Spot Color Marketing Was hired to be a outsourced programmer, they refuse to pay the final invoice, and continue to use my work. Portland Internet
If you are thinking of working for Spot Color Marketing don't! I worked with them for 6 months, successfuly completed several projects that they were satisfied with, and then the trouble started. I was hired to complete the install of a Google Product Feed plugin and setup 301 Redirects to the clients new Magento site. I completed this work and sent it to the Project Manager Lynette for verification and approval. Their other Developer at the time Jason reviewed the work and sent approval to Lynette. Lynette informed me that the work was approved, however I would have to wait for my final payment of $1200 until after they finished launching the client and could bill them. Understanding I agreed and went on about my work on other clients.
About 3 weeks later I still had not heard a word from them and reached out to Melody Rose(My original contact) at Spot Color Marketing to find out what was going on and how close we were to billing the client. At this point she informed me that Lynette & Jason no longer worked for the company and she would have the new Project Manager Sean Lucas contact me about the work. I said ok and waited for him to contact me. Upon intial contact our conversation went well, I informed him of what I had done and that I had already received final approval from the previous Project Manager and Developer. He said great and that he was going to verify it so he was sure.
Several days passed by and Sean Lucas sends me an email saying the work was not done and that the plugin was no where to be found. I promptly responded and said "Well it was done, approved by 2 people, and it had to be deleted some how since it had been done already.".
Then Sean Lucas and the CEO Nicol Weber requested a phone conference to discuss the issues around theproject. While on the phone conference Nicole was merely present allowing Sean to handle the meeting how he saw fit and with whatever tone he felt like letting slip from his mouth that he thought might set me off. When I expressed that the work had to have been deleted or lost somehow, Sean's only response was I don't care it is not done and that is all that matters. There were also statements made about previous work not being done to his specifications, and I pointed out that he was not the one who gave me the specs so he could not hold that against me. He then said "Well the work is not done to my specs and that is all that matters.".
I then offered to REDO ALL of the work that I ORIGINALLY had done and delivered. At this point Sean rattled off that he wanted me to just reinstall the plugin, get it configured, and resetup the google feed xml template. Sean Lucas and the CEO Nicole refused to listen to anything about the work being lost somehow and Sean would avoid the subject making the problem my fault. He would do so without any consideration to the fact that one of his technical resources had lost hard work. The fact is they provided no FTP and Database access for me to backup my work when I initially did the work and made me work on their clients server.
Therefor limiting my control over protecting the work being done and ensuring that it would be easily restorable should it have been lost.
After completing the reinstall, resetup, and recreation of the XML template code I was sent an email confirming the work and approving it. At this point I invoiced for the remaining $1200 and was told that the initial deposit was more than fair and basically that I needed to move on. A response was sent informing them the work was complete and Nicole responded claiming that I had said "I would not be charging any more money for the work.". When in fact what was said was "I will not charge you anything over the agreed amount to help redo the work that was lost.".
After all of this I am left with one conclusion that Spot Color Marketing did not care about the deleted/lost the work during laying off Lynette & Jason and hiring Sean Lucas, they then decided to get me to redo the work, and then not pay me to get the work for free and pocket my pay.
I put over 50 hours in between doing the work the first time and helping redo the plugin the second time. My was invoicing originally for 32 hours and had no problem eating the extra hours to redo the work. Yet apparently $400 is fair for that many hours and the loss of the work on a server that I am not in control of is apparently my fault.
The best part is when she had my 1099 Filled out she put my DBA on the top and my personal Social Security number on the TIN line which means not only was it useless for taxes, the State of Oregon informed us today that we would have to file a complaint with the IRS to get the 1099 fixed and then I could take Spot Color Marketing to court for what they owed. The 1099 was sent out during the fireing and hiring process and since I do not believe in coincidents especially after reading other workers reviews on various sites that this is common behavior.
So if you are going to work for them don't, they will use you for a few months, then find a reason to get rid of you and pocket your money rather than pay you that last invoice. This feels like the CEO's business model.
If your thinking about becoming a client I wouldn't if I were you! They are only concerned about taking your money and they go through talent like water goes through an aquaduct and your work just gets drug further and further out because of this.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
REBUTTAL
#3Author of original report
Mon, May 22, 2017
I have spoken with at least 5 of Nicoles previous workers including the developer and Project Manager that was working with me up until the end of the first quarter of 2017. All of which have reported to me that Nicole refuses to pay them just like she refuses to pay me, and no surprise it is with the same excuse. Saying that they are trying to pull a fast one to get paid. When in fact what Nicole is doing is firing people keeping their final pay and then replacing them with a cheaper staff member to redo the job. There is no other explination for this behaviour of mass firing people and then refusing to pay them.
I am not the only one that she has done this too, she has done it to her previous Project Manager Lynette, her other developer Jason, and as far as I have been able to tell from speaking with past 1099 Contracters that were there before me that has found this post that EXACTLY the same thing was done to them.
The client that Nicole is referring to about loosing she herself was not happy working for that client and the client was immature in asking me to be removed from the job when all I said was "I will have to look into that." thats all I said and she didn't like the fact that she could be incorrect with what she thought was possible in the system that we were working in for them which was Constant Contact.
Her 99% Claim is inaccurate when I was hired they had had issues with their previous developers and why they were looking for new talent. I have talked with quite a number of their previous employees and this seems to be how they run the business. Apparently she gets mean with everyone and denys them final pay when she decides she is through with them and moves on to newer talent for cheaper.
Her accountant/bookeeper was requested to fix my 1099 to which they said that it was past time for fixing the 1099 which is a lie. You have up to 7 years to file a correction, I mean all you do is refill out the 1099 again and check the corrections box. I thought all accountant/bookkeepers knew this. So not only do the keep their devs final pay when the decide to get rid of them and they missfile 1099's and refuse to correct them.
As to posting I have a right to post and report the bad business practices of a company that has hired me as a 1099 Employee. For the record as a final note she did not Contract my company, she contracted me as an individual so my company has no place in the conversation. Spot Color Marketing/Nicole hired me as an indipendant contractor, if they had hired my company then there would be 1099 b2b does not 1099 another corporation.
As to contacting her client I had every right to do so because they are using my stolen code/work and are continuing to do so as the developers of the plugin have been notifying me daily that nothing has changed on the plugin. After contacting the client and informing them of the theft, I was still able to login to their site and did only verifying and taking screenshots of my code still running on their site just like the plugin develoers said it was. I have not since logged into the site, however like I said above the plugin developers are telling me daily that my XML and reinstall that I did is still running on the site. Thus making Nicoles response false that they could not use the work. Since the plugin is still running my XML code like the plugins developers say the plugin is then there obviously is usefulness to the work and they are just choosing not to pay for the work rendered.
As to trying to pull a fast one, I have been in business for 12 years and I deliver my work as it is requested by the client. In my 12 years of business I have never had this much trouble with one person I have ever worked with. In fact you can talk to anyone else I work with or have worked for and they will tell you not only am I responsive, but I also always deliver. I have a very long list of clients that can contest to this.
There was no fast one, someone deleted my work just so they could accuse me of not doing the work and keep my pay. Their new Project Manager Sean did not even care that my work was missing and was abusive with his tone. Even after their other employee Melody told me that if I just redid the work I would get paid they refuse to pay. So I redid the work that was obviously deleted on purpose and despite what Melody Rose said I would be getting paid. I have yet to see my pay and I know that the other previous developers and project manager have not been paid either with ALL of the same false excuses for their denying us payment.
So even after taking Melody Roses instruction to redo the work and I would get paid appears to be a lie too. Nicole can claim whatever she wants to, the fact is:
1. The work was done originally
2. Someone other than me removed the work.
3. Melody Rose asked me to ignore the drama, redo the work, and that she was sure that I would get paid as long as I redid the work was false.
4. I was verbally bullied by her new Project Manager Sean to redo the work on conference call with Sean and Nicole to which Nicole never once told him to watch his tone or atitude.
5. Nicole likes to try to convince you to not take legal action by saying that you have to go through Mediation before you can take something to court in oregon, which is true for b2b disputes but I was hired as a 1099 contractor so it is not a b2b transaction so her claims of requiring Mediation is false. I have checked this with several attorneys and the Oregon State Department and her claims are false. 1099 Contractors can sue without mediation since it is not a b2b relationship.
nicole
Lake Oswego,Oregon,
USA
Contractor was paid for work completed
#3REBUTTAL Owner of company
Mon, May 15, 2017
We hired George from Betazed Software Solutions to do some contract work for one of our clients. He said the work was completed, when we went in to check it out, there was nothing there. When we got on the phone with him to discusss this, he said the work was done but someone must have deleted it.
No one on our team deleted his work...we needed the work to be done. We were now behind on the job and client was questioning our timing. At this point all we wanted George to do was to install a plug in...and the only reason we asked him to do this task is we had already paid him $400 for it. He said he would do it and not charge any additional money.
The work that he finally did was not acceptable and had to be redone by another developer. We know that George put time into installing the plug in, thus we did not ask for our money back. However, we were really surprised when he asked for another $1200 to pay for work that we did not receive.
We think George was trying to pull a fast one one us and get paid for work that he did not do. In addition he has been posting things like this report, as well as reaching out to our client saying they have stolen code on their site, which is completly not true.
George states that he had been working for us for 6 months and successfully completed projects that we were satisfied with. This is not a true statement. I worked directly with George on a couple of projects that went so poorly the client asked George to be removed from the job and we lost all of the work...I never wanted to hire George again after that, but he convinced our PM that we was capible of doing a product feed, so we gave him another chance.
We have been in business for over 16 years and have worked with hundreds of contractors over the years....99% of the time, things go great, we get the work that we asked for and happily pay the contractors for their time. Unfortunately this did not happen with George and Betazed Software Solutions...we wish him well, but won't be hiring him as a contractor again.