On January 11th, I hired Julian Miller, a self-proclaimed expert in CMS/Joomla, to make clean installs for two websites that I manage, and in good faith, I paid him a $200 advance to begin working. On January 13th, he e-mailed me claiming that he would begin to "implement fixes all tonight!" I wrote to him a few days later to enquire as to why no work had been done, and he replied, "Big changes to be implemented in the next 2 days." On January 25th, when nothing was done, I wrote to ask for a refund, and on January 26th, he responded that "I duplicated the installation from ftp to work without disturbing your production site." He added, "Let's touch base tomorrow..." I tried calling, but he never answered my calls. On January 28th Julian Miller said, "We missed each other again... I think we do need... Fresh installs of everything... To ensure... That it works 100% of the time."
After that, Julian Miller didn't respond to my emails until February 14th, when he wrote, "Gah! Sorry for the lag in communication. I had sinus surgery and then a bunch of complications." That was over one month after he claimed that he would "implement fixes all tonight!" I tried to be understanding, and again a series of emails and delays ensued until February 23rd when he wrote, "i'm getting ready to start work for you." On February 26th he said he would "knock out the whole project for $750" (in addition to the $200 already deposited), and in good faith, I made a deposit of $375 (for a total of $575) the same day.
The weekend of February 26-28, Julian Miller began "work" on the "fresh installs." However, the only thing he managed to do was mess up my regular site (I guess it didn't occur to him to make a duplicate site for the "fresh installs"), and when I suggested that he make a duplicate site to upload once it was completed, his response was something to the effect of "oh, yeah."
I asked him to fix the "500" error that suddenly appeared when trying to access my original site, but he insisted it was a hosting problem, and nothing he had done, although the error did not exist before he began "working." With my site down for five days, on Wednesday March 3rd, he supposedly made a "fresh" install of the website, and then uploaded certain files to restore vital information on the site. However, the same 500 error persisted in the new site, and although Julian Miller insisted that it was a "fresh install, " I consulted with some friends who explained to me precisely why it wasn't a clean install at all, but rather a duplicate of the original site with a new template, one of those reasons being the duplication of the 500 error.
On Thursday, March 4th, when he insisted the the problem was the hosting company, a friend told me that it would be better to cut my losses, and lock Julian Miller out of my site so that my friend could help me rebuild it. It took my friend and I about 12 hours to completely rebuild a fresh site, import the crucial data, and go back online. There were no longer any errors of any kind.
I wrote to Julian and told him that, although I realized that he must have put in some work, I though it would be fair for him to return a portion of the money, and that I would leave it to his good conscience to determine how much. However, Julian Miller did not respond to my mail, nor has he refunded any money. Now, I want a full refund because either he is not the CMS/Joomla expert that he claimed to be or he is some sort of confidence artist who preys upon the good faith of others.
Do not hire Julian Miller of The Van Rock Group of Chicago Illinois for any reason whatsoever, unless you want to waste your money. He is not honest and he is not professional.
Considering that it took almost two months for Julian Miller to
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