Though I was the original designer of their website, not a client, I think this is indicative of the type of people Online NW Media, LLC are - and what people should know about their ethics before working with them.
Basically, it's the age old "they owe me money and aren't returning my messages/emails/phone calls".
I designed their original website (note, a company that claims to be a web marketing company, offering web design, paying someone else to design their site, hmmm...). I was, I thought, at very least a good acquaintance (if not "friend") of Chris To, one of the two founders (also the only two "employees" of the company).
I put solid time into the site, and was paid for it - though I charged way under what I normally charge (other companies I've worked for using the exact same technologies I did charge a base price of $1000, I charged $200). Things were going good, I was paid after it was reviewed by Chris, with an agreement that I would handle hosting, maintenance, and get their email setup, for which I would be paid. I charged no profit margin for their hosting or email, just paid out of pocket trusting their word I would be compensated for expenses - saving them the hassle of worrying about any of the things they didn't know how to do.
I continued to do maintenance and further hone the site to their exact specifications, handling all needs - hosting, education on technologies, recommendations on what type of web service (what type of email setup they'd need, etc).
For the site itself, I designed and maintained it using a service which would allow me to completely hand over control to them in the future should I become too busy (or completely unavailable... Who knows? I want to travel).
I received payment for their hosting late once (I paid their hosting out of my own pocket, and would receive payment from Chris, without any question). Then right after setting up their email and paying for their year of email service - again out of pocket - after having a conversation with Chris, educating him on the difference between IMAP and POP email (yes, this founder of an internet marketing company didn't know the difference), and an agreement in written conversation online that he would pay me back for it, the site went down for approximately six hours.
At this point, for that six hours, the service I was using to maintain the site (I never intentionally hid this information, I would've handed over the site at any time, but they never asked) presented a landing page talking about the site being down. This is where things go haywire.
I was actually worried for a while. Me and Chris had gotten to know each other for a while and I suddenly stopped hearing from him. Sent repeated messages for payment for a month of hosting I had paid out of pocket, as well as the year of email service I had paid - again, out of pocket.
Given past law issues he had told me about, I thought something had possibly happened to Chris. I figured something had happened, put it out of my mind, hoping he was alright, and figured that as a stand-up guy, I'd eventually hear from him and be able to get this figured out.in the meantime, I had to suspend service on the site and email because I couldn't keep paying for someone else's site myself.
Then I saw that Chris was still active on Facebook, just ignoring my inquiries about payment. That's when I figured it out. They had basically checked out the service I used to make the site, studied up on how to make their own, and made their own new site under a different URL (onlinenwmediallc.com as opposed to onlinenwmedia.com). For them, business as usual, and me out the money I had paid to add email services, hosting, etc.
Now... Are they free to make their own site if they're not happy with the one I made? Of course they are. It's their own company. But I am still owed my money.
I try to be understanding and see things from others' perspectives. I have a very good idea of where they were coming from. They liked the site when I presented it, were willing to pay for it, did so (almost completely) - but once they found out they could figure out how to make one, they got upset and decided to retaliate by not paying me my owed money. My guess is they had a misguided sense of "with a bit of research and work, we can do this - so that means he ripped us off"
A couple thoughts here. It is the product/service one pays for - not necessarily how it's made. If you go to a car lot, test a car, and like how it looks/feels/drives and feel it's worth the price, you pay for it. You don't buy a car, make most of the payments, use it, then say you're not going to pay for the rest because you found out Honda uses robots for part of production instead of crafting the entire thing by hand.
You also don't get to stop making payments should you get the tools and skills necessary to build a car yourself.
Once that Honda is paid off, feel free to go on your merry way to another option if you feel so inclined. Buy that hand-crafted Bentley. Build a car yourself. But debt is debt is debt.
Long story short, this is apparently two guys who will go back on their word regarding payment and/or services should they suddenly decide based on arbitrary and unpredictable merit that they have the right to. Best of luck to anyone feeling like taking that chance.
... And by the way morons, checked out your new site... It's "all rights 'reserved'", not "preserved". Amateurs.
0 comments