Learning a lesson from disappointment.
Ξ November 27th, 2007 | → 2 Comments | ∇ E-Commerce |
As some of you are aware, I dabble in e-commerce with my primary store being Star City Scents. I’m not a programmer by trade, so when I need to have some changes made to my shop and the way it functions I sometimes need to hire a freelance programmer to assist in the work as my PHP and programming skills are very basic. Sometimes I can work my way through it, but it doesn’t have to advance far before it is beyond my ability and I need assistance. I have no problem in paying a skilled programmer for their skills, time, and efforts. However, I recently had an experience that started out positive, but turned out badly in the end. Luckily for me, the amount of funds lost was fairly minimal – but it’s the lack of integrity that still bothers me.
I originally had some work done by placing a job out for bid on CRELance. CRELance is where people who use the CRE Loaded version of oscommerce can go to find freelance programmers to do work for them. You place a project up for bid and the freelance programmers may bid on it. You then decide who you want to offer the project to and CRELance will handle the escrow of funds, transfer of payments, etc for a small fee. Freelancers and those putting jobs up for bid get reviewed by the other party. It’s a nice system they have in place there and works very well. A few months back I had bid out a project and chose oshelpers.com for my work. They completed the job fairly promptly and without incident. Not long after this job I had a few other items on my to-do list and decided to continue working with Chris at oshelpers after my positive experience with them. However, I paid him via Paypal and did not use CRELance. He completed the first couple of jobs without much problem. Maybe not exactly in the time frame quoted, but then again I think we were working through some adjustments and the communication was there. I give them the benefit of the doubt as they did get the job done and done correctly. I was fine and pleased with their efforts up to this point. The prices charged were what I would consider very fair and they even passed on a coupon saving me a few bucks. However, this would all change on a fairly quick basis.
