Ohhh, I'm livid.
LIVID I SAY.
So I finished a nearly year long project for a company a couple of months ago. One that I've mentioned before. (See: SCW)
Obligatory Background. Web people, brace yourselves. Winter, is incoming.
Originally, the website this company was using was horribly laggy, and had a design reminiscent of the darkest corners of ancient Geocities. Stark. White. With a logo done in Paint up top, not even centered properly. The images they used on the website were full size images, shrunk down. Saved as BMPs. Thumbnails, therefore, were 8 MB apiece, on average, giving the website the look of absolutely nothing there while the page loaded for the next two minutes.
Oh. And every single page was saved separately. With its own separate stylesheet, links, etc etc. Basically, a miniature website within a website within a....you get the WEBSITECEPTION idea.
As a further cherry on top, they were paying $300/mo for hosting. A "friend discount" from a person they'd met once at a convention.
FURTHER cherry on top? They told me that they were about to go with the lowest bid they'd received on the project so far: $24,000.
I quoted them $2,500.
I also offered to design them a nice vector logo for printing, but that it'd be extra. "Nah, we don't need that, really. We'll pass."
Unfortunately things did not go as planned (see ExC), and delays occurred, but they acknowledged to me, in person, more than a few times that they were grateful I was bending over backwards to fix things up, and that they were happy I was going to such lengths to repair the problems.
Part of the solution in the end was to install a powerful script onto their website, for more flexibility. Also, it would be much more simpler for them to be able to purchase one of the thousands of addons for the script, if they ever needed something else, rather than hire someone to build onto the script all over again. This was a huge moneysaver for them, and saved them more, again. Potentially thousands of dollars in savings.
And again, mentioning that earlier hosting? I pointed them towards GoDaddy, and recommended the more powerful hosting, pointing out dedicated servers would support them greatly, especially with the large clientele they have. They loved it, and loved the fact that it was so much cheaper than their current setup.
On to today's event.
Out of the blue, I get a very terse email telling me to call them up, now. Oookay?
I promptly get a nice lecture about the script that we used on the website.
Its TOO powerful!...
Turns out, against my recommendations, they went with the super-cheap shared hosting, for $9/mo.
I'll let that sit in there. $9/mo. Shared hosting. For a massive website that requires a ton of resources, and has a ridiculous amount of traffic coming in, and needs to be up 24/7.
They promptly lectured me how I should've said something, and that it was my oversight that has now cost them, because they had to move to $75/mo virtual dedicated servers.
Yes. I'm in trouble because they're still savings hundreds, but not saving THIS many hundreds!
As I'm inwardly fuming, and literally silent because I'm shaking, they proceed to tell me that I'd best remember this for future clients, because "things could get ugly".
Oh, and would I mind tossing them the .ais of the logo I designed for them? Thanks much, bye now.
Waitaminute, WHAT? So in one phone call, they completely ripped me a new one because I didn't save them ENOUGH? And oh hey, surprise, you turned down the logo design, and now decide out of the blue that I need to magically pull nonexistent logo vectors from nowhere?
Well guess what? IT GETS WORSE.
Another phone call, another complaint. Remember how I said their original website was....white? And that's it? Apparently, a SINGLE CUSTOMER went to place an order today, and sent in a complaint that the website looked "nothing like the old one".
So, I've been informed that obviously, my website is hurting their business, so they're going to start making it look like the old one again.
As I've been typing this? I am watching new images go up on their site where they have literally used Paint to cut out and paint over my beautiful website design.
I'm done. I'm so done. If there wasn't one insurmountable obstacle, I'd have given them a piece of my mind, and darn the torpedos.
LIVID I SAY.
So I finished a nearly year long project for a company a couple of months ago. One that I've mentioned before. (See: SCW)
Obligatory Background. Web people, brace yourselves. Winter, is incoming.
Originally, the website this company was using was horribly laggy, and had a design reminiscent of the darkest corners of ancient Geocities. Stark. White. With a logo done in Paint up top, not even centered properly. The images they used on the website were full size images, shrunk down. Saved as BMPs. Thumbnails, therefore, were 8 MB apiece, on average, giving the website the look of absolutely nothing there while the page loaded for the next two minutes.
Oh. And every single page was saved separately. With its own separate stylesheet, links, etc etc. Basically, a miniature website within a website within a....you get the WEBSITECEPTION idea.
As a further cherry on top, they were paying $300/mo for hosting. A "friend discount" from a person they'd met once at a convention.
FURTHER cherry on top? They told me that they were about to go with the lowest bid they'd received on the project so far: $24,000.
I quoted them $2,500.
I also offered to design them a nice vector logo for printing, but that it'd be extra. "Nah, we don't need that, really. We'll pass."
Unfortunately things did not go as planned (see ExC), and delays occurred, but they acknowledged to me, in person, more than a few times that they were grateful I was bending over backwards to fix things up, and that they were happy I was going to such lengths to repair the problems.
Part of the solution in the end was to install a powerful script onto their website, for more flexibility. Also, it would be much more simpler for them to be able to purchase one of the thousands of addons for the script, if they ever needed something else, rather than hire someone to build onto the script all over again. This was a huge moneysaver for them, and saved them more, again. Potentially thousands of dollars in savings.
And again, mentioning that earlier hosting? I pointed them towards GoDaddy, and recommended the more powerful hosting, pointing out dedicated servers would support them greatly, especially with the large clientele they have. They loved it, and loved the fact that it was so much cheaper than their current setup.
On to today's event.
Out of the blue, I get a very terse email telling me to call them up, now. Oookay?
I promptly get a nice lecture about the script that we used on the website.
Its TOO powerful!...
Turns out, against my recommendations, they went with the super-cheap shared hosting, for $9/mo.
I'll let that sit in there. $9/mo. Shared hosting. For a massive website that requires a ton of resources, and has a ridiculous amount of traffic coming in, and needs to be up 24/7.
They promptly lectured me how I should've said something, and that it was my oversight that has now cost them, because they had to move to $75/mo virtual dedicated servers.
Yes. I'm in trouble because they're still savings hundreds, but not saving THIS many hundreds!
As I'm inwardly fuming, and literally silent because I'm shaking, they proceed to tell me that I'd best remember this for future clients, because "things could get ugly".
Oh, and would I mind tossing them the .ais of the logo I designed for them? Thanks much, bye now.
Waitaminute, WHAT? So in one phone call, they completely ripped me a new one because I didn't save them ENOUGH? And oh hey, surprise, you turned down the logo design, and now decide out of the blue that I need to magically pull nonexistent logo vectors from nowhere?
Well guess what? IT GETS WORSE.
Another phone call, another complaint. Remember how I said their original website was....white? And that's it? Apparently, a SINGLE CUSTOMER went to place an order today, and sent in a complaint that the website looked "nothing like the old one".
So, I've been informed that obviously, my website is hurting their business, so they're going to start making it look like the old one again.
As I've been typing this? I am watching new images go up on their site where they have literally used Paint to cut out and paint over my beautiful website design.
I'm done. I'm so done. If there wasn't one insurmountable obstacle, I'd have given them a piece of my mind, and darn the torpedos.
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