Complaint Review: jwpublicrelations

I am a freelance graphic designer/illustrator. I have been working in this capacity as a designer/illsutrator for over 36 years so I am not new at this. I began working freelance in 2007 and met Jennifer Maxwell of jwpublicrelations through work that I was hired to do for her on an online freelance site. She seemed to be knowledgeable and our working relationship was good.

After the first job, we continued to work through our email addresses instead of the site. There were a couple of jobs she needed design work done and she contacted me. Note, I said that she contacted me to work with her. The last job that she had contacted me about working with her on was for a client who was a doctor and wanted to help educate other physicians regarding the need to educate themselves to avoid lawsuits. We agreed upon a fee for the pieces before I did any design work. In the end there were four pieces that were designed and used by the client. Each was formatted and designed to suit the doctor's website and after making revisions and sending them to Jennifer I never heard back from her.

After about a week or so, I then sent her a bill for the work with the amount that we had agreed upon. That was in March of 2013. A month later, I had not heard from her so I sent another bill. Then another. Then another for each month following the initial bill. I even sent a bill via USPS with the bill being returned because she no longer had the PO Box listed on her information. I then attempted to contact her via her email address, company email address as well as her cell phone and office phone leaving a message regarding the non-payment and explaining to her that obviously there was some sort of problem that I was not made aware of. I encouraged her to contact me via email or my office phone at her convenience and we could work something out regarding the fee for the work done. She has not responded to any of the messages that I have sent to her.

I felt that we were professionals. But, I have exhausted all of my lines of communication with Jennifer. To some folks the money that was owed to me would not be considered a huge amount, but my wife and I were caregivers to my father before he passed away in November of 2013 as well as my mother who had undergone surgeries and was not able to care for herself. That required me to give up a lot of my work time and so any job was important to help with paying the bills at home. I am just furious that she never once made an effort to contact me and to at least be honest with me regarding the bill and money owed.

Obviously she is not what she professes to be. She lacks professionalism as well as respect for those who spend their time to produce the design work that she needs to keep clients. I would warn any designer to stay away from this woman unless you are willing to work for free and you know that before you invest hours and hours of your time which could be spent on work that will be rewarded with payment.

I really didn't want to do this but I have no other choice. I have already indicated to Jennifer that this is my recourse for her lack of communication and perhaps she will learn something from this.