seen this happen on this forum where a person went on leave and didn't tell anyone, was gone and then a couple of items where returned back to her on her tour and then this whole mess happened. Then after 9 months she came back and found out what happened, mailed out the items and was still banned from the forums. Sort of sucks, but she should have told the people that she was going on tour duty before she left.

 

I would probably stop short of the phone number, but I would definitely want the email address and physical address of the person before I started work on their doll, and I'd probably be able to find out their phone number by looking up their address in the phone book. What I can't understand is why someone wouldn't include a return shipping address as a matter of course. Surely you'd want your doll back, whether you got in touch with the commissioned artist or not?

 

Having been in a similar situation... NOT with a doll, I sold a sewing machine for $500 (AUD) over the phone to an elderly woman who paid by direct deposit and said as she lived interstate would pick it up 3 weeks later when visiting her sister in my general area... All good untill 3 weeks comes and goes, 6 weeks comes and goes, I telephone twice and leave messages, talked to the bank etc... 6 MONTHS LATER I get a phonecall from a social worker saying she had passed away, The machine is STILL sitting under my sewing desk 3 years later.....

Now back on topic and in relation to my first comments...

Were it a doll and (if I) the commissioning artist did EVERTHING possible within reason to locate the owner then its up to the individual how to proceed, I personally would keep it, love it and play with it knowing that truly it isnt mine to sell untill questions are answered.

Depending on the situation once I had an answer I could do multiple things... In events like death attempt to return it to the family or at the very least ask what they want done with it, Keep it knowing it has a good home, However if the owner simply drops off the face of the earth and after contacting them on all available methods has failed, then if you dont want to keep it and you're personally okay with selling it then sell it... I think that disclosing its a missing persons doll might limit your market... but thems the brakes I guess...?

My Family know (by way of my Day-Book) where I send stuff and how to access my various accounts and websites in an emergency so if anything did happen to me whilst a doll was away being worked on - there wouldnt be a chance in heck you wouldnt hear about it... You'd all be looking after my baby sister (21 yrs old) for months in a new thread called "Sympathy for Lexi"

 

I really think it goes both ways. If the custom job can't be completed in the time frame given to the person commissioning it, then the person commissioned to do the work should offer the immediate return and a refund of payments for unfinished work or offer a discount for taking longer than the specified time.

Again I think this is something that should be stated from the beginning. If I were doing commissions I would try to have a clause stating something like "any work that takes longer than the agreed time will receive a discount of 10% per (month?) over the agreed time alternately the item can be returned in as is condition at my expense with no further payment from the person that has commissioned the service"

 

If i ever got a commission at one point and lost communication with the other i would hold on to it for at least 6-8 months before considering selling it. I would do everything i could to get in contact with the person, but if theyve been gone for 6 months from internet total then they probably arent too worried about the doll anyway. While i wouldnt feel right selling someone elses doll i would give them a nice long wait to get hold of me some way.

 

Customisers do need to get information up front, but I would hesitate at actual immediate payment. There needs to be a careful balance, there are lots of trustworthy, excellent customisers and there are also lots of trustworthy, excellent buyers, however, there are also people who are willing and eager to exploit other people. Everyone needs to be careful.

If you are conducting a commission from the same country, have been paid upfront and you do have the return address, why not post the doll head back by the cheapest form of recorded mail? At least put a 'return to sender' stamp so it comes back to you if the old owner doesn't live at that address anymore.

I'm sending a head out to be customised; I have the price already and I've also sent the customiser my email and physical addresses so they know where I am. I've let the customiser know when I'm sending the head out and I'm sending the head by recorded post, so I'll know when the head arrives and who signs for it. I've agreed with the customiser to pay for the face-up and return postage all at once, when the customiser acknowledges they have the head in their possession. I think this is a fair way of doing things, at least when you're conducting a commission within the same country.

I'm also concerned that if it becomes accepted by the community that a customiser will sell the parts they've worked on if they don't hear back from the rightful owner in good time...what's to stop unscrupulous types from exploiting this? Expensive and limited edition heads get sent off for face-ups and mods all the time...selling them could be a tidy little side project if someone so wished. I'm not saying that we should automatically be suspicious of everyone, but there have been doll thefts through sending dolls out for customisation, so we need to be aware of all sides of the coin.

 

I'm not rather sure what to say on this topic, TBH. I mean, if I was working on something for someone and they failed to get back in contact with me I would be very hesitant to sell it. There could be a good number of reasons why the buyer has not contacted me. Sometimes RL has a way of sneaking up on us and disrupting plans. What if something had happened to the buyer and they had no one to contact me on their behalf.

I'll use myself as an example; I don't share my hobby with anyone because they are not interested. I have one friend (possibly 2) who knows I collect BJDs but I don't go into much detail, thus I wouldn't tell them that I've sent a doll off for work. So, if something were to happen to me that put a stop on my communication with the seller/customizer, no one would know anything. I could have fallen into a yearlong coma.

So, I personally wouldn't sell something that didn't belong to me. I'd probably put it up somewhere and forget about it. If the buyer contacts me again, then good for them. If not, I have something random lying about my house.

Now, onto the subject of giving out telephone numbers. I don't have a problem with giving out my number because to me this is a business deal/exchange. It just makes perfect sense to me for the buyer to leave a name, address, email and emergency contact number. I would expect everything would be kept confidential and my number and other details wouldn't be passed on, especially considering money has been exchanged, as I would assume that either the full amount or a deposit would have been taken.

However, that is just me and the way I am.

 

Don't most people pay for a face-ups upfront?
why not just return the head to the address that it was sent from, What if that person was in the hospital/coma and you sold off their doll..that doesn't seem right to me.

If I sent my doll of to someone I would give them my contact info (why not they have your adress!).

 

If someone is in the hospital or in a coma, there will almost certainly still be someone checking their mail and phone messages. Probably not email or PM's, though, which is why it's important to get more contact info. I would NOT mail something back to the return address without contacting the person first, because people move and mail sometimes gets lost. Some customizers don't take payment until the work is completed to the customer's satisfaction.

I don't go out giving my phone number to just anyone, but if I sent one of my dolls out I would make sure they had more ways to contact me than just online.

 

If it had been paid in full before I started work, then yes, I would send the doll back. However, if it was something like a commision, who usually (well all the ones I've delt with) take a disposit and then have the rest paid once it has been completed. So if the full amount hasn't been paid then I would wait until I heard something from the buyer (assuming I had failed to hear anything so far). If I heard nothing I would, like I said before, put whatever it was away and just forget about it until the time comes.

 

It would be pretty annoying to do all that work of a commission and not get paid... especially if you were counting on the money because your finances are tight. I give my vote to the waiting 6 months and sending multiple messages and then seeing if I can find another buyer. You never know, if you get stuck holding onto the item for years until you find out what happened, you might never get paid by the original owner, or the item could go out of fashion and nobody wants one anymore. (I'm sure everyone can tell I'm coming from the pov of trying not to get screwed out of money...)