Warning AND Word Press request

[Jude Iam]

Hi Waccoistas.

First, a cautionary tale, then a request.

Deciding to update my web presence, I was referred by old friend to a stranger who'd contacted her (here on Wacco) as a new, local, web designer/hosting service/ SEO specialist looking for work.

I got in touch and started talking with him. All seemed to be good, so I paid him $400 in full, in advance, to create a word Press site, give me a few (4) hours of coaching (so I could make all changes and maintain it myself), and for a year of hosting on his server, through March 2018.

Follow-through quickly degraded into an utterly horrible, nightmarish experience (like working with a total sociopath).

A basic site was finally completed and put up on his server. I never got the coaching which was part of the deal, but was glad to just cut ties and move on. OK.

BUT
Last Friday, out of the blue, I got an email from him with subject line Service suspension notification - saying that my site was down until I paid $240 which he now claimed I owed him.

I emailed back with my receipt from him for payment in full, but have gotten NO reply and NO website in over a week.

As the host, he has the power to hold the site hostage and attempt to extort money. I am not playing that game. He doesn't have a brick and mortar place, nor a real business presence and I don't want to bother trying any small claims recourse... I just want my site up, and its control.

This guy is poison, so beware. His name is Jonathan Keller, doing business as West County Media.
Talks good, has experience as tech support and SEO for some big company; put up a website with lots of services, looks ok. Avoid like the plague if you don't want to be ripped off. If you're already in process with him, take precautions and good luck.

So, my REQUEST:
I'm wanting someone well familiar with Word Press to help me reconstruct my site asap at a modest p/h rate.
Appreciate your contacting me. Thanks, Jude

[Shandi]

Sorry this happened to you, and thanks for the warning.

I can't imagine paying anyone that much money up front, especially a stranger, who happens to have a business service I need. But I've certainly lost money to business rips offs.

I checked Yelp, and there are no reviews, so it might be worth your while to post a summary of your experience.
Also, file a with BBB, with your documentation.

This makes me very glad that my best male friend is a master at designing sites and knows who to trust for affordable hosting. He's so good at what he does, he's not taking anymore clients at this time. That itself says a lot.

First, a cautionary tale, then a request...

[rossmen]

Thanks for the warning, i trust you, jonathan keller has no business in my world.

[gypsey]

Sorry for your bad experience. Just doing the math, how does creating a word press site, 4 hours of coaching at x$ per hour, and a year's "hosting" (not sure why you would host on his server, since well known servers abound) pencil out to just $400? I mention this not to blame you for your choice, but as a precaution to others to comparison shop and if the price is "unbelievably low", beware.
Best of luck in getting the help you need to get your site back up.. .

[Jude Iam]

well,

$24 for a year BLUEHOST SPECIAL - just checked to reply to you (see link below) or $125 or so normally
+ a couple of hours to create a site on a WP template (been told by a few folks that's what it can take for a simple site + 4 hours of coaching

what do you think that ought to cost?

and he said that he wanted to offer a good deal cause he was a new business and wanted to get the ball rolling. he suggested using his site for some reason i can't recall, but sure wish i hadn't, of course...
jude

iPage Hosting

Sorry for your bad experience. Just doing the math, how does creating a word press site, 4 hours of coaching at x$ per hour, and a year's "hosting" (not sure why you would host on his server, since well known servers abound) pencil out to just $400?....

[WestCountyMedia]

A cautionary tale, indeed..

CAVEAT EMPTOR: "Let the Buyer Beware"

My name is Jonathan Keller, founder of West County Media.

Please allow me to address this and share the other side of this coin.

I was referred to Judith, or rather Judith was referred to me via a local Graphic Designer who happens to contribute to this very forum.

After what seemed to be a very promising first call, sales call if you will, in which Judith repeatedly "haggled" the price down to as low as I could possibly afford to provide even under ideal circumstances, we came to an agreement on a basic WordPress package, for a simple, functional upgrade to her very outdated website.

Included was a new Domain Name, One-Year of Basic WordPress Hosting and 4 Hours of Consulting, Training & Design services to get her new WordPress website up and running, PLUS including migrating all old content from her legacy website.

The grand total for this came to $409.50 and Judith insisted that I come to meet her in person, after hours, to give me the majority of the invoiced amount.

She requested that I meet her at a local "dance hall" during a Friday night dance event which I thought odd, but hey, it is Sebastopol after all. When I arrived, instead of getting to the purpose of the meeting, Judith attempted repeatedly to get me to "dance with her" on the dance floor. I of course politely declined, explaining that I had kids at home whom I needed to get back to. After many attempts to get her to re-focus on the reason for being there in the first place, Judith finally, reluctantly pulled out four crinkled 100 bills from her purse, for what she so excitedly ordered via our online shopping cart just hours before, with a clearly legible invoice.

Her hesitance was the first sign of what appeared to be immediate buyers remorse on her part, but as an optimistic professional I wanted to give the new business relationship a full chance to go well.

After accepting the (majority of, but NOT the total) invoiced amount from Judith, I made it abundantly clear that the very next step was for her to let me know when the best time was for her and I to have our initial work meeting.

Instead of hearing from her about when we should meet to work, I was greeted the next morning by an email basically complaining - almost to the point of being insulting - about the rate for the hosting portion of the invoice.

I explained kindly, and clearly that we are not competing directly with large, multi-million dollar hosting companies who offer aggressively priced shared hosting services like that. Even after explaining to Judith that most often those bargain discounted hosting rates come with the requirement of paying for at least two to three years in advance to get such cheap rates on hosting, it fell on deaf ears.

Not to mention that it was very clearly stated that West County Media is a local startup who's value proposition is to offer excellent professional services, not necessarily bargain basement pricing.

It became clearer and clearer that Judith was experiencing severe buyers remorse before even allowing for a chance to receive what she had purchased.

So in a conciliatory effort to re-frame the situation, I made an adjustment to the invoice where I removed the previously extended deep discounts on the hourly portion of the invoice, simply returning the hourly rate to full retail (which is still competitive, I might add) and instead gave Judith the hosting portion of the invoice at NO charge. One-year of FREE hosting, now included. The grand total had not changed, but the terms had. And as far as total cost, it was obviously a wash.

Unfortunately, instead of now having free hosting included in the purchase actually satiate her perceived need for even more value from this transaction, it was ill received and met with hostility.

It was then that I rather firmly suggested that Judith meet with me IMMEDIATELY for a full refund, as it was clearly not a good fit for us both.

She then began to back-pedal, and essentially beg me to continue helping her with the project, which I reluctantly agreed to, and now very much regret.

The attempt to even schedule a work session became completely unreasonable, with Judith answering phone calls simply to say "I can't talk" or sending a barrage of emails which were either incoherent, belligerent, or both.

Finally after many back and forth emails betwixt myself, Judith and the original referring friend who played as an ad-hoc mediator to the strained relationship, we finally were able to get some progress.

After receiving the required credentials, I began the process of archiving her old website, provisioning her account, installing WordPress, etc.

Even after providing Judith with very detailed instructions about selecting a FREE theme for WordPress, as she had stated there was no budget beyond her invoiced amount, even as far as giving her the EXACT keyword phrases to place in a search engine.. Judith replied with a selected Premium WordPress theme that carries a monthly license fee of $85 or a one-time license fee of $249. She also referenced example websites that clearly had weeks or more of development time put into them, expecting to receive that kind of finished site for her $409.50.

I of course explained that it was not realistic to expect that kind of finished end product on such a limited budget, to which she again, was extremely unpleasant.

The situation and dialogue continued to deteriorate, despite many attempts to educate Judith on the nature of what she was purchasing, the cost and time requirements involved in the services she was requesting, etc.

Ultimately after logging hours of work (well beyond the original four if you include the extensive, over-and-beyond level of extraneous support requests, emails, phone calls answered etc.) she then after all that demanded a refund in full, again.

And at this point, I was forced to explain that our contract was complete, that I had in fact installed WordPress, a Free Theme, Migrated the Content, added stock Photography, a functioning Contact Form, etc. and further reminded her of our official no-refund policy, which is clearly stated in our Terms of Service as posted at our website AND which is required to be agreed to in order to complete a checkout process at our website.

She became even further irate.

To the point of her actually showing up at a non-related business location, UN-anounced, with no appointment, demanding to discuss her account and refusing to leave until I was forced to threaten to call the Sheriff for harassment and trespass.

She persisted even then, even said to call them. Aghast, I walked away.

Judith is (or was at least) friends with a couple of folks from Sebastopol whom I also know and do business with, and both of these individuals expressed to me that they were "done" with Judith as she had been troublesome in their respective relationships in the past. While unrelated to this situation, it does speak to character.

Finally, after some time passed and another attempt by Judith to restore functionality to the relationship, I reluctantly agreed to support her account via Live Chat and Email ONLY and would continue to host the account for the remainder of the year. When entering our first (and only) scheduled chat work session, Judith spent an entire hour DEMANDING that I call her over the phone to work. I have the entire chat log saved, which is just shocking to read and review.

This leads us to our unfortunate conclusion to this tragic client/vendor saga.

Please let me remind readers that we are a start up, in our first year, and that sometimes growing pains happen.

Last week, while working on our billing system, a technical error occurred which resulted in the unexpected, automatic termination of the hosted account in question.

See, Judith's invoice was NEVER paid in full.

Yes, the remaining $9.50 was the culprit, as due to the tenuous nature of the account history, I decided that I should probably keep the invoice accurate. Because in the (very real) possibility of winding up having to explain all of this in small claims court, I felt keeping the records accurate was likely very important.

However, with the default settings in our billing system (which automates both provisioning and termination of hosting accounts based on invoice payment status) the LONG overdue, unpaid balance on the sole invoice on Judith's account met the criteria for the system to terminate (delete) the account from the system due to the extremely overdue invoice status.

Now while technically, the service was not paid in full, and therefore the account was subject to termination according to our Terms of Service as posted at our site, it was not actually intended, or planned for termination by us.

But, unfortunately, we were only alerted to this situation via a "heads up" email from a member at WACCOBB.net who kindly let us know that Judith had posted her one-sided account of the events.

The only communication we received from Judith was a request for clarification of the invoice with respect to the remaining $9.50, which was of course clear in the invoice from the very start.

Our records indicate that Judith has never even confirmed her email address in our billing system, let alone access her client account (which is available 24/7) for her to address such issues as ordering services, reviewing invoices, making payments, etc.

Nor did Judith participate in the relationship with any spirit of good will, of working professionally, respectfully and generously with one another. Instead, it became immediately as she stated in her post, "poison" and toxic.

I wish Judith no ill will and we are more than willing to attempt to restore services in an effort of good will towards Judith, and the community.

However it takes two to tango and it would have been much more reasonable to reach out to us directly, with a specific issue, concern, or request for emergency service, than to simply default to writing an inflammatory, defamatory post on local social media forums.

In fact, had Judith paid her bill in full, this never would have happened. And beyond that, if Judith had not sabotaged the working relationship from start to finish, any problem like this would likely have been nearly immediately resolved.

In closing, I would hope that any prospective clients, partners and colleagues who find themselves reading this thread, would be reasonable enough to evaluate our services for themselves.

Professionally,


Jonathan Keller, Founder

West County Media
https://westcounty.media

My Account @ West County Media
https://my.westcountymedia.com

[WestCountyMedia]

Sorry this happened to you, and thanks for the warning.

I can't imagine paying anyone that much money up front, especially a stranger, who happens to have a business service I need. But I've certainly lost money to business rips offs.

I checked Yelp, and there are no reviews, so it might be worth your while to post a summary of your experience.
Also, file a with BBB, with your documentation.

This makes me very glad that my best male friend is a master at designing sites and knows who to trust for affordable hosting. He's so good at what he does, he's not taking anymore clients at this time. That itself says a lot.

Please read my lengthy response to the original post/complaint before rushing to judgment and defaulting to recommending that people attempt to trash a new business's reputation in social media reviews, at the direction of an unreasonable, unprofessional client.

[WestCountyMedia]

Thanks for the warning, i trust you, jonathan keller has no business in my world.

I have never had the pleasure, Sir, of meeting you.

But I would encourage you to read my reply, before speaking ill of my name.

[WestCountyMedia]

Sorry for your bad experience. Just doing the math, how does creating a word press site, 4 hours of coaching at x$ per hour, and a year's "hosting" (not sure why you would host on his server, since well known servers abound) pencil out to just $400? I mention this not to blame you for your choice, but as a precaution to others to comparison shop and if the price is "unbelievably low", beware.
Best of luck in getting the help you need to get your site back up.. .

If you have ever started a new web services business from scratch and had the sole responsibility of not only creating the entire apparatus from zero but also of finding your first new clients, you likely would understand the temptation to offer deep discounts to "founding" clients in the hopes of quickly building a client portfolio.

In fact, if you take a minute or two to read my full response above, you'll see that the client haggled aggressively for such a deep discount, which we now obviously regret having extended.

Lesson learned.

But please, don't rush to judgment as to the nature and quality of our work solely based on a single low price offer.

Being based in Sonoma County and working in the highly competitive space of Web Development services, it is not exactly easy to find a balance between competitive pricing and a reasonable margin for survivability, let alone sustainable business growth.

However, we feel we've done that and are proud to offer our services at what we feel are reasonable, competitive rates for such services to be performed locally, by a local professional. In fact we feel our prices are actually extremely reasonable, even less than any qualified local Plumber or Electrician would bill hourly for their professional services. We are equally skilled and proficient at the professional services that we provide.

And by all means, please see for yourself as all of our professional services and rates are clearly posted here:

Service Packages @ West County Media
https://westcounty.media/packages

[Jude Iam]

Aaaaaaah, a reply from Jonathan, at last. So glad I posted - apparently this is what it took to finally get a reply; I'd sent numerous emails over the course of weeks and months, without any reply - including the lastest one about the Service Suspension Notification and the outstanding $9.50, asking for a reply asap... Does a web professional 'overlook' an email? Fail to answer by chance? No communication makes any progress or resolution impossible. And I got no response to emails or calls. NONE. Till now.

Replying to Jonathan's pages of words, I'll keep my response as brief as possible, addressing but a few points:
Jonathan asked for payment before he began work on the site, and suggested we meet for a drink at a bar. I'm not into bars, and was going to Wieschman Hall that Friday, as usual, so I suggested we meet there.
I even introduced him to some of my friends when he turned up, in the spirit of friendliness for a new person in town. "Dance with me"... he makes it sound like I was hitting on him - not.

That the 4 $100 bills I gave him were crinkled even seems like it was a problem for Jonathan. The remaining $9.50 ($9.50??) could have been settled at any of the meetings we were supposed to have - but never did.

I am accused of "haggling aggressively": Noting that Jonathan was charging me a hosting rate over 2-4 times that of GoDaddy or BlueHost, I said that I did NOT want to pay that much. (Would you? 1 year hosting at GoDaddy now starts at $42; Bluehost is $24 - $130 -- Jonathan's lowest rate is $240 a year.) He continues to defend that amount, below. (Compare also his other rates with established web folks around here and draw your own conclusions.)

After I said I wouldn't pay this high hosting rate, Jonathan became very antagonistic. He said he was now giving me free hosting - BUT changed the rest of the terms to compensate for that money. Shell game. The "consultation/training" hours vanished as did communication.

He'd said that he'd send me several sample sites before we met so that I could look at them and decide which I liked before our first meeting. Though I asked for these numerous times, he never sent any, so I sent him some sites I liked as samples. That, too, became a problem because they were not amongst the ones I 'ought to have known' were available to me... nothing was simple, nothing forthcoming with good will. We never had a single meeting.

Even phone calls were NOT acceptable to Jonathan - he wanted ONLY "online chat" as the sole means by which we were to create my new website. While always signing off with "Professionally", is this professional behavior?

The bit about my "showing up unannounced" and "calling the sheriff" and "trespass": in actuality, I was at an old friend's, from whom Jonathan had rented a shack to sell used furniture, and seeing him pull up there (after he'd not replied to calls and emails to complete my much-needed website) I thought it might be a potential opportunity to talk and make some sort of progress. I was met only with more extreme antagonism - I just left.
Jonathan writes some slurs about my 'character' via unnamed sources: rumormongering.

The domain name which Jonathan had suggested, and I'd registered through him, was not commercially advantageous, so I got another one, registering that through Go Daddy.
So, I now had 3 domains: my original one, the one he'd suggested, and my third one - all needing to be directed to the same site, as well as corresponding email addresses to each site, all needing to get to me.
I struggled hard to get all this together without (my supposed webmaster) Jonathan's help.

It's ironic that Jonathan clearly does not understand that citing Caveat Emptor is to warn your own potential customers to beware - totally warranted here.

Meanwhile, Jonathan has not seen fit to put my website back up YET. Over a week.
I'm unable to even get the emails sent from the old website which I had GoDaddy resurrect.
My business is cut off - and left off - intentionally, by Jonathan -- and he rants about my unfairness.
Does this strike anyone else as unconscionable? Where is the recompense for this?

Since my post here has rousted a reply after so many attempts without any, I hereby publicly welcome Jonathan's follow-through (coordinating/redirecting the 3 sites and emails, and communicating with me as needed, in a timely and respectful way, about any and all issues regarding the sites and their emails). Or other acceptable agreement, hashed out in private. I will report the results here, if any.

"The best disinfectant is sunlight." - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sincerely, Jude

[rossmen]

Reads bad, don't believe this is the right place for business disputes. In the spirit of the customer is right, my free advice is return the 400 and chalk it up to learning, not easy when starting but essential.

[jesswolfe]

Yeah, this is not the place to work out disputes. But it's actually a great reminder. Don't give yourself away. Don't say yes to things you should say no to. It's hard to start a business and it's common to think that giving deals will bring more work. If you are doing that (and I cartainly have!) it doesn't bring in the energy you want. You want to be respected for the work you do and you want to act with integrity. Giving your work away is not acting with integrity with yourself.

On the flip side, don't assume you know what it really costs to buy a service you don't know anything about. You are hiring someone for their expertise. Looking to see what GoDaddy charges doesn't say anything about hosting and what that might mean. Pay them what they are worth! That brings you good juju, because you are acting with integrity as well.

I've certainly messed up both. Hard lessons to learn, as we are seeing here. I hope that some kind of peace will come for both parties.

Jessica Wolfe
www.daughterofthediviners.com

[WestCountyMedia]

Aaaaaaah, a reply from Jonathan, at last. So glad I posted - ...

CAVEAT EMPTOR in this context translates to: "Know what you're purchasing"

Your recollection of events are incorrect and many of your statements made are false.

The domain recommended by us - for a wedding officiant - OurBeautiful.Wedding - is somehow "not commercially advantageous"?? Whatever that means, I'm not sure. I've been assisting clients with registering custom domains for their businesses, organizations, projects, etc. for nearly two decades, have owned and managed hundreds of domains, even sold domains on the aftermarket for a tidy profit. Therefore I feel quite qualified to determine domain value. What experience makes you qualified to state that the domain is not "commercially advantageous"?

And the only reason we did not ever have an in person work session, is because you refused to schedule one, despite numerous attempts (on record, with witnesses) to get you to schedule a work session. This left us in a position where we were unable to perform the Consulting & Training portion of the contract, as you were completely UN-cooperative in the process.

Further, the 4 hours included in your purchase were for Consulting, Training & DESIGN services.

More than (4) four hours were logged performing design services for your account per your original requested specifications. Subsequent to us performing that work, you scrapped any and all theme work that we had performed and began re-designing an entirely new WordPress theme on your own with a new "web designer" who was so qualified that I had to instruct him on how to properly connect to your account via FTP - as he was repeatedly trying to login to OUR domain WestCountyMedia.com which is a security issue, at the least.. That is your prerogative, of course, to choose to throw away the work that we performed for you. But you did not purchase unlimited hours of Consulting Training & Design services, you purchased (4) four hours and then spent them very unwisely.

And the reason you never received any responses, Judith, is because you remain un-teachable and refuse to follow clear instructions.

Instructions like, submit a Support Request through our Trouble Ticket System (https://my.westcountymedia.com)

You see, after inundating my personal email inbox with countless, incoherent emails day after day, week after week, written with a nasty, demanding tone, you got your email address blacklisted from my inbox. So I never received any of your terrible emails after that, and that was specifically done to prevent your continual harassment from reaching the wrong inbox.

You do not have a right to harass people every day, despite what you may think.

And, you were well informed of this action taken on your account. You were advised that there would be no further standard communication and that as of the end of your annual hosting contract, your account would be terminated and to make preparations for that event. If you hate West County Media so much, and hosting is so "cheap" everywhere else - why did you choose to remain hosted on our platform for so long - and with an outstanding balance on your sole invoice, for well over 90 days? Completely irresponsible and imprudent business decisions.

If you had used our Support Request/Trouble Ticket system as advised by us to ALL of our clients, your support request would have been noticed and addressed.

However, instead of requesting support in the proper, professional way, you chose to falsely accuse us of criminal activity in a public forum, which is subject to civil liability might I add.

For the record, as soon as we were alerted to the problem with your account, we took immediate action to restore the hosting account in question (this is now done) and recover all lost files via our fall-back recurring backups performed at a network level (this is also now done) and you can easily find all of your backup files simply by navigating to your domain on our system. It is the only file there.

We will absolutely terminate your hosting account again (on purpose this time) offer no further assistance and gladly see you in court if you continue down this path of repeatedly violating our Terms of Service, laying false accusations and committing libelous slander.

[WestCountyMedia]

Reads bad, don't believe this is the right place for business disputes. In the spirit of the customer is right, my free advice is return the 400 and chalk it up to learning, not easy when starting but essential.

You are correct, this is not the ideal forum to handle business disputes.

You should however direct that at the person who brought this dispute to this forum.

Also, this client has now cost us thousands of dollars in value and will receive no refund as per our published policy.