Sun Love Beauty - scandal

If you've seen my tweets the last two days you know something went bad with a business deal I was doing with Sun Love Beauty, which is a self tanner. Let me tell you in detail what happened and why I was mad enough to tweet publicly.

Over three months ago I was contacted several times from Sun Love Beauty's youtube channel via messages. They wanted to pay me to do a video promoting their product. I've done this for various companies numerous times. I've never had a bad experience. When this kind of business goes on, in my experience, there hasn't always been a contract signed. I was feeling trusting, it was not only a fellow youtuber but a real business. After checking out their website I agreed.

At first we discussed ideas of spoofs, the contact who was writing back & forth with me throughout signed the emails Darian. He was very nice. I came up with Little Miss Honey Bee using the product in a fake commercial and told him it would be awhile, as securing studio space and editing green screen takes awhile.

The deal was to have the video autoplay on my channel for about a week, tweet, promote, etc. I did more and left it up longer. When I emailed Darian at youtube Sun Love the link he wrote back saying thank you, that he was having a bad day and he was cheered up by my video, etc. And that he had 125 units of lip gloss he was going to give me.

No mention of payment was included in his message. I waited awhile and finally wrote to ask (and I hate being the one to broach it) what the time frame was of being paid, finishing up this deal. I should mention this was not for much money, at all. The money itself was never the issue. What began to bother me more and more, as you'll read, is the fact that they were flaking on me.

I had been able to write back and forth with Darian regularly. I always quickly responded to him and vice versa. Suddenly it was becoming quite difficult to get a response.

The next message I get is that he was away for passover and wasn't there to sign checks and would take care of it asap.

I wait another couple weeks...nothing. I write back and a message comes back awhile later saying Darian is in the hospital with heart trouble. This time it's signed with a different name.

I wait a few more weeks. Nothing. I write back, I resened, I wait. Then Dairan writes back telling me he's stopped checking the youtube messages as often and he's still not feeling well, god is telling him to slow down. He asks if I can please email him instead.

We start to email and the first response back, he doesn't know who I am and I have to explain. He says he doesn't recognize me without my youtube name (even though I've always signed our messages with my real name.) I'm told he's sent someone over to another office to find out what's going on with my payment, as he had issued that over a week ago.

I hear again a payment was sent and am given some 4 digit tracking number.

I keep trying to get ahold of someone and nobody seems to want to help anymore so yesterday is when I tweeted, warning others that doing business with them is shady. In my experience, it absolutely was. I don't want another youtuber putting the time and effort into making them a video to help them promote, and getting ripped off. If I can warn them, then I'll do it.

Now I'm tweeted back that the video wasn't what they wanted so it didn't benefit them. In their tweets they tell me "you were hired to do satire and you did your own thing" and that I "have a lot of nerve".

Let me link to my video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSQH3cz9pI

Let me define satire.

satiric - satirical: exposing human folly to ridicule; "a persistent campaign of mockery by the satirical fortnightly magazine"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
satirist - a humorist who uses ridicule and irony and sarcasm
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Now there is an internet battle. So. Lame. I tweet them back telling me they have a lot of nerve for deciding NOW the video wasn't what they wanted.

This just in.

I check my email, and Darian has sent me several emails. First he's outraged that I made fun of passover? And called him a liar (heart trouble)? I tell him uh, no, nothing is being made fun of, I'm merely listing the excuses for why I wasn't paid. Did I use the word liar? Nope. Did I make fun of a religion? Nope. Wether the excuses I was given were true or false, those were what I was told. I get two more that say I might want to mention (insert here other terrible things that have happened to him) and that he's going to make this personal, that I need to apologize, I'm not important to the company, that we had discussed a pink house and I made it green (I have no idea what that means, we've never discussed a house lol so now clearly, things are being made up) so how can I want money when I didn't do what he asked, (again, there was a deal to make a video and be paid and this is the first I'm hearing that they didn't approve the video) to GO TO HELL and that he wishes he WAS A WOMAN SO HE COULD BEAT MY ASS. Yes. He said that. Yes, I'm saving all of this. Yes, he's threatened me.

At the end of the day, I think my point is proven. Never in my life have I encountered business people like this. In the end they win, they got a video out of me and had no intention to pay me. If I mean that little to their company, they should laugh at my foolishness (no contracts signed) and go on about their day. But no. I get threats! Unreal. If they're gonna be like this, you bet I'll spread the word.

I hesitated with making it public, it's just more promotion for them. I don't know if they realize that.
Probably. They're probably having a good laugh over this, the messing around with me.
Nobody is that dumb. They can't be for real.

But like I said, I don't want fellow youtubers having to deal with this.

And like I've said, I have every bit of correspondence saved.
I stand by everything I've said / sent to them. I'm guilty of nothing other than persistence.

Wow....

Moral of the story, kids. Always sign a contract!
Be CAREFUL who you trust online.