I was hired by this company to redesign their website. I have a strict half down and half upon completion policy. The owners of Destination Areas complained to me how they were ripped off by their previous web designer so I made an exception. They made a small down payment to cover hosting. Once I built the site they agreed on, they wanted a site almost 10 times the size of what I had designed for them. I told them it would cost more and they agreed to new terms. So I built the site they wanted.
Once the site was done, they were wanting changes and updates daily which was not what we had agreed on so I gave them a schedule of fees for the amount of work they wanted. They didn't have to agree to it. Basically they would say I need this done to the site and I would give them a written quote before we did the work. I went to check on their site and noticed they had a new host and hired a new web developer without so much as even telling me.
Now they won't return my calls or emails and they owe me over $700 for the work that I had done. They also had a company in phoenix that was providing videos for their site. They complained that they weren't getting them fast enough and hired a new company to do the videos.
They seem to target small businesses that are privately owned so that they can work out some sort of verbal agreement. We do the work and then when it's time to pay, they switch to a new company.
On top of all that, they are trying to charge businesses between $99 and $399 per year to advertise on their site. No one even sees it. It virtually gets no traffic and the owners have no knowledge of how it can even benefit anyone to advertise with them. If they approach you ask them a few basic questions about advertising and they won't be able to answer them. If you are approaced by DestinationAreas.com stay clear!!!
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