1 out of 5
Watermelon Web Work’s redesign of my site was an utter failure. If it had been a city it would have been declared a disaster area, and frankly, dealing with FEMA would have been a lot less exasperating than dealing Watermelon.
On the day before the new design was launched my site had 939 visitors.
The new site only averaged 3 visitors a day. Not 3,000. Not 300. But 3.
I suffered a double whammy: having no income coming in because no one was visiting the redesigned site, and paying Watermelon’s nearly twice what their estimate was. I nearly went bankrupt.
When I asked Watermelon’s top web guru if there was any chance I could get a partial refund he said “No.”
After I balked at paying for a 4th time to fix a programming error that was causing my customers to be overcharged I concluded my email by saying:
If I was only out $8,000 (almost double your bid) it would be one thing, I could walk away from it, but I've lost my livelihood, I've lost the way I made a living, I've lost a business it took me 35 years to build.
When I was looking for a design firm everyone said, "They do good cheap work in India." I was an idealist, and was willing to pay more to hire not just a U.S. firm, but an Oregon firm. So much for idealism.
The guru emailed, “I do not appreciate the attitude. … These are services that you should be paying several tens of thousands of dollars for. … I understand why you are upset, and I have a good deal of sympathy for your situation, but it is in NO WAY our fault.” The caps are his, not mine.
He said he was willing to restore my old site for free ... as though that was something I should have been grateful for.