Deception.
March 12th, 2008
So, a funny thing happened to me last night. While going through my Mint site statistics, I noticed that one particular site was bouncing quite often – all while trying to visit one specific page. The way my blog is set up, any 404 redirects back to my main page, so the only information I really had to go on was the referring site. After clicking on this site and going through a few of the pages, I noticed that it was a coffee / restaurant review site, specifically for the Orlando, Florida region. Keep in mind that I attended college at Full Sail roughly 3 years ago, so I do have contacts down there. More specifically, one of our projects involved making a website for Palmano’s, which is a small coffee shop down in Winter Park.
As it turns out, the site that was linking to my site was actually linking to the location of a testing page that I had accidentally left up for about six months. You see, the Palmano’s folks had contacted me last spring regarding revamping a lot of what we had made for them while at school. Their host had gone down, and they lost their entire site. They wanted me to help them get their site back up (if I still had it – which I did) add some features, tweak some text, add some new photos, and things of that nature. I told them that I would gladly do that for them, and I did have the files they needed, but I did not have the sql database backed up. If the server was in fact down, I’d have to re-create all of that for them, and it’d take me maybe a work day to make all of the changes they wanted. I told them that would cost them, they said okay, and away we went!
Fast forward to July of last year. By this time, I had re-created everything and gotten most of the content back where it needed to be. I had also sent the clients some hosting options, told them what it’d take to get this thing live, and thought we were on our way to essentially getting the site back to where it was 2 years prior. As soon as money was mentioned, all I got was radio silence. No replies to my emails, and even to my phone calls. I had obviously seen this behavior before from people, and gave it a few weeks and tried again. Still nothing. At this point, I figured I’d just let it go and move on. If they wanted to continue working, I’d demand payment in full and we’d move forward from there. If not, I guess I was out a few hundred bucks.
I didn’t hear anything from them until I emailed the son of the owner (the guy I had been working with when I lived in Orlando, and the contact I had when I was getting things set up for them again) last night. I basically told him that I noticed a site was linking to my site, and I’m not sure how that happened, but I have since deleted the test pages and made a meta refresh that will send traffic to a google search for their company. Additionally, I offered to redirect it somewhere else if they so desired. I just figured this was a simple mistake, and we could sort this out quickly and easily.
No reply.
I decided to see what would happen when I typed in the client’s address. Wouldn’t you know it, it redirected to my site as well. This, of course, set off a nerve. Someone could have made a mistake and linked to my personal site, but it takes a real set of balls to log into your registrar and redirect it to a testing location when you have stopped replying to their emails and phone calls. Simply amazing. Torn, I wasn’t sure how to react. Part of me wanted to do something vindictive, and the other figured I should remain as professional about this as possible (although this could hardly be considered professional work). I decided to strike a compromise and simply link the redirected location on my website to a starbucks.com search for locations in Winter Park, Florida. I also sent an email to the client in question outlining how unprofessional they have been with me from the outset, but this was obviously the icing on the cake.
The money is certainly not the issue. At this point, it’s been a year since we got started and it’s only a few hundred dollars. I just find the fact that they chose to go behind me back and link to my personal site hilarious/infuriating (if that’s possible). These guys seemed sketchy from the outset, but I certainly didn’t anticipate anything like this.
Anyway, if you’re ever in Winter Park Florida and need to quickly know where a Starbucks is, don’t waste your time fiddling around with their search interface. Just type in palmanos.com!
UPDATE: Looks like they have changed their DNS info. It was fun while it lasted! To at least see what the client saw, you can go to http://www.danielandrews.com/palmanos/ - where he had palmanos.com pointing to.
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March 12th, 2008 at 11:17 am
HAHA! Man, that’s awesome. :D
Comedy at it’s finest!
March 12th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It’s one thing to disappear if you aren’t happy with the work, something comes up, or you change your mind. Not that any of those are *okay*, but you can deal with it.
When they fall off the radar and you then find out they’re not only sucking your bandwidth, but essentially using your work for free. As I mentioned above, the actual design work and the php files are something they can have for free – a group of students and I made that as a school project, and it’s theirs to have. However, I refuse to re-create the database out of the kindness of my heart given their behavior towards me.
I feel like I’ve made my point, however. I could have done something considerably more unethical I’m sure, but I felt this was a good ’screw you’, but still within ethical guidelines.
March 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Agreed. I’m getting glimpses of what the project looked like, and I can remember little bits and pieces of what it looked like, but the overall design evades me right now.
Speaking of old projects, I still have the Adventure Comics database/site… (I didn’t design it, but I DID code the PHP/MySQL). Weird how I don’t want to let it go even though I’ve done better work, imo.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
This is the most entertaining thing I’ve read all day. =)
March 13th, 2008 at 10:19 am
They have enough knowledge of DNS’ to change them within hours, yet they couldn’t take the five minutes it took to call you about payment for the work you did for them?
Distasteful.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Here’s a funny update to this story:
When you search google for Palmanos.com, I am one of the top two entries. When you search for Palmanos, I am on the first page.
I really hope at least a few people come across my site and see what kind of sleazeballs they are.
August 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Daniel,
I am the guy who you are referring to as a sleazeball. I am the son of owner and did his website for him originally.
First off, you built this website because of a school project, and WE were nice enough to allow you to use our business as a platform for your lessons.
After seeing what a Great job you did, I decided to convince my father to try and hire you to use it as a basic design platform.
You were supposed to build a back door to allow us to change content and pictures, which we never saw. You were leaving us emails and voice mails demanding payment for something we didn’t see. How was I supposed to convince a computer challenged baby boomer to pay you for something when there was no product?
I linked your site to the domain so that my father could pull it up in his own time and figure out what he wanted to change in the site, not to take advantage of your work. Although your design was great, none of the content was correct and that was what he needed to change. If you think that we benefited from having a site with entirely wrong content then you are mistaken.
My father has no knowledge about link domains to sites. You are slamming the wrong person.
If you have a problem with anyone, it is me, and I would love to come to Atlanta for a sit down any time that is convenient for you. Or if you are making a trip to Winter Park, I will be glad to meet you.
In the mean time, posting silly remarks about people that isn’t true, or at least skewed, is a huge waste of time and energy. As a new business owner, talking trash about anyone does nothing than make you look petty and you will lose business that way.
Sincerely,
The Sleazeball