I happened to surf past fasticon.com and saw the banner advertising their caricature service. For $89, you get your face drawn by an artist. The picture isn't necessarily a caricature per se, but it's something nice to use as your avatar. $89 isn't such a bad price for a good-looking picture, so I paid and sent them a few different photos of myself.
Quoting their Info page: Each Caricature icon is completed in around 3 days, depending on complexity. However, because of the number of orders we get, most caricatures are delivered within a week or two of receipt of your pictures by the artist, sometimes sooner.
I patiently waited for some kind of reply. After two weeks, I emailed them but didn't get a response. After yet another week, I contacted the payment processor, 2checkout. The same day, I finally got a reply from Dirceu Veiga of Fast Icon. He claimed he had tried to contact me earlier, but that his email messages had been rejected by my mail server. He also provided a pencil sketch of my caricature!
I was satisfied — I had finally got something, and it was a nice drawing! So it appeared to be my fault after all since my email setup didn't work. Strangely, nobody else had complained, and I send at least a few emails a day. If it's ok for you, we will start the coloration, and in at the most two days you will have the ready caricature.
I replied, from both my primary email account and my Gmail account to be on the safe side, and told him I liked the sketch. I waited two days. Three days. I emailed Fast Icon (again, from both my email accounts). Four days. Another email. After one week, and three emails, my patience wore thin, and I contacted 2checkout once more.
Again, he promptly replied after I contacted 2co. A seemingly hastily composed email message from the apparently English-challenged Mr. Veiga read: sorry the delay. I'll send today the preview of your colored caricature, through the panel of control of the 2 checkout.
That gave me some hope, but I somehow knew what to expect. One day went by. Nothing. Two days. Three. I contacted the 2 checkout
again, and they asked me to wait a day more to see if they could get ahold of him. I waited two days, and *surprise*... no response. So I told the payment processor, and they asked him to go ahead with a refund. Dirceu woke up and replied, blaming a high workload. you will receive an update of your order today.
Right. Sure. Yeah. I never got any kind of reply, of course. But I finally managed to get 2checkout to refund the order.
Conclusion
On one hand, Fast Icon's CaricatureIcons.com service seems legit. They have great-looking samples on their page, and they sent me a nice sketch. So it's clearly not all a scam. On the other hand, their barely existing customer service sucks deeply. Don't hire these guys, unless you're craving a frustrating process of repeatedly getting screwed over and not getting what you were promised and paid for. I like their name; Fast Icon. Irony at its best.
But hey, at least I got a sketch.
Tomas Franzén, 2008-10-09
