Offer too good and I have no experience

Question

I hope this is an appropriate question.

I uploaded a cropped picture of something I knitted to Instagram and someone contacted me asking for a commission. They have no knowledge of my skills, just a single picture of part of a sweater, and they agree to any price I named, including half of the money upfront.

We are talking about a complicated sweater with expensive yarn that takes easily over a hundred hours to knit, so the price I asked for was 1900 pounds, thinking they will understand this is a very time consuming craft and give up. They said yes.

I would love to knit this as a commission but I can't help but feeling this is a scam. This person has absolutely no knowledge of my skills or even a full picture of the sweater, and I have no experience in freelance so I don't know what can go wrong here. My account is a brand new Instagram account, no pictures of my face and was clearly made a week ago.

I am not even sure what to ask here, would love your advice. Is there a good payment platform I should use, if this is even a good idea?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

First off, I get asked at every show if I do commission work. Being asked to do a commission piece is common. There are people who can easily afford to pay for a commission piece.

One way to go is to use a platform such as PayPal to get the down payment. What you can count on is that payment. The second payment is at risk of not being paid. If you have doubts, what you can do is to get the first payment, do the knitting, ask for half of the rest before delivery.

What will give assurance that this is not a scam? Look at the interactions with the client about things like size, color requests, etc. If you don't get good communication on those issues, then you have the right to say that you can't do the work. A good client will communicate with you, and they will want you to communicate with them about progress on the piece.

Scams want to pay with a check including fake "certified checks." One scam for artists is to be offered a check and the check is for more than the purchase price. They want you to give them cash for the amount over, but the check itself is fake. You will be out the full amount and be investigated for submitting a fraud check to the bank. (I stopped this by asking for a "check drawn on specific banks for the amount of purchase only." Those banks were ones that I could contact right away and ask if the check was good.) Stolen credit cards are not likely on commission pieces as the fraud will be found before they get their hands on the piece.