My husband and I were recently directed to Mr. Bierly by a law firm for which he had designed a website. This site was well done, professional looking at apparently designed at half the price of Lexis-Nexis. We contacted Mr. Bierly and he drew up a work order for about $2000 with a $200 deposit.
We paid the deposit and informed Mr. Bierly we needed about thirty days to complete the photography of our office and staff for the site. He told us he "preferred" to have the full remaining balance $1800 immediately, but we could just send the rest of the money with the pictures. We began to get concerned that the phone was never answered at his "design studio" and when it was answered it was by a child who sounded like she was between 8-12 years old. When our photographs were taken, I told my husband to send Mr. Bierly no more than 1/3 of our remaining deposit because I wanted to see something produced before I put anymore money into what appeared like a sham operation.
When Mr. Bierly got our photos on CD and the text copy for our site, we immediately got our first return phone call from him, despite the fact that we had left myriad voice messages with his "secretary" (the 10-year-old). Alex told us that he had already set up a "staging website" but would not start working on our website until he had the full $2000. At that time we told Mr. Bierly that we were sick of playing phone tag. I also directed his attention to the letter with our photos that said "if you show us something that you are doing any work, we will send more money". He said he would go talk to his staff because he "had already put a lot of work into this already".
About two days later we got an email from Mr. Bierly which included a live link to the staging site. This was supposed to be a proto-design of our website. To say the least, NOBODY would want that website representing their business on line. The design featured misspellings, wide gaps in the margins, weird characters from the "symbols/wingdings" font on Windows, and looked like it had been thrown together with a template he had just downloaded off the Internet. I told my husband "we're not paying for this". At that point, my husband said that I would have to call "Bierly" because he was tired of trying to contact the guy.
I sent Mr. Bierly an email and explained there was no way we were paying for this website and that we had decided to just pay the extra money to Westlaw because "you get what you pay for". Surprisingly, I did get a response (2-3 emails) back from Bierly informing us that he was: 1) suing us; 2) going to complete the full website anyway on a "Build production schedule" and then send us a bill; and 3) claimed that my husband had "congratulated" him on designing such a great website for us when NO such comments were ever made. He then informed us that if we didn't pay that he had "linked" up our website to another business with which we were no longer affiliated and would keep our Internet traffic being redirected there until we paid. I contacted my attorney who informed us to ignore Mr. Bierly and keep whatever remaining money was outstanding in the contract.
Sometime in late July, we received a phone call from the other business that Alex Bierly had redirected our web traffic to by use of a "pointer" on the GoDaddy domain registration page. We contacted GoDaddy and reported Alex Bierly d//b/a Wolfpack Design. The other business demanded that our websites stopped being "pointed" at their URLs or they were going to sue us for fraud. The GoDaddy people told us the person who pointed them had to redirect them away from the websites — and, guess what, that person was Alex Bierly. I told my husband that if he didn't call Bierly this time, I was calling the PA Atty General's office and reporting Bierly for corporate fraud. Reluctantly, my husband sent three emails to Mr. Bierly, then called him three times before he ever answered.
The reception we got from Bierly was amazing. He started yelling at my husband that my husband was a "scam artist" and told us never to contact him at his "design studio" and never send him email again. He then stated that we owed him two thousand dollars when he had done NOTHING for us in the end, except his jacked-up proto website which was never published in the first place. My husband was at all times conciliatory with Bierly and informed him "look, we don't want any trouble with you. We only want to pay you a $1000 bucks so we don't hear from you and everybody walks away from this". We thought that if we did pay something to Bierly (who was in effect blackmailing us) he would at least remove the illegal pointers off of our domain so that they didn't point back to the other company. Although Bierly CLEARLY knew that was why we were calling him, he claimed "I don't know what your motivation is in calling here and never contact me again".
Our attorney is currently on vacation at the end of the summer. When she returns, we are filing suit on thus guy. He is nothing more than a little pissant with a bad attitude. He never works, is never available, and then expects you to pay for things never delivered. Then, if you refuse, he utilizes all kinds of unfair and illegal computer techniques that amount to extortion. Do NOT do business with this guy. His "business" is nothing but a complete sham.
0 comments