Lawrence with New Bern Signs contacted my all-volunteer non-profit animal welfare organization in 2009. He offered to create a website for us as a charitable donation at NO CHARGE. We only were responsible for website hosting costs. The site went live Feb. 2010.
Once the website was live, Lawrence started submitting bills for his time, without even communicating this change to us. When questioned, he removed the charges & started just charging site hosting monthly which we were willing to pay.
Then he discontinued all routine work on the site in early 2011 with no explanation. Recently we started creating a new website, keeping our current site live. Once he found this out in late August he deleted our site, erased all data on the site without even contacting us & without our authorization. Our new site was not finished, and our current site was off-line for a week while we scurried to finish the new site. During this time, we repeatedly called & emailed Lawrence to find out why our site was down. He would not return our calls.
Two weeks after the site was down, I finally got ahold of him. He told me he deleted the site from his server because we are non-paying customers. HE is the one who contacted US about doing the website originally. His charitable attitude apparently flew out the window. When confronted with what he did, he had the audacity to hang up on me after telling me that he has "no allegiance to non-paying customers". I had just told him I would pay him our monthly site hosting fee, that I didn't care about the cost. We lost so much information on the site. Had we been warned that he was going to delete the site, we could have backed it up.
We are a non-profit all-volunteer animal rescue organization. We spend our volunteer time & limited funds rescuing animals in need. To think that an unkind soul like Lawrence took advantage of us like this, under the premise of charity, is deplorable. We rely heavily on our internet presence, and he virtually killed over a week's worth of helping animals by sabotaging our site.
I have never encountered a business person who was more self-centered, egotistical, vindictive, & unprofessional. There is no explanation for him running his business so poorly. Obviously, this guy is out for a buck & will dog anyone who gets in his way. Not the kind of person anyone would want to do business with.
Hopefully other potential clients will steer clear of New Bern Signs.
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