# PaintedFigs.com Miniature Scam?



## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

I just received an interesting email about paintedfigs.com, the claims in it are pretty serious.

I'm only posting this because when the DE were released I ordered allot of models from paintedfigs, it however took over 6months before the models arrived. People on podcasts have also mentioned it taking forever before they receive their models. Now this popped up so I'd like to know what you guys think.

I have no idea what's going on, if their site got hacked or something since the article is posted on their own site.

http://www.discountfigs.com/

Emailed them today and got this reply, sounds reasonable to me.




> Good Morning Daniel,
> 
> Navin here, thanks for your email.
> 
> ...


----------



## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

I was going to order my Necron 2nd wave models from them but after reading this I'm not so sure anymore...


----------



## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

I have to be honest, some of their work is terrible. I just flicked through some of their gallery, and there are begginers on these forums that are far better. Not surprised they ran into financial trouble of one type or another.


----------



## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

I've only really scan read it... i'd never heard of the place until this to be honest. But... this tells me one of a few things. 

Either this is the truth of what is happening with them. They've really pissed off someone to the point of creating this as a fake... which still says to me theres something wrong with them. Or... its someones idea of a joke. Which seems alot of trouble to go to just for this.

In other words... yeah, i'd defiantely not use them again. Especially if its taken them 6 months to send out an army. Hell.. i'm not the best painter in the world and I can easily take a hour to do a single model... but even i could paint at least a 2000 point army to a good display quality in less then a month if I put my mind to it.


----------



## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

I heard about them on the podcast D6generation, this plus the huge discount they offered when I made my order was the reason I used them. I only ordered boxed models, no painting or anything like that done. I remember receiving the models a month after the DE Battleforce came out. They blamed GW for the problem which is in this "reveal".

Not sure how to take it at all since paintedfigs.com and discountfigs.com used to be the same company when I made my orders but now it seems something has changed.


Emailed them today and got this reply, sounds reasonable to me.




> Good Morning Daniel,
> 
> Navin here, thanks for your email.
> 
> ...


----------



## orcman (Feb 20, 2012)

I contacted http://www.discountfigs.com/ and asked them could I see the emails they say Navin sent. 

They sent them over to me. From what I can see they seem to be internal discussions the site has got hold of and thats why Navin is being rather forthcoming in them.

There are indeed emails Navin sent that confirm the things said, which I don't think he ever thought would be made public. 

I couldnt believe what I was reading, I suggest you contact them yourself and ask.

Further they say Navin was given an opportunity to answer prior to publication and he refused, they stand by their claims and if Navin wishes to sue for libel he is welcome.

From what I read in those emails he sent he would loose!


----------



## wulfmojo (Feb 23, 2012)

I saw this over on Faeit212's blog and was shocked. So I came over here to speak my piece in defence of Navin and the company.

These guys are not scammers at all, I've had tons of work done from them over several years. They basically painted my entire Skaven army between about three different orders, as well as a small Chaos Daemons force and a Necromunda team. They aren't the quickest it's true, but from my experience no painting services are quick, it always takes months to get your stuff done. However the majority of work they've done for me has been good quality, and I've always been happy with them. I generally use them if I want an army painted, and another more expensive service if I just want a single model or unit painted.

Navin Weeraratne always used to handle customer service personally and I have a load of old emails from him, plus I added him onto facebook because we used to have a laugh about geeky stuff. It's completely unfair that they're being slandered like this. I think the quoted message in the OP says it all really, this 'journalist' doesn't turn up when Googled, this is just an attempt to screw over the company, which is just appalling.


----------



## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

to be honest i dont actually think anyone cares or until this was posted had heard of the company or the alleged scam other than Madcowcrazy


----------



## wulfmojo (Feb 23, 2012)

Well obviously some people had heard of them, or they would never have have been in business at all. If people are anything like me, they generally don't advertise that they've been using a painting service, as it's somewhat frowned upon in the gaming community.

Regardless, I feel they're worth defending, as they've always done good work for me.


----------



## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Frankly, while I'm not fully aware of the situation, or the people involved, I'd think that if one company is posting such things about another company they used to be a part of, there must be some element of truth to what they are saying.... 

Also, for someone to have to sit down and write something that long and have it be a bunch of lies.... again, someones really pissed someone else off, which again says to me theres an element of truth to it.

Until its resolved one way or another, i'd steer clear of them just to be safe.


----------



## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

bitsandkits said:


> to be honest i dont actually think anyone cares or until this was posted had heard of the company or the alleged scam other than Madcowcrazy


I heard about them on the D6 Generation podcast, I believe they have quite allot of listeners. I tried them out because they had some huge discounts, 30-40% off RRP if I remember correctly. Painting I can do myself but those discounts for boxed models were too good to pass up on, so I ordered 4 boxes of everything from the DE release. I was then told GW took offence to their huge discounts and refused to send them their orders, thus the waiting began. 6-7 months later I received my boxes.

They had to do a new pricing deal with a max of 20% off RRP and some other requirements set by GW so they changed back to their US supplier. This is about as much as I remember from the emails I received.


----------



## pnweerar (Mar 19, 2012)

I apologize for this late reply, I hate to commit thread necromancy but this thread does come up whenever my company name is googled so I think its important that my response be there for people to read as well. 

What I'm posting here is similar to letter I wrote to the gaming community last week, on dakka. 

From 2009 to about early 2011, we were affected by a conman who caused great damage to our company. We ejected him and then fixed the damage. We talked about this here with Raef Granger (formerly of the D6 Generation):

http://www.payloadz.com/d1/freeproducts.asp?id=1531825

In response, the conman launched a smear campaign against us. Here’s the site he runs it from:

www.discountfigs.com

The only things he doesn’t accuse us of are child labor, rape, and talking in theaters.


*Proof Discountfigs.com Has No Credibility*

Historians test something called “external credibility.” It’s what you notice if you’re given a parchment written by Henry VIII, but you notice is clearly printed by an inkjet printer. The parchment is falsified: its contents are therefore not credible.

“M.E. Shenny” is the “investigative journalist” who put up the smear content. If you Google M.E. Shenny you will find no evidence that he exists. No magazines our journals he’s worked for, no stories he’s written, nothing. He magically sprang into being with a gmail account of all things, in February of 2011. He is completely invented. Would you trust someone who tries to convince you of something, who starts out by lying to you?

Secondly, journalists don’t post stories on sites that try to sell you things, and are really keen to gather your email address. They post on news sites.

On these two points alone, Discountfigs.com has zero credibility. I will not waste time on the numerous accusations and smears it makes. Instead, I will show you what our customers see: real evidence that we are exactly who we say we are.


*Over a Thousand Galleries of Painted Armies, Including Many Recent Projects*

See for yourself: https://plus.google.com/photos/105582963113829861589/albums

Click on some galleries and read their publishing dates. See how they go up almost daily? See how large some of those orders are? Check out the numbers over the past three months. Or if you like, past three years, your choice.

That’s a lot of painting going up, especially in recent months. This suggests a lot of painters: skilled workers expecting skilled pay. Conmen don’t spend on the job: that defeats their purpose. Now, better conmen may spend a bit to look legit – but does it look like I’m spending a bit? Or, does it look like a huge amount of work is getting done?

Don’t take my word for it. Go on, look and see for yourself. I bet I have more pictures online of Games Workshop products, than Games Workshop does.

Either I have one helluva painting team, or I am a terrible conman.


*Catching Scammers is Paypal’s Job*

Retailers don’t like working with Paypal. It’s a pain. They randomly freeze your account and run inquiries on you. Even end-users are annoyed by Paypal. Paypal has a good reason: they are the frontline against Internet fraud.

If we were scamming people, Paypal would have watched the complaints go up, and then just moved in and shut us down. Simple as that. They probably have an algorithm to flag fraudulent behavior.

We spent almost a year cleaning up the damage after we ejected the conman. Almost a year of slow refunds, late orders, and large backlogs. If we were scamming people that whole time, how could we have trick Paypal?

We simply would not be having this conversation. Paypal would have cleaned us out.

A year ago.


*The Largest Miniature Painting Service in the Fantasy Business*

There’s bigger painting services out there, but they’re not dedicated, custom, fantasy painting outfits. We’ve got twelve full-time staff:

Two builders
Three newbie painters
Five experienced painters
One studio manager
One Navin

That’s over 30 man-years of training and experience. It’s also a big payroll to cover. A conman won’t have a big payroll. He’ll ideally have a payroll of just one – himself. Not convinced about my team’s size? Go back and look at the galleries. Figure out how much I must paint to maintain such a hoax.

It’s not humanly possible – if it was, I would have found out and got a patent on it.


*Six Years Experience*

Six years. You don’t do something that long if you don’t love it. You have to push ahead. Solve problems. Build systems. Train people. Sometimes, you even have to log back on Dakka and defend your reputation:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/436240.page

No one sweats like that over something and then throws it away.

Also, who waits that long to make a quick stolen buck? Conmen want fast money. If you take six years, you may as well be working for a living. If I was thief, I would have robbed everyone a long, long, time ago.


*Big Names Support Us*

We’ve sponsored the D6 Generation, and we’ve painted off and on for all three hosts. Here’s some work we just did for Craig:

https://picasaweb.google.com/105582963113829861589/CraigGallantD6GenerationWesternMinis

We buy our minis from Neal at thewarstore.com. These are not people who will waste time with random fraudsters. These are people of strong character. These are people with a stake in the community. These are people who know the score.


*We Didn’t Quit When it Hit the Fan (MadCowCrazy, please take note)*

If I was going to scam the wargaming community, here’s what I would do.

Presell a huge amount of minis, painting services, etc… at a massive discount (40% -50%) to as many people as possible. Exactly like we did in 2010 to MadCowCrazy.

Start having problems with delivery, and run for as long as possible taking people’s money but not giving them their goods. Exactly like we did in 2010 to MadCowCrazy.

Send out a big email about how we got robbed of all our money but some mysterious, evil, third party we never actually name. Exactly like we did in 2011 (probably to MadCowCrazy).

Declare bankruptcy. Walk off with all the money.

Oh wait! We didn’t do that.

I spent the next year answering angry email after angry email. We made cuts. We worked weekends. We took money from new orders, and used it to finish old orders. I took responsibility for a mess that I had gotten myself into. I took care of my clients. MadCowCrazy, as he states himself, got his goods. 

All the clients who went through the problems of 2009-2011, either got their minis or got their money back. There are a few people we’re still refunding, but the for the most part order has been restored.

A conman doesn’t sit around to face the music after he’s robbed you. He flees town. My name is Navin Weeraratne, my business is Paintedfigs.Com, I live in Sri Lanka. You won’t find out the name, business, or address of an invented persona that attacks me online though.

Paintedfigs.com is still here. We will always be here. People have slung mud against us since the very beginning – download our pricelists and you’ll have an idea why. Our work speaks for itself:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150636257568585.399360.105483868584&type=1

You can see why quality like this, at our prices, creates as many enemies as it creates friends.

Thank you for reading this,

Navin Weeraratne, Owner, Paintedfigs.com


----------



## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Hi Navin, I dont think it was wise bumping this thread, very few people read this thread or cared enough to answer and a few of those who did had not heard of the alleged scam in the first place, by posting that huge response i dont think you have actually done anything good, you have in fact done the opposite,by coming here and protesting your innocence you have made yourself look guilty particularly when you included a section on "_If I was going to scam the wargaming community, here’s what I would do._"
plus "_catching scammers is paypals job_" which could easily be interpreted as "well if paypal dont spot the scam its ok".

those are not things you should include in post where your explaining what happened as they just scream "dont trust me"


----------



## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Have to completely agree with Bits here.... Its a case of 'he doth protest too much', which makes you sound even more guilty then you did before.

And its Paypals job to catch scammers? No... :nono:


----------



## crabpuff (Aug 5, 2008)

Plus making people read that long ass post.......bored.... back button.


----------



## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

GrizBe said:


> Have to completely agree with Bits here.... Its a case of 'he doth protest too much', which makes you sound even more guilty then you did before.
> 
> And its Paypals job to catch scammers? No... :nono:


paypals job is to count its copious amounts of cash for doing feck all.


----------



## normtheunsavoury (Mar 20, 2008)

This all sounds a lot like two people who used to work together and get on had a bad falling out. I don't know if there was any sort of scam going on or not, I don't really care, but all this comes across as is two 12 year old kids bitching at each other over the net.

I think I'll keep hold of my money and paint my own minis.


----------



## LazyG (Sep 15, 2008)

That said the 'reveal' fake site really is written by a five year old. I love the awesome 'journalism'!


----------



## dodginghitmen (Mar 21, 2012)

I worked at Painted Figs from April 2010 and was commissioned to build and manage a number of websites in this time in return for a fee. In early 2011 Navin Weearatne, the owner, decided he wanted to keep the money he was paying me for himself, thanked me for my work, even pointing out how good it was and then terminated my contract. I never chased the outstanding money he owed me, but explained that as per our agreement considering he hadn’t paid for some of the newer sites he couldn’t therefore have them. For me that was the end of the matter. 

Subsequently Navin Weearatne realised he wasn’t as competent as he thought at implementing the marketing plan and his cashflow dried up. So he decided to invent the story that I stole his money and then he expanded this lie. Even blaming me for the poor performance of his painting service, namely slow turn around times and painting quality that is average at best. Apparently I even managed to impact on Painted Figs performance before I worked at the company and long since after I left. 

I privately gave Navin Weearatne the opportunity to apologise for his libel/slander and pointed out that as he had brought this into the public domain and published my name and email address that if he did not apologise I would talk to a journalist to set the record straight and publish my subsequent interview online. In which, I would detail all the emails Navin Weearatne sent me during my time at the company, proving that what Navin Weearatne was saying was nonsense and a lot more besides. 

Navin Weearatne did not apologise and continued to slander/libel me for all the issues of his company. So I published my interview which can be found online at http://www.discountfigs.com/ 

I received an interesting email asking me the source of the emails used in http://www.discountfigs.com/ and were they infact sent by Navin Weearatne. 

The sender also outlined that they had contacted Painted Figs asking them the same question initially Navin Weearatne wrote back saying he would answer. When he received the questions he wrote back again saying he would not answer them. 

The sender also outlined they had contacted Neal at the Warstore to ask for a reference about Painted Figs, but had not received one. 

As outlined I was paid to be in charge of the Painted Figs website and build and manage numerous others from April 2010. So have all the email records from that time. My interview just outlined what Navin Weearatne said in these emails. Emails which anyone is free to download from the site and see for themselves. I am not accusing Navin Weearatne of anything. I am simply making public the type of person he really is, duplicitous, what he said in his emails is one thing and what he tells everyone of Painted Figs customers / prospective customers is something else. And that some of the things he does are illegal. 

He doesn’t deny sending the emails. But points out that he has been around 6 years and that it’s Paypals job to catch scammers. A quick trawl of ebay and a Google search that reveals various fake items shows, I think ,Paypal doesn’t quite see their service in the same way Navin Weeraatne does. Amongst other thing he is still openly admiting he was trading while insolvent, but doesn’t seem to realise that is illegal. 

The incompetent invent stories that blame others for their own short comings. The guilty try to discredit the source, not the facts. All the spin in the world cannot change the fact that the emails I say Navin Weearatne sent are genuine, which he does not deny and he fabricates stories to cover his own incompetence. To date it has been everyones fault but his and that list includes: customers, Games Workshop, courier firms, customs officials, me, various other members of staff and that he has been ill. No doubt when he was at school the dog ate his homework frequently as well. 

I find it strange that Navin Weeraratne consulted his libel lawyers on the matter and their advice was to let it slide. Who has ever heard of a libel lawyer letting a matter slide unless it was true? So, if Navin Weearatne and the Painted Figs libel lawyers would like to challenge the authenticity of those emails in a proper court of law I am happy to oblige. And if I stole from you why didn’t you call the Police? 

I am not a gamer so I have no authority in the gaming community. But if you believed everything people with authority told you, we would still believe the world was flat and of course governments never lie. So because I am not a gamer doesn’t mean what is said in my interview on http://www.discountfigs.com/ isn’t true. Infact the opposite, because I have nothing to loose. I am not the person who is pitching for your business, Navin Weearatne and Painted Figs are, so who benefits from lying? Navin Weearatne, who looses his easy lifestyle if you believe me or me who looses nothing if you believe Navin Weearatne. 

If you believe me Navin Weearatne is an incompetent, duplicitous, liar. If you believe Navin Weearatne he is just incompetent. Feel free to read what Navin Weearatne said in his emails at http://www.discountfigs.com/ Look at the images Navin Weeratne posts to show the quality of Painted Figs work, see what other gamers say and decide for yourself if you want to use Painted Figs or not.


----------



## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

dodginghitmen said:


> I find it strange that Navin Weeraratne consulted his libel lawyers on the matter and their advice was to let it slide. Who has ever heard of a libel lawyer letting a matter slide unless it was true?


Having obtained a postgraduate law degree and and worked in the legal profession of many years I can think of several reasons why I would advise a client not to pursue a case for defamation in response to an unfounded slur.

As I point this out purely in the interests of fair assessment of both side's claims, I will refrain from speculating on whether such reasons might apply here.


----------



## scscofield (May 23, 2011)

Next on Jerry Springer!!! Is DiscountFigs actually the father or has PaintedFigs been leading him on.....?


----------



## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Told you no good would come of his post bumping antics


----------



## Achaylus72 (Apr 30, 2011)

I don't think it is prudent for two sides to use this place and its forums to air their dirty laundry.


----------



## scscofield (May 23, 2011)

Personally, the whole thing makes me think it one person/party using this 'scandal' to push their business.


----------



## humakt (Jan 2, 2008)

I always think the public washing of laundry should be avoided. Its good of you both to come to a public forum and defend or accuse each other when I guessing a majority of users dont give 2 hoots. Maybe you both need to grow up and talk to each other and come to some form of agreement about who said or did what to who. Issue a joint statement and stop making such long posts that we don't really care about.


----------

