Tldr: the shop pawned me off on their apprentice for a large and complex piece. The apprentice, Seth Jarvis, never set an appointment with me, and stopped working on the design the second he got a deposit out of me. Don't go here.
I came in with plans to get a large lettering piece that had a lot of meaning to me. There were no portfolios available for me to look at, just a tv with a screensaver cycling between AI slop and some truly shaky looking work. I mean there was a picture of Mario on there that looked like my 4 year old nephew drew it. After explaining what I was looking for, I was immediately referred to an apprentice at the shop, Seth Jarvis. Nobody told me he was an apprentice at the time, not him or his mentors: it was just listed on his Insta. His work looked sick and was in the style I was interested in though, and he had a few people talking him up in the comments so I decided to give him a shot.
He quoted me $1300, which I thought was high, but if it was quality work I would have been happy to pay that. He said he'd get back to me with the design in a week and two weeks later he finally did. I'm wasn't in a rush so whatever. It looked sick, but only the left half was done. I say hell yea, can't wait to see the rest. Fastforward another week or two and he sends me the full thing. He says it's still a work in progress, but I can see a few points in the new design that really take away from what I wanted out of the piece. I communicate that with him and immediately start getting push back. He pulled out every narcissist line in the book. At first he just brushed away and disregarded my concerns and then he tried to browbeat and gaslight me about the style not allowing the changes I wanted on the right half of the tattoo, even though they were present and looked just fine on the left. I went in to the shop to try and reason with him, and he said he'd need a deposit to keep working on it. I wanted to give him a morale boost because I felt the design I wanted was a little complex, so I gave him double the amount that he asked for. He sends me a picture of the design the next day stripped of all flavor, with half the issues I had noticed in the first draft still there. I pointed out the issues that were still present and even offered an idea for how to fix them. His response to that was that I could take this new design or take the old one, but he refused to make any more changes. After giving him double his requested deposit without even the promise of a date to do the tattoo, he refused to work with me the very next day. If that's not a scam, I don't know what is. read more
