I could scream!

[sparklyscotty]

I delegated so many things over the past couple of months, and no-one has even met their own promises, let alone my expectations.
My web 'developer' has spent months tweaking a graphic design with absolutely no response to my questions or reqeusts for help in regards to copy, conversion rates, navigation, layout etc.
I have also been burned by almost every advertiser by paying them to do my copy for ads for me... only for them to take it word for word from my website. I have one such case right now that i really grudge paying for. Can I refuse to pay, since tchincally I wrote the ad and all they did was cut and paste?
I am so dissapointed that I have spent my budget on people who had a really good reputation, only to now be broke with no sales. Help!
-Angel-

[CaroCaro]

Yes - get tough. Tell that that you are not pleased with their work and why. If you have copies of your original written brief you gave to them, sit down and go through it with them, word for word, pointing out the them what your issues are. I hate having to have those kind of meetings with suppliers/clients etc, but they have to be done, otherwise you will just get walked all over and taken for granted. Face to face is best, emails and phone calls just don't work in this situation. It is your business and life they are playing with and they should not be allowed to get away with poor service for full payment. Take someone along with you, whom you trust, to help get your points across and give you some clout. Follow up the meeting with a detailed letter with the points discussed and follow up action required, with a cut off date. You don't have to be agressive, you just have to be assertive. Copy writers do need to lift certain facts etc from exisitng materials, but a straigh copy is a NO NO. You are paying them to work with it and make it more appropriate for the chosen audience. With the website guy, he sounds too hooked up on the look more than the function and both are equally important and neither should be neglected. I can appreicate how annoyed you are, but most of the time you cannot rely on things to get done just because you ask once. Go get them and good luck!

[Rob Holmes]

Angel,

You could try a free review of your site here..

http://www.yourwebsitedoctor.co.uk

Hope this helps,

Rob

[top-click]

Hi Angel,

This is unfortunately a tale I hear often - and indeed, I got burned while setting up my business too.

Years working 'agency side' has lead me to being a VERY strong believer in developing a brief, insisting on status reports and setting expectations - and also, not handing over the cash until the job is done to everyones satisfaction.

The way in which I got burned was falling for the trap of local advertising, I actually negotiated a good rate of £500 for 3 insertions into the business section of a local, but still high circulation, newspaper. I expected to get 6 leads from this - but got none, not a sausage. I had the copy written, and the ad designed - but was really playing in the dark.

These days, although I am an advocate of testing and learning from new advertising opportunities, I am a lot harder to persuade.

These forums have been great for me, so I'm gonna give a little back - with a free test and learn campaign for you. There are no guarantees, even with PPC as there are many variables to consider - is my product competitively priced?, is there much competition for my product/audience?, is my site capable of engendering trust/sales? etc

What this activity will allow you to do is;

Test performance without burning loads of cash
Find out what copy inpires your target audience [which you can then use confidently cross media]
Build sales at a rate you can cope with
Track customers through to sales
Promote specific products/deals
Sell overseas

Give me a shout and we'll get things moving

Regards
Rob

top-click

[ebonybailey]

personall i would go LIVID!!!!

There is no way on gods green earth I would hand over a penny. infact I would do them for copyright!!! ( unlikely )
Stick to your guns. Go spastic at them for ripping you off, and ask how the papers would see this let alone trading standards.
No ad is better than any free ad, thats what i have found. I paid for yell, for yell 118, yellwww and yellbook, in one year I have received NO, thats right NO people coming through from them, I would suggest to go to goole and add your details to free ad sites like kellysearch, kyotee and others, i have had business from those sites. Advertising is full of ripoff merchants, all saying that they get 45 billion clicks an hour, yet ask for an SLA and they go white!!!
Im telling you now you can get away with free advertising cos paid stuff is useless.

[Rob Holmes]

I am so dissapointed that I have spent my budget on people who had a really good reputation, only to now be broke with no sales. Help!
-Angel-

Angel, we usually charge for our search engine optimisation but if you'd like a couple of pages done on us (I would say free but it costs us in time and effort) then give me a shout.

You will need someone to update your site for you with the suggestions - we can do this but there will be a small cost.

Best regards,

Rob

[ebonybailey]

i should point out i meant people like yell, web optimization does seem a better source of advertising.

[sparklyscotty]

thanks guys. I have taken back control of just about everything which has left me broke, with even less time than I had before. What I am most mad about is that I wasn't one of these people that was totally stingy- I made my priority to increase brand awareness and web sales and threw the appropriate amount of cash to professionals... only to have them take it and run.
I haven't heard back from the copy people and they haven't changed the ad on their site.
I also haven't heard from my web developer so I am checking the contract tonight to see if I can cancel out and go looking for someone else. (again.)
Thanks again for all your help. Makes a difference to know that it isn't just me expecting too much.
-Angel-

[Essence]

Hi Sparklyscotty,

Sorry to hear that you are having bad luck. I would also be absolutely furious, and would flat out refuse to pay for copy that is essentially a cut-and-paste job. There is no work to pay for! Do you know your position on refusing to pay? What were their terms and conditions when you took them on?

I have sent you a PM.

Essence.

[Johill]

Hi

I really sympathise with your awful experience of bad web designers / developers. There are a lot of good ones out there but a LOT of bad ones too - and it can be so stressful when you have wasted time and sometimes money and don't get what you want.

I can recommend three excellent web designers - I have used 2 of them myself and my sister used the other - and they all did a wonderful job - and were a pleasure to work with.

http://www.reyus.com
http://www.babylamb.com
http://www.dotcog.com

This is the reason I have set up an online network for recommended businesses. I operate a free finding service, so if you find yourself in need of a good accountant, printer, designer, architect, publisher, legal expert etc etc... take a look at our member profile pages or let me know and I can always provide you with 3 recommendations: http://www.affinitytrading.com.

Good Luck!

Jo

[sparklyscotty]

OO-er. They are still demanding payment! I have been very polite and explained that I was under the impression that paying for copy to be written meant that they take information from my site and translate it into a unique piece of copy that is specifically geared towards their clientelle. Since this wasn't done, I am still refusing to pay the invoice. They are claiming that the extra work to replace the copy now demands the fee!
-Angel-

[CaroCaro]

Good, let them fester and you stand your ground. What is there justification for wanting their invoice pad? In the meantime do you need an ad wiriting? Why don't you post on the message board to see if someone will assist you?

[SillyJokes]

Letting the magazine create the copy is a schoolboy error which I suppose we have all done. Usually they offer to do it for free just to get you on board.

Their copy is always rubbish - you can look in a magazine and see immediately who has let the magazine crunch together the ads for them.

You may have to swallow this cost this time, move on and work on what does make money for you. You are certainly working very hard at the moment.

[sparklyscotty]

Sillyjokes - I love your posts (although I often dread reading them) becuase you are always 100% honest. It is hard sometimes when embarking on a new area of business to know where to draw the line between an ideal situation and someone taking advantage. Somewhere in the grey area of the middle is where you learn the real lessons about being in business.
-Angel-

[CaroCaro]

I would certainly not put it down to a schoolboy error and swallow it! It is irrelevant if the copy has been written by the magazine or an independent copywriter - a bad job is a bad job and no one should put up with bad service.

[sparklyscotty]

If it was just bad copy I would just suck it up. But its the fact they have charged me for copy from my website that I wrote.
-Angel-

[Amber]

Try telling them that the copyright of the material on your website belongs to you, and that you have not given them permission to reproduce it in their publication. Doing that would be an infringment of copyright and could land them in trouble. As the theft of your copyright is a very basic error which they, being in the publishing industry, should know better than to comit, they will need to bear the costs of fixing it.

I would also ask them where the additional work in replacing the text comes in? Is this a print-based publication or a web-based one? Either way, unless they have to halt a print-run, it shouldn't be a huge amount of work to replace one block of text with another.

They are trying to string you along here in the hope that you will give up and pay up. Don't do it.

[sparklyscotty]

They just conceded and said that the 'wouldn't press' for the payment this time. :)
Feels like a hollow vistory though. I am not a very combative person.
-Angel-

[Essence]

Congrats on your victory, albeit hollow. I hope you won't need to cross paths with them in the future.

They clearly thought that your written work was good enough to pass off as their own, so why not consider writing your own copy, and passing it to a copywriter for sense-checking?

Wishing you lots of luck.

Essence.

[Julie]

I'm sorry you've been caught like this and I wonder if your post has prompted so many replies because we've many of us been caught out in a similar way.

Perhaps your hard lesson here is to write a really clear brief for any work you want doing, as Rob says. I cannot tell you how many times I have been stung because I didn't do just that. I would make the mistake of giving a verbal order, for printing very often, and then when the job was delivered to my client, and the client was unhappy, I'd get into a horrible wrangle over who's mistake it was and, more importantly, who would pick up the bill. . . and it nearly always ended up being me. I lost a lot of money until...

I started putting everything down on paper! At first I felt a bit anally-retentive, writing everything down. In the end, I even wrote in penalties for late delivery, it was incredible how it changed things. Work would arrive on time, exactly as I asked; and if it didn't, I was able to pull out the brief and ask for it be re-done until it was correct.

Hope you get it sorted,
Julie

[Julie]

Just saw your post about them conceding. Glad you've got it resolved.

Julie

[Rob Holmes]

They just conceded and said that the 'wouldn't press' for the payment this time. :)
Feels like a hollow vistory though. I am not a very combative person.
-Angel-

Good for you Angel :)

Rob

[STRAYGOAT]

I would refuse to pay and threaten legal action re: copyright.

I might be a bit late here, but if you want reliable web design and web copy, why not send me your details? I'm a copywriter with several very reliable design contacts. I don't rip-off other people's work, delver on-time and to budget, and most importantly, I don't BS - if I say I will meet a deadline, I will meet it.

Visit www.straygoat.com if you want more info.

Thanks

[VeryMark]

Entirely correct, but unless you have set out a proper specification with the right terms and conditions (i.e. some kind of standard or conditions to be met), a supplier can legally still expect to get paid for a bad job if the quality of the work is open to subjective interpretation.