A TikTok dispute over a customer paying $2,600 for a rough tattoo sketch and no actual tattoo has spiraled out of control

• Courtney Monteith turned to TikTok when she ended up thousands out of pocket with no tattoo.
• She said the artist, Lindsay Joseph, overcharged her and wouldn't change the initial design.

A woman's complaint about a tattoo artist who she said charged her $2,600 for a disappointing sketch and no tattoo has spiraled into viral outrage on TikTok.

Courtney Monteith, from Ontario, Canada, posted to TikTok last week describing being thousands of dollars out of pocket after hoping to get a tattoo of a fox.

Monteith had planned on getting a full sleeve of the fox surrounded by leaves and flowers tattooed on her arm. She had requested the services of the artist Lindsay Joseph at her studio, Lucid Tattoos.

However, after some back-and-forth, Monteith spent $2,600 on designs and decided not to go ahead with the tattoo.

All she had was a rough drawing of a fox that, she said, looked nothing like what she wanted.

In her post, she said she agreed to the fees but later considered herself to have been ripped off.

The dispute — nicknamed TattooGate — follows a similar pattern to other customer disputes which went viral on TikTok, including ones about a disappointing birthday cake and a $200 plastic cup.

Monteith's first video racked up over 5 million views as people jumped to her defense, shared their stories, and offered to tattoo her for free.

"I was just posting my experience for my friends to see," Monteith told Insider. "I had less than 200 followers. I had no idea that people would rally around my experience."

It also sparked a backlash against Joseph, who set her social-media accounts to private and had her business flooded with bad Google reviews. Joseph told Insider that she had also received death threats.

People think there were red flags from the start

Monteith said she sent Joseph two reference photos of what she wanted her tattoo to look like. She shared the source images in her post and the design she got back: a full orange fox surrounded by different plants or butterflies.

Joseph initially agreed and asked for a $180 deposit, plus a $1,000 design and consultation fee, per the TikTok post.

Monteith was then offered three options: to pay $1,500 for a concept sketch to which she could request one change, $3,500 to have a few changes, or $6,000 for multiple reviews and alterations — all plus tax.

Immediately, people in the comments said this was a red flag.

"I'm 70% covered in ink," one person wrote. "I've never had an artist charge for a concept or a consultation. RUUUUN!!"

Monteith said she went for the first option and paid $2,695. She said she was "confident" Joseph would design a beautiful piece because she had been such an admirer of her work.

But when Monteith received the drawing of the fox tattoo, she said she knew it wasn't what she wanted — the fox didn't have its full body showing and did not resemble the reference images.

She emailed Joseph to ask for some adjustments, but Joseph refused, saying if she wanted a new piece, she would have to pay the difference between option one and option two — an extra $2,260.

"She said it was my fault that I wasn't clear that I wanted a full fox," Monteith said, despite showing the two full fox tattoos she had sent as a reference.

"I don't know how much clearer I could have been," she said.

In an email response, which Monteith showed, Joseph said having a full fox would have made it look like it was "scooting when they get an itchy back end."

Monteith said she asked for a refund, but Joseph declined.

"No. I'm not refunding you anything, I have given you options of moving forward, I have been kind, patient, and have fulfilled my duties to you this far," she wrote in a screenshot Monteith shared.

"If you don't want to move forward, that is your choice, but I'm not giving you my time, expertise, and creativity for nothing."

Monteith said in a response Joseph was "deflecting" and "placing all blame on me." She said she would have appreciated Joseph asking more questions.

"I said, I guarantee if you had sent me a beautiful sketch of a full fox, we'd probably be moving forward and I'd probably be getting this tattoo," she said. "But unfortunately, we're in this situation and I'm out $2,600."

Huge creators and artists have seen the videos and reached out

TattooGate has spread rapidly through TikTok over the past week, gaining the attention of creators, including Danisha Carter, Mama Tot, and the actor Julia Fox.

Another creator named Ri McCue also came forward, claiming she had been "basically scammed" out of $4,000 when she visited Joseph for a consultation in 2021.

McCue said she wanted Joseph to cover an old tattoo on her collarbone and that Joseph quoted her $1,700 with 50% upfront as a deposit.

Unlike Monteith, McCue said she ultimately did get the tattoo, but that things didn't go to plan. She alleged that Joseph first changed the placement of the tattoo, asked for more money than she quoted, and showed up late to the appointment.

McCue said she ended up paying $4,000 in total over two sessions. She said Joseph threatened to call the cops on her if she didn't, and attempted to blacklist her among other local artists.

Joseph didn't respond to an emailed request about the allegations made by Monteith and McCue.

In the past five days, Joseph's studio has been flooded with negative Google reviews, bringing her average rating down to 2/5 before many recent ones were removed. However, some historic negative reviews remain, describing similar experiences of late starts and high prices.

Joseph told Insider in an email she had not responded on social media to the claims against her because she would be "attacked from every angle" and declined to comment on the individual claims against her.

She said she had been receiving death threats for the past five days, including messages "telling me my children should die, my mother should get cancer, the list goes on."

She said her side of the story did "need to be told" but didn't specify how or when.

Monteith said in various follow-up TikToks that hundreds of artists had reached out to her with their own fox designs.

In a TikTok posted Monday, Monteith said she had taken up an offer from Matt Vaught, a tattoo artist in Newport Beach, California, to fly her out and tattoo her free of cost. She said she never expected to get anything for free, so she was going to donate to a fox-rescue charity.

Monteith told Insider she knew Vaught was going to do an "incredible job" on her tattoo.

"I'm overwhelmed by everything," she said. "But I'll keep posting my journey on my TikTok page so everyone who has been so supportive will get to see the amazing tattoo I had hoped for."