- Report: #1239401
Complaint Review: Donovan Lord - Internet
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Author Not Confirmed
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Donovan Lord
Internet, USA
Phone:
214-764-4309
Web:
www.tx-reab.com
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Donovan Lord 8Square FAUX WEB DESIGNER SCAM Dallas Texas
Donovan Lord...or his real name Donovan Lordavan ripped me off using the business name of 8Square. His site for this "company" that is down now was 8Square.com.
I needed a web designer for a company I was starting. I went through Thumbtack to get referrals. Dovovan reached out to me almost immediately. He seemed competent, creative and like he was a good business person during our intitial consultation.
I paid him a retainer of several thousand dollars to start my website. He insisted that we keep all communication and his design work on a web based communication channel called BaseCamp. At 1st he not only seemed competent, but also he seemed friendly...like a good guy.
He asked for more money to continue and complete my website. In total I paid him a bit over $10,000.00.
Soon thereafter he became the antithesis of everything he portrayed himself as.
He called me on a weekend evening and told me that he was out of town and asked me if I could put money in his account. He told me some lame story. He sounded like he was messed up on something. I told him that I was sorry but I couldn't.
He then started emailing me hateful emails through BaseCamp. He also stopped doing work on my website. I had asked him to make some changes on the stuff he had already designed. He told me he would make the changes. But, he never made changes.
At this point; I just tried getting the design work from him that he had done. I decided that I would take it to another web site designer and have that company make revisions and complete my web site.
None of this ever got to happen. I woke up one morning (shortly after I had declined to put money in his account) and Donovan had taken everything off of BaseCamp and dissappeared with my money!
Then, he put an image of a stack of my business cards on his home page of 8Square.com which had my logo (which I had paid a different designer to create), my name and my phone number on it. He had a logo on his home page that he was a Gold Thumbtack Member. I called Thumbtack several times and told them the aforementioned story. Nothing was ever done about it.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
8square
Dallas,Texas,
USA
Shannon Laporte
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Fri, July 03, 2015
In 2012 Shannon Laport, (((redacted))) dilatante who hired 8Square (after we had been in business since 2000 by the way) to design her website and a few other things.
Specifically, Shannon hired us to do the following (taken directly from the agreement we had with her):
- Website Design retainer - Upon Execution of This Addendum - $2015
- Upon Approval of Web Concept (Front Page & of 1 Secondary Page Design) $3000
- Upon Completion of Logo Design, Business Cards/Letterhead/Envelope Design, Thank you Notes Design, Set up
- Constant Contact/Mail Chimp and Flash Deign of Doors $2015
- Upon completion of Website Design including Website Copywriting, ecommerce functionality, text editing capability,
- back end management system for clients/contractors, slideshow. $3000
- Upon Completion of Marketing Plan, Handouts Design, Slideshow/Presentation $2015
We completed items 1 - 6. We did not charge her for item 7 because we did not complete the marketing plan although we did complete the slidewhow and handouts. items 1 - 7 add up to $10,030.
Shannon Laporte is simply upset because we dropped her as a client. She was impossible to please, had no idea what she wanted, and wouldnt take any of our advice on what to do, and was completely flightly and changed her mind every day. She would call and have lengthy conversations about her personal life in the middle of the day like her custody battle with her ex husband over her kid whom she said was kidnapped once when she missed a meeting with us. Another time she called crying about how her husband was still after her kid. I mean talk about unprofessional!
We constantly asked for clarification and constantly asked for direction and she kept changing it. Ultimately we just did exactly what she asked for us to do even though we didn't like it and we did exactly that - and gave her exactly what she asked for (I have all of our correspondence from Basecamp and email which proves everything I am saying).
When we dropped her as a client, AFTER completing EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE MARKETING PLAN FOR WHICH WE DIDN'T CHARGE HER FOR, we put ALL OF HER BRANDING in a branding manual which included all of her logos, colors, fonts, letterhead design, business card design, enveloopes, note cards, and her website which we completed as well and emailed them to her ( a link to a dropbox download).
She paid us for a service, and we delivered exactly in keeping with the agreement and she did not pay for anything that we did not do.
After we sent her and her newly hired assistant/web administrator (she worked out of her house) Carlos all of the aforementioned items, she sent me an email and APOLOGIZED stating that she thought 8suare wasn't doing anything and that's why she was angry. HOW SHE THOUGHT WE WEREN'T DONG ANYTHING WHEN WE MET WITH HER ALMOST EVERY WEEK AND TALKED ON THE PHONE EVERY DAY AND SENT HER EMAILS WITH PROGRESS FOR HER APPROVAL I DO NOT KNOW. Like I said, the woman is NOT ALL THERE! She kept changing things after they were approved and then wondered why everything seemed unfinished?? She also kept telling me to finish her stationary FIRST before we had a LOGO approved - which of course is impossible but this nutbag couldn't grasp that concept.
We never asked her for additional money above and beyond the agreed upon amounts. Also, we never put on our website anything that wasn't done by US for her - anything that was done by 8square for Dallas Designer Moving (the name of her business) was put on our site (which we still have a copy of). And we completed her website to her EXACT specifications, because everything we suggested she said she wanted soemthing else, or maybe this, or maybe that...if she wanted to take what we did and get someone else to change it that was her choice, not ours nor did it have anything to do with us nor did it change what she owed us.
The bottom line is she paid us 10,000 over the course of progress of the project and only after each phase was approved - and we provided her 10,000 worth of work. If she isn't happy with her decision to hire us, she's entitled to her opinion, but she should be honest about what happened and not be bitter because she's impossible to please and impossible to work with. And of course she never had someone else redo the site we did because I am sure no one will work with her!
As for being "nice" and a "good guy". I am nice, and people think because I'm nice they can walk all over me, or take advantage of my good nature and try to get something for nothing which is her issue. Once she became impossible, I stayed professional and friendly as long as I could - but when we had enough, we dropped her as a client and sent her the final bill and sent her the final versions of EVERYTHING she paid for.
She really is delusional.
As for THumbtack, we were Gold members of Thumbtack and had a long history of good client experiences and reviews on there - simply because ONE client was nuts and unhappy isn't sufficient reason to have smeared the business.
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