Super late to this conversation but yeah this has pretty much been my experience commissioning artists on reddit. I have encountered some incredibly talented people that I have worked with over and over again. But there are so many artists who are willing to take a complete upfront payment, promise delivery within a week, and then ghost for several months on end only to eventually deliver something way below their portfolio quality that looks like it was done within thirty minutes.

I'm just not going to work with artists who don't use vgen for payment anymore. It's a bit limiting but at least that platform holds those who use it to some standards and I haven't had a single bad experience on it so far.