I have had the unfortunate displeasure of working with Shayna McCullough, now operating under the business name of Inspire Design (http://1inspiredesign.com) for the period between 2003 up until late 2009. Up until Mrs. McCullough and I were business partners - her role was to perform graphics and front-end web design while I - performing many of the same duties - handled sales and project/client management. Mrs. McCullough routinely performed sub-standard work and more often than not simply did not finish projects for which she had received deposits. Mrs. McCullough is completely unscrupulous and has no reservations whatsoever about either deceiving or brazenly stealing money from her clients and business partners.
While doing business with Mrs. McCullough (operating with meunder the name of WebGuru4Hire for some time), she would take deposits from clients, do the bare minimum of work required to marginally at best justify the deposit, and then abandon the rest of the project, instead preferring to move onto the next victim, leaving me to contend with angry clients who were left in limbo by her total lack of a work or business ethic.
The last straw was dropped late in 2009 when I contracted Mrs. McCullough to perform work on a large-scale social networking project that I had been awarded. Needing money as usual, she conned me into believing that she could be trusted to perform the work and wanting to believe her, I foolishly subcontracted graphics and web design work out to her - $1200.00 per month in exchange for 10 hours of work per week. My client paid Mrs. McCullough a deposit of $600.00 to being work, with the understanding that said work would be taking place on a daily basis.
By the end of the first week, no tangible work had been produced, my client was growing frustrated and Mrs. McCullough was making excuses as to why she had not done anything yet - the same pattern that I'd seen many times before. I knew based on her history where this was going, informed my client that the arrangement with Mrs. McCullough should be terminated immediately and proceeded to recoup the $600.00 that she had stolen.
Mrs. McCullough of course refused to return the money, which I was forced to refund back to my client In July of I took Mrs. McCullough to Small Claims Court and was awarded the judgment for the $600.00 she had defrauded from me.
This is, unfortunately not the only instance of Mrs. McCullough's impropriety. While working with me over the course of several years, she frequently behaved in a manner that was completely unethical and outright fraudulent, including:
* Delaying the completion of projects as to appear to justify the rates we were charging.
* Taking deposits from clients, not finishing the work and then abandoning the project
* Stealing designs from other websites and then claiming them to be unique
* Blaming clients for not having the materials required to finish the job
* Skipping town with people's money - she's moved across the country over half a dozen times in as many years trying to avoid discovery or legal action by clients she's stiffed.
* Fraudulently misrepresenting herself, citing work that she's done to be hers that she herself had either never done or had done while doing business with me.
While doing business with her over the years, I was forced time and time again to explain to my clients why work was not done to their standards while she pocketed the money. Time and time again she would promise to "turn over a new leaf", appear t be doing so, then eventually slip back into her previous patterns, leaving me to clean up the mess.
It goes without saying that I no longer do business with Shayna McCullough, I am in the process of contacting clients who have been mistreated by her while doing business with me. While I will be the first do admit that Mrs. McCullough does have a talented eye for design - a waste of talent as far as I can tell - she has an even greater talent for unethical behavior, so it does not surprise me in the least to see her name or the name of her business posted by other people.
If you come across her website - http://1inspiredesign.com - and compare to mine - http://webguru4hire.com - you will no doubt notice two things:
1. A number of items in her portfolio are the same as in mine
2. Her website looks very similar to mine.
Mrs. McCullough - true to form - not only decided to use work that had been performed while working with me, but even went so far as to steal elements of my own website to use on hers. This of course is not the first time she's done something like this as she very often made a point of using elements from other websites, claiming them to be unique then the charging clients for original design (see http://msmvps.com/blogs/michael/archive/01/14/32120. Aspx)
Because of Mrs. McCullough - who is now supposedly working as an AM radio dee-jay (http://momsquadradio.com under the handle of "Raw Mama" LOL!) and her penchant for fraud and deception, I am left hanging to repair the damage to my reputation due to her misconduct. If you choose to do business with her, expect the same, if not worse.
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