Part One: Barter Gone Bad
I sent a blast out to my Yahoo Instant Messenger buddy list on September 16 to ask if anyone would be interested in bartering with me for some gifts that I needed. Victoria responded and we worked out a deal. I had picked out $64 worth of Cookie Lee jewelry from her ($75.50 after tax and shipping).in exchange, she would receive advertising on two of my sites as well as one solo ad per week until Christmas.
She informed me that she had one piece of the jewelry in stock and would send it right away and that she would order the rest. I sent her an eMail that day letting her know exactly what I needed in order to place her ads on my site. She was also supposed to send the information for a solo ad. I have never received any of this ad information from her. I asked about it several times and she always replied with "it's on my list of things to do today".
In the middle of a separate YIM discussion later in the day, she informed me that she had packaged the one Cookie Lee item that she had in stock and that it was ready to be sent to me... I've never received it.
Victoria asked me on YIM to make a banner for her Cookie Lee business as well as her Letters from Santa business on September 23. I completed both banners right away. Victoria then asked me if I would consider these banners as a part of our barter that we had arranged on September 16. I told her that would be fine. The banners were $10.50 and $11.50. This brought my total down to $53.50 that I owed Victoria in advertising for our barter.
On October 7 I requested an update via YIM on the jewelry from our September 16 agreement. Victoria told me again that she had one piece and was going to the showroom on the 11th to pick up the rest. So she had never mailed the one piece that she said was ready to be mailed to me about 21 days earlier! I asked her again for the information so that I could complete her ads for my end of the barter. She did not respond.
On October 14 Victoria sent me a message via YIM asking me to make a banner and button for her Traveling Vineyard website. She wanted to again adjust our barter and include the banner and buttons as part of what I was doing on my end of the deal. The total for these two was $20. This meant I now owed Victoria $33.50 in advertisements for my part of the bargain. I asked her again for her ad information so that I could take care of my end and she replied with, "I will put that on my list right this second". I completed the banner and button the following day. I did misspell a word and corrected it as soon as I could.
On October 20 I sent another message to Victoria via YIM asking her if she had all of my jewelry from our bartering agreement. She stated that she was not able to get one piece but that it was coming in her order on October 23rd.
On November 16 I sent Victoria an eMail requesting an update on my jewelry from our barter. It had now been TWO months since we had made the agreement. She knew the items were gifts and I informed her that the dates I needed them for had already passed the week before but I was seeing my friend again the following weekend and definitely needed them then.
Victoria replied via eMail on November 17. Her reply was, "I have a TON of cookie lee stuff here and I will mail them out on Wednesday. Is that ok?" I didn't understand what she meant by that. It sounded like she was saying she just had a munch of jewelry and was going to send me whatever she wanted to send and not specifically what I had picked out. I then replied and asked her if she was able to get all of the items that I had picked out and informing her again that I had to have them. She responded stating that she did have everything I had asked for and she was packing them up and sending them out to me.
On November 20 I eMailed Victoria to let her know that I would be invoicing her for the amount she owed me towards our barter. I had done $42 worth of banners for her in exchange for the jewelry that I had never received. Had she taken the time to ever send me her ad information then I would have completed the rest as well. I was not billing her for the full amount of the barter, only what I had completed. I did state in the eMail that it was $32 but that was a miscalculation and as I have stated above, you can see the numbers come out to $42. Over two months was MORE than enough time for her to order a few items and mail them to me.
On November 21 she replied via eMail. Her response was, "Yes, I have the items you requested in our barter." She was completely ignoring the fact that the items were no longer of any use to me since she was well past the deadline that I needed them for and I was having to buy different gifts elsewhere. She stated she was sorting through her pile of jewelry and sending them priority mail with a tracking number. I replied again letting her know it was too late. She replied yet again, the same day she assured me that she had all of the items I requested, saying, "If you can please resend me a list of what we bartered for in Cookie products, it would save me going thru a ton of emails and I will get them into the mail to you ASAP." In other words, she had no idea what she was supposed to send me. So how did she know she had all the pieces?
She has no intentions of paying me for what I did on my end of our barter.
Part Two: Website Woes
On September 16 Victoria sent me another YIM message asking me to create a website for her. She agreed to pay $125 for the hosting, design, banner & button and first month's maintenance of the site. She also asked me to purchase a domain name for her. I told her I charged $10 to purchase domains and that she must request a transfer and pay any required fees in order to have it put in her name. She assured me that this was acceptable.
I required her to pay the $10 for the domain up front, which she did pay that day. She also sent $30 to the hosting company who I am partnered with. The hosting was included in her $125 package, therefore, this brought her total owed to me for www.WahwNetwork.com to $95.
Payments are due to me within 30 days of beginning my work on sites. Victoria did ask me, up-front, if I would allow her more time and let her pay on some type of payment plan. I told her that I would but it must be paid before the end of October. This agreement was only for the remainder of the money she owed me towards the package.
She also stated that day that she would want to pay a monthly maintenance fee of $50 to retain me to maintain the site.
I purchased the domain that night or the following morning and began creating the site.
On October 13 Victoria sent me a message via YIM telling me she would be sending a payment that week. I didn't receive anything payments towards the package that week.
On October 15 I sent Victoria a message on YIM letting her know that her $50 maintenance fee was due if she wanted me to continue maintaining the site. I did not get a response.
On October 17 I sent an eMail to Victoria concerning the maintenance fee that was due on the 16th. I let her know that I had sent her a reminder via YIM on the 15th but that I was having issues with my YIM client and realized that she may not have received it. I also informed her that I realized I may not have been clear that our payment plan agreement was only for the original package and did not include the maintenance fee. Letting her know that I would understand if she did not have it right away. She replied letting me know that she would send the payment on the October 21st.
On October 20 she informed me again that I would receive a payment on the 21st for the maintenance I was already doing and so that her maintenance would be paid up through November 15th.
On October 21 Victoria informed me via YIM that she had put sending my money for the maintenance on her to-do list for the day. I did NOT receive a payment that day.
She did finally send a payment on October 23.
In the following week, I received a few eMails from some of Victoria's advertisers complaining to me that their ads were not up. I explained to them that if their ads were not up then it was because I had not received their information from Victoria and they needed to take it up with her. A few of them forwarded eMails to me later that were from Victoria.in these eMails, she put the blame on me, stating that I didn't understand her instructions or that she was just waiting on me to do things. She was using me as an excuse and making my business look bad. She tried to deny that she had reacted in that manner. Apparently she didn't understand that I had seen the actual eMails from her myself. Going back in my records, I see where I requested the information from her for some of her advertisers over half a dozen times before she finally gave it to me.
November 1 rolled around and I have not received a single payment towards the balance that Victoria owed me.
On November 2 (even though she had not attempted to make a payment or even give me a lame excuse as to why she had not paid) Victoria sent me more work to do on the site. I sent her a reply asking her why she had not paid the remaining $95 and her answer was, "I am just waiting for an echeck to clear, looks like it will clear tomorrow. Actuallyt here are 3 of them... Then i will send right over." I did NOT receive a payment the following day however.
On November 4 I was informed by Victoria, via YIM, that an advertiser had filed a PayPal dispute against her and that PayPal had "locked up her funds" but that she had transferred more money into her account so that she could pay me. I didn't understand why there was a dispute because she had just asked me two days before to take all of this woman's advertising down off of the site. So shouldn't she be refunding her anyway?
I knew the dispute was over a non-tangible item and that PayPal does not do claims for non-tangible items. So I asked Victoria why there would be such a hold up. She told me this whole tale about how the lady had marked "goods" instead of "services" when she made the payment and that she was having to prove to PayPal now that it was for non-tangible items.
On November 6 Victoria sent me a message, via YIM, stating that she had just gotten off of the phone with PayPal. She said that her funds should be released no later than November 10th. She continued to tell me more about the issue involving the same woman who was disputing the payment.
On November 16, not only was Victoria 16 days behind on her package payment, but she did not attempt to send her maintenance fee that was due either. She did ask me to continue maintaining the site and stated she would send the maintenance fee as well as the remainder of the money owed on the package "soon".
On November 17 she told me that she would be sending me a money order for her payments. I informed her that I did not accept money orders and I would be waiting for my PayPal payment.
Up until November 19, Victoria was still telling me that she was having issues with the SAME PayPal claim. However, I contacted the woman who had made the claim and she forwarded the eMail to me from PayPal that showed the dispute had been settled on November 1st... Yes, the claim was actually settled 3 days before Victoria started using it as an excuse to not pay me.
On November 20 I confronted Victoria in an eMail. I let her know that I knew the PayPal dispute had been over for a long time and that I knew her funds were not frozen because she had sent a payment to someone else that week.
She replied on November 21 stating that I was correct, that the dispute was over. Although she says she never lied to me. The fact that I had proof of her lie meant nothing to her. She also now stated that there was a new dispute and her funds were again on "hold status". She said that I was correct about her sending a payment of $20 to someone else as well. Then she said, "Again, Rachel, please, allow for me to do this. I will send $20 immediately, to show you good faith." She NEVER sent me that $20.
She eMailed me again the same day saying, "Again, Rachel, Please, I ask you from the bottom of my heart... Please allow me 2 weeks to pay you in full. PLEASE! I will do it. I swear to it. Please give me this opportunity to show you that I truly am sincere." That was 3 days ago, I have yet to see any money. But she does eMail me several times a day now. Demanding access to things that she does not even own.
She then asked me for my address so that she could send me a money order. I had already told her once that I do not accept money orders. After I received the address request, she sent messages out to her advertisers telling them that she had transferred my money to her PayPal account and would be paying me that way. So she was telling us two different things.
I replied letting her know, again, that I do not accept money orders. I told her that they can be counterfeited and I simply didn't trust that. She responded telling me that it is not possible to counterfeit a money order (HA!) and that she would let everyone know that she attempted to pay me and I refused.
I asked her why she did not just make an eCheck payment through PayPal since she claims the money is in her bank account. Of course, she never sent a response.
Today she has told her advertisers that she is sending me a Certified Cashiers check even though I told her I only accept PayPal. If she does this, I will return it via certified mail to her. I have given in enough to her and I won't do things on her terms any longer.
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