aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, July 12, 2008

E.Webscapes is for Dummies: Stay away from Lisa Sabin-Wilson

NOTE: THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY DATED APRIL 13, 2008. I HAVE CHANGED THE DATE TO PERMANENTLY PLACE IT ON THE ARCHIVED HOME PAGE OF THIS SITE. I CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THAT LISA WAS WILLFULLY NEGLIGENT AND SHOULD BE HELD LIABLE FOR HER AWFUL BUSINESS PRACTICES. UNSUSPECTING CUSTOMERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE NO SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE TO PREVENT THE SAME THING FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.

In October of last year I contracted with Lisa Sabin-Wilson and E.Webscapes Blog Design Studio to “tweak” my blog design, move this blog to a new host, and upgrade my blog software. Sabin-Wilson is the author of WordPress for Dummies, and blogs at Just a Girl in the World.

Prior to contracting with Lisa to do the work I read the FAQ posted on the E.Webscapes site, browsed the portfolio, followed her blog, listened to the podcast of a presentation she did at a conference, and contacted one of her blog clients for a reference. I thought I did my due diligence. I thought wrong.

My experience with Lisa was very bad. Very bad. I opened a ticket with E.Webscapes on October 21, 2007. I paid for services on November 3, 2007. I was told to expect a 20-30 business day turn around. I received a full refund (with $50 extra) on March 26, 2008.

The full story of my business relationship with Lisa Sabin-Wilson and E.Webscapes is contained in the extended entry of this blog post. I am happy to provide detailed documentation to back up my claims upon request. I am posting this reluctantly in order to help stop this kind of thing from happening to other bloggers.

On November 3, 2007 I paid the asking price of $600 for services with absolutely no negotiation and was told it would take 20-30 business days. I was perfectly happy. The price was very low—well within the range I like to keep for this blog-hobby of mine. My then expiring hosting plan was set to end on December 31, 2007, still 41 business days away. On Sunday, November 25, 2007 I got word from Lisa that she was working on my design and “should have a mockup for you to review by mid to end of this coming week.” That’s when things went sour.

I did not here from Lisa again until December 19. I had a deadline looming to get switched from my expiring host to my new host, and personal vacation travel plans preventing me from doing it myself. My upfront payment to Lisa limited my ability to pay someone else. I felt trapped and pleaded with Lisa to get it done. A cloud hung over my holiday as I worried and wondered how I would manage a transfer if she didn’t come through. She and her husband, Chris who runs Blogs-About Web Hosting, did finally complete the move on December 28, 2007.

So the switch was done… I thought. And I tried to persuade Lisa to move on to the design portion of the work. She did hastily submit one mockup. Judge for yourself. I asked for revisions. The second was much better.

But then on Super Tuesday my site went down. This was the exchange between me and ICDSoft support:

ICDSOFT SUPPORT CORRESPONDENCE:
Feb 06 2008 12:01
Q: My site appears to have gone down at three hours ago. The error message reads: Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists.
Thanks, Joe

Feb 06 2008 12:12
A: Support35
Hello, I checked the configuration file of your application and it appears that the problem is with the settings you have there.
The following line:
$conf[’db_hostname’] = “205.178.146.27”;
instructs your application to connect to an external database host. This IP address is not ours.
If you want to connect to your database on our server, you must use the following:
$conf[’db_hostname’] = “localhost”;
Best Regards,
Support

For the uninitiated… when Lisa transferred the site to the new host, she did not update the configuration file to point to the new host. My database was housed at the old host. When the old host shut it down and deleted it, it was gone. My site was gone. What made it all the more tragic is that I had reported to Lisa that the built-in backup didn’t work—so I had no backup!

My blog was down completely for 2 days. Lisa said she was sorry and surfaced long enough to restore it (thankfully!) back to December 27, 2007. I manually reloaded as many posts as I could, as many as I had, from my RSS reader, one at a time. Still, I lost more than a hundred and it took untold hours. Comments weren’t working for weeks (I finally got them working on my own). Lisa didn’t respond to my repeated work order requests. Nor did her husband Chris at Blogs-About. (To this minute I have no email address for Lisa—none is provided for clients to contact her.)

I wrote to her on February 8, 10, 11, 14 and 29. In that last I asked that she propose a way to amicably end our business relationship. She had my money. I don’t know what she thought. That I should just go away? I had paid for services I had not received, rather I had a busted site with lost data and no new design and a designer missing in action. Or, rather, a designer who would not respond to a paid client but was happy to tell the world of her travel to SXSW for 5 days, and hiring new people, and buying a parrot.

So on Monday, March 3, I proposed that I should get a full refund by March 31 or I would post my full correspondence, work order, contact her publisher, etc. etc. With that Lisa finally responded. She said she was sorry and that she would refund my money. Along the way she told me that at least one of her employees walked out on her. And she had to refund the fees for four other clients. Of course, even that she couldn’t do right. In my proposal I gave her to March 31 to issue the refund. As the date approached I wrote asking whether I could expect to receive the refund. She answered that it was sitting there waiting to be accepted by me. Of course, she had submitted it to a non-existent account. I had even gone so far as to issue a PayPal money request from my account so that she would have the correct info!!!

Now, I have all of this amply documented and am happy to share it with anyone. My concerns are that for all the ostensible freedoms we have in the internet space, they do not come with the same established protections we have in the physical world. Lisa and E.Webscapes are not members of the Better Business Bureau and not subject to their sanctions. As a client you will find no phone number, no email address, and no mechanisms for feedback or means of communicating with Lisa. You have no recourse. Small claims court? You pay upfront then take it or leave it!

I am left with a site in disrepair—worse than it was when I started out—and a lesson learned. I am happy to share that lesson with others. Among those lessons: I was looking for boutique services at a discount store, then complained that I didn’t find them there. That’s my fault. I wish Lisa was smart enough to have told me that. But now I know.