Unreliable writers/designers, lies and promises

[pam]

I need to rant. If you don't want to read my rant, click 'back' on your browser now. And no, this isn't ABulletaway in disguise.

I'm really, REALLY sick of the unreliability of people in this industry. Today it's writers. I had one I hired to do reviews who wasn't doing them after a month or more. A PM assured me they would be done. A month later I said they needed to be done in a week and I was assured they would be. 2 months later they didn't even have the courtesy to tell me to go fuck myself or something, they simply did not do the reviews with no explanation.

Another writer was hired to do blog posts and reviews, but needed the money up front with one sob story after another -- "I need a new monitor" to "I want to go to NASCAR" but oh, their ePass account would not be set up for 3 days so please use PayPal. So, I find someone to do a transfer of $300 for me and pay upfront. This was 2 months ago and gee, that ePass account is still not set up. The writing went well at first and then the person disappeared on me. Every day I'd get a "I'll be doing the reviews tonight" email and they never, ever were done. The person had one excuse after another and refused to even do a test review for me with some bullshit excuse. 3 weeks went by without a single blog post. When they finally did decide to do some work there were a dozen posts.

When I asked for the 3rd time for a refund on all monies owed, which is about $200 in my estimation, I was told I'd have to wait for it as they didn't have it and they'd pay me back as they could. Wait -- you demand payment with every pithy excuse known to man, lie to me through your teeth and don't do any work -- yet expect me to wait for my money? Then the "I can do the work for you instead of a refund" emails but sorry, I've already hired someone else. Time is money, and a month is just too long to wait. Unreliable and a liar. 3 days with no emails to my demand for repayment. Shit lists are on boards for a reason. I hope I don't have to use them.

Then we have designers. A few months there was the disaster of a designer who sold blog templates through this forum and others. Some kept their templates up despite the fact they were stolen designs. Fortunately I went to the biller and asked for my money back, and got it. But how many people got fucked out of money and/or designs over that one?

It seems like every day I log into a forum and and read about a domain name sale gone bad, a writer who disappeared, a designer who stole designs, a programmer who did a half-assed job for a program, a traffic broker who disappeared, etc.

And yeah, I can see the "I use so and so and they are great." I have writers and designers and coders who are awesome. Hell, I'm going to spend my entire day on a single site because my coder redid the entire script and all features of it, and it will take me all day to make sure all is good, add things, etc. He rocks!

Bottom line is I do more and more myself because the end result reflects on ME. I've often said if I don't do it myself, it's not done right.

This is a rant against all the fuckwits out there but there are some amazing people doing work as well. I'm not going to name them just as I'm not going to name the fuckwits right now.

I just wish we had more ethical people in our industry.

[CuriousToyBoy]

This could be a LONG assed thread if everyone does the same, and vents on being let down.

Trust me, you are most definitely not alone and MANY of us feel your pain.

;-)

[Phreak]

Amen to that...
It's been rough on you....

My view to these things is simple, do not trust anyone but yourself to get things done the way you want them!

You will not only find these fuckwits in this biz, they are everywhere....

Stay happy...

Phreak

[REßEL]

The problem is also that very few like to name and shame. Whatever their reason, "it's only $50" or "I'll look petty and unprofessional complaining about a few quid", or even when they do out they get the "there's 2 sides" and a bunch of enablers making excuses.

When in actual fact all it actually does is allow the unreliable, unprofessional, cheats and scammers to continue to get away with their crap on the next unsuspecting person because they've not heard anything bad about them. When the truth is that it's just that no one has spoken publically about their bad experience.

[hardcoreblogger]

i feel your pain, there are really a lot of very unreliable freelancers in this biz. one thing i have learnt to never do anymore, no matter what the excuses and arguments are, is to prepay the full amount. of course there's also the other side of the story, many freelancers have been burnt by cheating webmasters who don't pay them. in a new relationship i consider it fair to go 50% upfront and 50% after complete delivery.

[Chimera]

I don't come to this forum very often anymore. No reason to unless a thread is pointed out to me.
This one was. I will say a couple of things here and take my leave for a few weeks or months again.
People have been known to say there is an "uncoolness" factor to outing someone who took money from you and did not deliver.

There is no uncoolness factor to saying so and so took my money. There is nothing cool about losing 50$ or 2k.
The uncoolness comes in allowing it to go on and let others get taken.
Paying in advance is not actually a cool thing anyway. If you do and you get taken - then you name names, not that it will retrieve your 2 cents or your 200 dollars but it will prevent someone else from feeling that same pain.
If you are all about helping persons then you should be all about preventing the same thing from happening to others, not about being "cool".

[daedal]

It's good to rant.

I have not been ripped of for a long time now, but that's because I learnt from my mistakes. I do as much of my own programming and design as I can, anything else I don't just rely on one person, I use different people for different projects, so if I am let down I have a fallback.

When it comes to designs. I always get different designers to do different things, and won't get one doing all my design constantly. I won't pay upfront out of principal, by paying up front I am opening myself up to being let down in the future. No matter how good someone is today and how reliable, theres nothing to say they will be reliable in 6 months time. Anyone that asks for payment up front is a risk, if you don't know the person then 50% is fair.

I won't use Paypal either for payments, as its the only payment processor that even if you are right they can find in the other persons favour. In fact I have only ever had issues when accepting paypal in the past.

[SleazyBear]

I had some what the same problem but it was in house, and I fixed the problem pretty quick, I hired college students, paid them $8 an hour to start, if you was late you went to 7.75 if you missed a day you went to $7.50 unless you called in. You dropped 25 cents every time you was late, late 3 times you was gone, called in more than 3 times and you was gone..

Paying out people on the net.. that are doing day work, should be paid by day, or by week, stop paying by month. Everyone I work with around here pretty well knows if I hire you, your paid when the work is done. None of this half now half later crap, If you don't like my terms thats fine, someone else will. This seems to be one of this industries odd things where you get paid to do the work first.

[Globofun]

I had my share of deadbeats, and I will not pay in advance anymore.........NEVER AGAIN!

This biz sucks because of that, and sometime I just feel like leaving for good

Online business is filled with cheaters, liars, deadbeats and the like......unfortunatly!

[pam]

I don't think naming names always works. Case in point -- Lela Hosting. For YEARS you read here how they provided poor service, sites always down, etc, yet everyone still did business with them.

The one who ripped me for $200 was named in another thread so it's no secret. But there *are* 2 sides to every story, and I know I've worked with people who others don't recommend, and vice versa. I've never heard anyone say it was "uncool" though. I guess I miss a lot.

It's like "sponsor so-and-so sucks" threads where half say they suck and half are doing amazing with them.

I don't pay upfront very often, but unfortunately I have a heart. 2 months ago I loaned someone money (will I never learn??) and was supposed to get work back in return. I'm just tired of sending PMs plus at this point, I don't need them to do any blog posts for months.

My regular designer generally does the work and then asks for payment. Sometimes he'll ask for payment right before it's done, but I haven't had problems in a few years so I guess I now trust him and he trusts me, apparently.

Oh, yeah, to the haters, go fuck yourself.

[liqqwid]

if i may add my 2 cents..... i think it's probably best to build a relationship with associates before you offer payment of services...and maybe take a little extra effort to work with them to understand what they're skill sets are before you invest more time and money into a project that may fail, or exceed beyond your expectations.....

[rvince]

We're all experiencing the problem every once in a while I guess...

That's why I'm doing absolutely everything on my sites except the banner designs (I'm colorblind and couldn't design a banner to save my life).
_ALL_ the rest is done by me (writings, unix host admin, scripting, support, shooting models, ...)
Indeed, I feel like I'm only doing 20% of what I should do to get my sites going like I'd want them to be, but I prefer to be sure everything is working great and progress slowly rather than have a major part of my business screwed up because of a lazy/unreliable/dishonnest employee/contractor.

BTW, I've seen the very same problem occurring every time people are working at home. The only way I know of to get an employee/contractor to work correctly is to be able to come behind his back (physically! ICQ/phone/skype doesn't count) a few times per day...

And let's face it, the few people who can work correctly at home very quickly end up working on their own stuff rather than working on someone else's...
Why would I write a blog post for $2-5 when I can make $50 and over by using them on my own blogs anyway?!

[gamemint]

If its 100.00 plus transactions, i only deal with people that are for example
have adult design sites that are reputable, havent had any problems, or if i know them online etc etc,. but if i ever use a freelance programmer, i pay 25% upfront, and 25% when things are getting done, and you know how that goes

[rvince]

Originally Posted by Globofun

I had my share of deadbeats, and I will not pay in advance anymore.........NEVER AGAIN!

For as long as I've been doing business (including non adult), I've always refused to pay more than 30% of the total price upfront.

When I'm asked for more than 30% upfront, I just move on!!!

I move on even more quickly if I'm begged for a "quick $100 to pay for rent/food/etc...". I prefer to work for people swamped under orders rather than people who need to beg to get some work...

Also when I'm working with someone for the 1st time for a "big" contract, I split my order in several sub-orders and don't proceed to sub-order N+1 until the N is fully completed.

[ristac]

Pam you forgot to add how you had to "Request" that this person who owes you $200 stops using your name as a reference. This is another point, I used same said person, mainly because they stated Pam was a happy customer and I was lucky as my work was completed after a little run around. If I had not just taken word for it and actually contacted Pam then I might have thought otherwise.

I AM NOT blaming Pam, I am kicking myself as checking references is another lesson to be learned...

[wildwebcamgirls]

Well I think you aren't the one to blame pam.. especially if you paid money and got 0 work. I mean it's not even like writing reviews is a huge challenge. You just type. They proved they had the ability in the empty messages they wrote you.

You got me fired up. Reminds me of the empty promises made to me. It's the reason I quit my jobs and learned how to be a better coder, designer, and manage all my web stuff myself. Sometimes some extra hands would be nice, but who can we trust?

I think a problem is that when you're paying someone to do something obviously they aren't going to put the same amount of care and love in it as you would. It's yours not theirs. I was going to design a site for someone once and they decided to just do it themselves. Well, it came out way nicer than if I had made it.. only because I can tell he tried really hard to put it together the best he could. If I had done it for money I would have built it according to how much $ he gave me.

Okay so my story was kinda pointless... once these damn fingers get going I can't stop them.

Hey, why do you want 200 of 300 back? I'd want all 300! And how long did the reviews need to be?

[mojoman]

ethics? from people who sit infront of a computer, don't deal face to face with humans at all, and can disappear and come back reinvented at a whim?

doctors, lawyers, teachers, specialists etc are called professionals for a reason. webmasters generally aren't.

[pam]

Originally Posted by ristac

Pam you forgot to add how you had to "Request" that this person who owes you $200 stops using your name as a reference. This is another point, I used same said person, mainly because they stated Pam was a happy customer and I was lucky as my work was completed after a little run around. If I had not just taken word for it and actually contacted Pam then I might have thought otherwise.

I AM NOT blaming Pam, I am kicking myself as checking references is another lesson to be learned...

See, that's the point I made above? 2 sides to every story, etc. If you had asked me about his work when I was posting glowing reviews about him, his references would have been sterling. But even when he was fucking me over, he was using me as a reference. I told him to stop. TWICE. I told him if he continued, he'd not like what I had to say about him and had email proof of all of it. That was the last I heard. He's very, very lucky no one did check his references with me

Face it, his reputation was made and a lot of work was gotten because of what I posted about him, and I *was* happy at the time. I tried to be understanding when he had a family issue and could not do work, even though he managed to log into MySpace every day. But he posted your work would be done, Ristac, and it was. He posted mine would be done and it simply was not. I didn't even get an email update as promised, nor did he post again.

I had to hire another writer (Senore, who has worked out well thanks to Tigermom posting about him) to pick up the slack and do other jobs while I waited and waited for this person to do what he was paid to do.

I didn't even mention how he TRIED to get me to pay more half-way through and I absolutely refused. That's another rant for another day.

I kept trying to be patient, but I had obligations to myself to meet. I finally just had to hire someone to takeover his work and ask for a refund. I then went though old emails and saw 2 weeks of emails with a promise every day or every other day, yet the work was not done.

I think some of us are professionals. Those of us who run this like a business, don't work for a Happy Meal, etc. Unfortunately, though, there are too many who don't have professional standards in what they do. That's the point of my entire rant. My dog was sick, my car wouldn't work, I didn't feel good, there was a concert, my server was down, my computer died, my monitor died, my foot hurts -- every excuse you can think of.

Wildwebcamgirls, if 100 posts were done, then they legitimately earned it by doing good work so it would be dead wrong of me to ask for that back. They may be fucking me over but that does not give me license to do the same back to them.

Also, Wildwebcamgirls, reviews are not just "you type." You have to understand the niche and fetish. I had a reviewer write a review on a BBW site and he talked about how disgusting the fat women were. It sounds like it's easy but ask anyone who writes reviews how it can be complex. I only require text-- many reviewers on other sites need to download images from a members' area and then need to gauge which images will appeal to a surfer. Writing a review that sells a surfer WHILE being honest is not always easy. It's more than keyword-stuffing but if you don't understand the niche or have a good understanding of it, it's not easy to write about.

But mojo made a good point about people who disappear on a whim and reinvent themselves. I've seen it with a program owner who was proven to shave sales, I've seen it with designers, too. I like to talk to the people I deal with in business.

Ask FacialFreak who called me out of the blue last week just to answer a support question