In November, I contracted with a company to provide a new look for my web site. I sent them their money in advance. I actually thought it was a pretty good deal (only $99). I knew as a professional, I couldn't do anything meaningful to anything for $100 in service, but I figured that:

1. They knew what they were doing and had templates in place to make it easy
2. The people in question may have had their own personal reasons to work less expensively than I would

In any case, it was their price, and I was happy to pay it for the service they promised. I was told there was a backlog, but to expect something in a few weeks.

I'm changing the names of the people in question, because I don't really want to cause them more trouble (that I would be forced to also deal with). For the sake of the rest of this posting, we'll call my primary contact "Sally", and the agency where she (used) to work, "Blog World". No, not their real names -- Sally's real name is actually a little exotic, and Blog World's real name is kinda cute and classy.

I sort of forgot about it until the beginning of February. I wrote and asked, "What's going on?" Sally told me that she had dropped the ball, she apologized, and she promised something very soon. She then sent me a screen shot of the look she was proposing, and I really liked it. I left her with some questions, but she thought she left it off with needing more information from me.

By April 1, I had sent 3 emails to Sally before getting a response indicating she needed information from me. I replied to her and got no response.

On April 15, I sent another query. No response.

Finally yesterday, I wrote Sally demanding a refund. I wrote Blog World, asking them to resolve the problem. This is the letter I sent to Sally yesterday:

Sally,

As you clearly are far too overworked to wrap up my site, I would prefer a refund. I have also emailed your previous management at Blog World asking this be resolved.

Please resolve this problem. I don't want to be forced to take additional steps. In good faith I paid for the service you were offering. I've since been exceedingly patient. I do not want to be forced to complain to PayPal, GoDaddy.com (where your domain is registered), or the California Attorney General (where I believe you reside, given the information available from whois on your domain).

If I have not heard something reassuring from either you or Blog World by this coming Monday, April 25th, I will begin the next steps to resolve this.

I am no longer interested in your service unless it can be delivered immediately (by Monday), in a clear, easy-to-use form, and one that does NOT require I give you access to my equipment. I believe a refund would be best for both of us.

I also sent this letter to the partners of Blog World:

In November, I sent you folks $99 via PayPal for your Christmas
Special. I was working with Sally.

It's now the end of April. No work performed. I've been in sporadic
communication with Sally, but for the most part, she doesn't respond
to any email at the addresses she's given me.

Fix this. A refund would be fine.

You folks were given fine references from some of the other blogs I read,
but I'm not remotely happy. Fix it.

I received this response:

Hi Joe,

First please accept my apology for the poor service you received. The designers working under Blog World were freelance designers and not our employees. Since you paid Sally directly she would need to issue your refund as we don't have a large pool of cash from which to give refunds. I have put an email in to Sally to see if I can assist in getting this rectified as soon as possible.

I will do everything I can to help correct this situation.

I wasn't terribly impressed with this response, but I decided to accept what help I could for now. I could always get ugly with them at a later date if they didn't do what I thought was The Right Thing.

Last night, I received this response from Sally. Judging by the time on the email, I suspect she sent it when she got home from her day job, as it's dated at 5:42 PM her time.

Hello Joe,

I received your correspondence, as well as a forwarded copy of the e-mail you sent to (my old bosses) of Blog World. While I understand your dissatisfaction in that your design has not been implemented on your website, I'm disheartened in the way this has culminated on all fronts. I was certainly disappointed that (my old bosses) bore the brunt of your anger regarding the situation, especially since they had no hand in it, they did not refer you to me. I was also so disappointed that you chose to use what I perceived to be a threatening tone with me.

It's not my intent now, nor was it ever my intent to make you feel as though you have been ripped off. I have attached the design that I've shown you, that you have indicated that you are pleased with. I've attached the graphic files and MT templates that you will be able to drop in (although, I would strongly urge you to make back-up copies of your existing MovableType templates before you do so) to your copy of MovableType without my involvement, as you've requested.

She then included her files to date with some directions on what to do.

But WTF? SHE dropped the ball. SHE refused to response to polite and repeated inquiries. SHE had my money, and I had zippo. And now she's getting defensive with me because I took the only reasonable steps available to me to get this resolved? Oh, very very professional of her! I replied:

You can be disheartened if you like, but the truth is, you haven't been responding to the email I've been sending you. I didn't get anything I could use from you until I did get ugly. And I didn't get remotely as ugly as I could have. Do you think that makes me feel good about the transaction? My last email on April 1 went unanswered as did my email from April 15.

If you were ignoring nice emails, what was I supposed to do? I sent you money in November. It's now FIVE MONTHS LATER. I think I've been the paragon of patience.

So don't get defensive with me. YOU dropped the ball on this, resulting in a client who was firmly convinced he'd been scammed. The proper response would have been, "Joe, I'm so sorry. I do good web design, but I'm just really lousy at answering my email."

THAT would have been the professional response -- coming from someone with 12 years of experience running a software consulting business. When you don't deliver on time, you apologize and take care of it, and you don't try blaming the client for your own shortcomings.

In any case, yes, I *did* like the original design you showed me. You do nice design work. I hope I can get it to work for me.

At this point, assuming I don't hear from you again, you can rest assured you won't hear from me.

And here's the last exchange, received 10 minutes later. (Wow! Was I impressed at the response time.)

Joe,

You are absolutely right. The professional thing for me to have done would have been to apologize (regardless of my skill level).

So I'm going to not just apologize for dropping the ball on the email, I will apologize ALSO for the email I sent yesterday. I am sorry. That was uncalled for. I won't make excuses for it.

So, how do I feel about this.

1. I really need some sort of tickle file system so that I get back to people sooner. I should have gotten back to Sally asking for updates on my standing in her work queue, perhaps every couple of weeks in December. This would have kept me from initially falling through the cracks. I shouldn't have to do this, as Sally should be able to manage her own queue, but clearly it's something I need to do in the future.

2. Sally, of course, dropped the ball badly. Completely unprofessional. As I said in one of my emails to her, she does nice design work, but completely unprofessional in managing her work queue and email.

3. Blog World's partners didn't do The Right Thing. The proper response would have been, "Let's see if we can shake Sally loose. If not, we'll issue your refund and deal with Sally ourselves." That whole "they weren't our employees" thing doesn't work. Sally appeared on their web site with an email address of "sally@blogworld.com". Included was a photo, some reference work, and her hours of operation. As such, she was a representative of Blog World. As good business owners, the partners need to stand behind the work and actions of their employees. They didn't do this.

4. I find it extremely telling that Sally could ignore my repeated emails, but as soon as I threatened her and got her old bosses involved, I had a resolution that very evening. What does this tell me? That Sally reads her email and was blowing me off.

5. Sally's response to me last night was completely uncalled for. Totally unprofessional. If any of my interactions with her are indicative of her professional behavior, well, she has absolutely no business working directly with clients.

6. However, her final email this morning recovered absolutely as best as possible, and it's part of the reason why I changed the names in this post.

Final analysis? If the look of this web site changes, you'll know I was able to make things work. And you'll see that yes, Sally does nice design work.