The one who stopped replying

When I initially registered ekynoxe as my freelance practice, I already had a potential client, there was going to be quite some work to do, short term future was looking exciting, albeit a little bit unknown.

It all started with a large project. And I really mean large: a full website for an African consulting practice to be launched, with more than 35 pages initially planned, on a CMS, and delivered in two languages! Add to this the creation of the identity and branding that goes with it, and you have an idea of the scope of work.

All seemed nice. However, even how promising and problem-less it looked, given a previous bad experience with a “client” leaving with work and money, and not acknowledging that a contract of work had been accepted both sides and ultimately delivered, I was determined not to fall in the same trap.

Never again will I be duped in delivering work not paid…

So we (the client and myself) both signed a contract, agreed on deliverables and schedules, and agreed on payments.

Back then, I didn’t really know how to both please a client and protect my business, but given my previous problems, I knew I needed to ask for some money up front. So I asked for 25%, got paid and started work. (Agreeing with myself about this also helped filter out not serious/committed requests for work too!)

Things went well! Really well! In a few weeks, three designs mocks had been reviewed and one generally accepted to be the one for the future site; the platform and its extensions had been chosen (wordpress), and some preliminary server side work was already working.

Branding has then been delivered, with logo, business cards designs and around 15 pages of content fully created in Photoshop, ready to be sliced up!

Home page

About page

This usually marks my first deliverable: design work complete. Not counting in some inevitable little tweaks, that’s where design mainly stops and coding starts to get really deep. That’s also when I was sending a second invoice for an extra 25% of the total of the contract.

This one got paid too, and that’s all I got in the end.

After the design, I spent an inordinate amount of time crafting all the intricacies of this website with as much love as I could give it, for that I wanted to please and impress my first client, and for that I am always passionate about what I do!

There was loads to do, and it has all been done:

• custom types on wordpress
• custom comments
• integration on absolutely all pages of the WPML language plugin to have a bilingual website.
• dealing with the CSS rendering in all browsers, including IE6. Yes, in Africa, IE6 is still present a lot.
• extension of some wordpress plugins like contact form 7
• etc etc…

This was all exciting and I ploughed on, having here and there some feedback, and here and there some issues.

But the most systematic problem was that I had to chase my client for content and for reviews. It was a constant annoyance as it was delaying my work, the site delivery, and the other contracts I had planned after this one.

Eventually, the site got finished, the client was notified about it and… I’m still awaiting feedback… as well as payment for the work done. The last real contact I had with him was mid-august 2010 by email, so it’s now been 7 months at the time of this post without a reply. I tried emails, text messages, and left countless voice messages on his answer phone. No results.

What can I do?

At the end of the day, I kept me promise to myself: I did not deliver work that have not been paid, but I have still taken all this time to do the work, and this is time I could have used on other projects and other clients. Also, I got paid half of the overall contract amount, and the client doesn’t have anything except some screenshots, but it still feels awfully wrong!

So dear client, you know who you are, and if you read these lines, I do hope you’ll think about your site and the money you lost so far. I’m willing to deliver it to you so you can at least have what’s been done. Of course for this, you’d have to honor your part of the contract.

If anyone is interested in a website for an African consulting company that looks different from your out of the box corporate clean/neat/constricted usual consulting website, then give me a shout, I’ve got one almost ready for you, and the price will be smashed for this complete amazing piece of work!

For the simple reason that I don’t want anyone to take out graphical/web assets without the work being paid, I won’t show the live demo site, but I can take more screenshots of the several sections.