I contacted Alex Bilmes to have him design a website for a small company I was managing. He put on a good front, made it look like he was the owner of an actual company with a substantial client roster. What I later found out was that he is a kid with a nice website who gets jobs then farms out the work to other people without telling his client. He falsely claimed that his company designed websites for Costco and Crate & Barrel to convince me that he was legitimate, which was a lie.
He failed to deliver what was asked and failed to properly document processes or even draft a work contract. Communication was terrible as whenever I would try and tell him what I wanted he would try to convince me why I didn't need it to save him money. He turned a bid of $3200 into a total cost of close to $10,000 and never delivered what was promised, even after 8 months of additional time. Alex Bilmes is a young, inexperienced and dishonest kid, stay away from him if you are looking for a decent website as he is anything but professional.
I continued to contact him for some time to try and get him to finish the site, send me the files along with some hardware I had bought from him (he also sold hardware and computers). Eventually he dissapeared along with his website and my company's money. He has since reappeared with a new domain and is probably hoping to lure some more trusting people in with his professional facade.
Alex always claimed that he was doing his best and it was my fault that the website didn't turn out correctly since I didn't clarify and I kept changing my ideas. Well, I did make some changes but I can refer you to the project lead who designed our new website and he will tell you that I worked very well with him and had our site done within 3 months. Besides, every change would have been avoided if Alex had drafted a binding contract from the beginning.
I learned my lesson and have since had a real design firm craft a very nice website. I just hope that I can prevent some people from making the same mistake I did.
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