Complaint Review: Marathon Computing - Nationwide

Let me begin by saying that I personally have used this individual's services for 7+ years. He always followed through with any work agreed upon and was paid promptly for that work. I made a recommendation for him to work on a project to an associate of mine. He was given all of the details, given several days to evaluate the project and came back with a quote for the completed job ($3,500) which was agreed to by all parties. He never asked for a contract to be signed or a down payment made and neither did I merely for the fact that he had done so much work for me in the past without issue. This was mid-March. He was to get started on the project at his earliest availability with a deadline set for May 1. May-June is the busiest part of the season for my associate where they make the money that gets them through the rest of the year. After not hearing anything, I decided to email and check on the status of the project on April 13th, almost a month after he accepted the offer. His response was:

"I have worked through the site and planned things out, but I haven't really completed anything.  I think the end of the month is still doable, but will require some late nights from me."

I then received another email on April 17th:

"I apologize, but my schedule has not improved at all.  I was thinking I would be freed up for focused time on this by now, but I am not.

There is no way I can do this by the end of the month.  If they are interested in doing this with a target of mid June, that would be great."

I discussed this with my associate and while not ideal I convinced them to stay with Marathon Computing as according to Mike Justice, the owner/programmer, he had already planned everything out and in my opinion was still the best person for the job.

The next email I received from Mike Justice was on May 5th:

"Finally, got back to work on this.  Please let me know if there are any new thoughts on this project."

I told him that nothing had changed. Then next email I received was on Wednesday, May 17th:

"Should have something to check out later this week.  Expect to be fully done before end of the month."

This was great news and I informed my associate. Four days later I get the following email:

"Well, this week didn't go at all as planned.

Other work on key projects came up again.  I just can't focus on your project.

There are also a couple things I really dislike about it - mostly the use of Wordpress.

I know you have been wanting me to get going on this for quite a while, but I just can't do it right now.  I think you need to find someone else.

Sorry, but I think that would be best for everyone.  Someone with solid php, wordpress, and xml knowledge should do just fine...although the complexity of the results structure should not be underestimated."

So, we went from being finished 4 days earlier to now dropping out of the project completely in order to focus on more important clients with an excuse that could have been made 2 months earlier so someone else could have been found.

So, now the project has no chance to be completed by another programmer within the targeted timeframe and more than 2 months were wasted believing that work was being done on this project.

I'm writing this here in order to warn people that are looking to hire Michael Justice either through his website at marathoncomputing.com or his Guru.com profile (http://www.guru.com/freelancers/marathon-computing/reviews) that apparently if a better paying job with higher profile clients comes up after he has committed to work on your job, then you will likely be left out in the cold. I personally will never do business with him again and cannot in good conscience recommend him to anyone in the future.