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Well sometimes one makes the right decision and sometimes one doesn’t.
The internet has opened up a whole new Pandora’s box to both the skilled and unskilled user. Being online allows us to do business with companies from other countries that we would never have had access to previously.
This can be very good (or not so good) as a couple of recent experiences have ably demonstrated to us.
Just some background - Dina Street of Southern Cross Blue Cruising and 20 year Bodrum resident has been active in the world of ITT since 1982 and was one of the very first persons in the USA to use e-mail over ARPANET at UC Berkeley. She has a good grasp of technology and has been building commercial and private web sites since 1998. Dave Stanley has over 40 years of experience with marketing and promotion, having run one of Yamaha’s most successful motorcycle racing teams.
One of the fastest expanding parts of our businesses in Turkey has been delivering turn-key websites to local businesses, especially in the gulet charter and marine industries and we have been commissioned to do some exciting new sites.
With the technological side of web building going ahead in leaps and bounds we have decided to concentrate on the SEO, design, layout, artistic and written side of the website projects and to find appropriate people to which we outsource the more demanding aspects, such as flash,
ASP, forums and site-local search engine coding.
After some homework and communication, we commissioned a company called E-Fuzion, headquartered in New Delhi to set up and do the moderate technical side of the work on one site we were doing, hoping to build a long-term working relationship for more complex future sites.
As our initial communication went well, we decided to go ahead with E-Fuzion. We told them exactly what we needed and they had no problem with any of it …… or so they said.
The site basics which we commissioned was quite a simple one so none of the back end should have been a problem with today’s technology. All was agreed to from both sides and we sent the 50% deposit mid-September with delivery to be in 20 working days.
After a plethora of emails to direct and collaborate over the work to be done and long periods of no return communication, the agreed work was not completed, nor was what had been done what we wanted in many areas. In fact, the work shown to-date was unusable.
Around the first week of November, 50 days after the start of the project, and without a delivery of any semblance of a presentable website, we asked E-Fuzion to terminate any further work and refund our deposit less 100 EURO for their expenses.
Needless to say we have heard nothing, after some initial bleating about how the website was practically finished and correct and of course, no refund for our deposit.
We feel this company took on something that was above their level of expertise. We don’t think they are full con-artists but the fact remains they were unable to live up to what they agreed to do and it wasn’t overly technical. More importantly, they have not taken into account the loss of over 30 working days from delays in delivering the website.
E-FUZION - DEFINITELY NOT TO BE RECOMMENDED.
In parallel with the E-Fuzion project, we were commissioned to deliver a much more innovative site involving some very cutting edge web technology. A major part of the technical stuff was outsourced to another company in India. They completed everything perfectly, were a joy to work with and very reasonably priced. So quick were they in many areas we sometimes had difficulty keeping up with them! Well done and with three new projects ready to go.
Lessons we have learned:
• 50% advance deposit for an unknown company is too much until something has been demonstrated. Instead, increments of payment as each work module is delivered should be arranged for until the company has proven itself to deliver what has been agreed upon.
• Speak directly to the company’s past and current clients instead of relying on an on-line portfolio.
• Negative on-line publicity is very hard to undo, so if you have a bad experience with doing business on the internet, report these to the following:
www.ripoffreport.com
http://www.fraud.org/info/repoform.htm
https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/GetStarted.aspx
http://www.netcheck.com/
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