Complaint Review: Origin3 - Salt Lake City Utah

My name is Bob and I am a programmer by profession and have had a very successful career. I like many folks getting up in age, have gotten tired of the corporate grind and politics. Well one thing led to another and my wife and I decided to start a new business about 6 months ago. We have invested a considerable amount of money in time and startup costs. We did everything right. Business plan was well thought out so we were also able to borrow a little more from our neighborhood bank. Although I am a programmer, web development was not something and I never cared to look at the technology. We needed a web site of course. We searched around and found Origin3. They looked good and the sales guy (Mike Adams) was incredible. Give the tire a kick he said. You will be very very happy. Ok, I threw a few requirements at him and he didnt flinch so I was fairly confident that we had picked a good one. How many times have you been wrong in your life? Well, for me it's the past plus 1. Ok so what happened. I will do my best to be fair with this because there were some good people in the mix here and they mean well for the most part but through my infinite wisdom I came to the conclusion that I was either dealing with novices,idiots or both, or they are very talented but they have 500 projects in the mix and only 2 programmers. You laugh. Well, I mentioned I was a programmer. An intrigal part of my job was to write requirements specifications. For those who do not know what this is, I will explain. It is a detail document describing a design. In this case it was a detail design of what I needed for our new web site. Colors, text, what happens when this is clicked etc. It is detailed enough for any good programmer to be able to put the pedal to the metal. Its a blueprint. Man, I thought this was going to be a cake walk. Man O' Man was I wrong. OK here we go. Wow, was I happy when I got the first email with a link to my mockup site. Mind you, this was just colors text etc for the proposed home page. I click the link and got sick to my stomach. The colors were wrong (they were given exact colors using RGB values). How can you get the colors wrong when you have the exact color stated in the document along with a link to a site that is using the same colors you want. Are these guys left overs from the 60's? Ok, now the fun begins. Communication is key here. I type the email and have learned to be careful with what you say as email can get interpreted in different ways. Whatever. Anyway it wasnt a flame but I asked them if they got me mixed up with someone else. This is how bad it was. After this folks, it was down hill or really it was straight down. 3,5,6 days, a week or more sometimes before a response comes around. Then it was emails back and forth. A lot of stalling was happening too. Hmm, I thought, why are they asking me this, I gave them the answer to that 5 days ago. Ok Im fed up and ready to fly out there. So to get to this point it took 1 month. Yes, 1 month to get it completely wrong. Now thats progress. Read their web site advertisements on how long the average web site takes. You know where I am now? I at 6 months. The home page is done but I have had 3 anxiety attacks, constipation at least 5 times, my wife and I both have a nervous laugh and our eating habits have gone in the toilet. You know, I always try to make fun of stuff and I know this may sound funny right now but honestly, I have had it with this company. I cannot for the life of me understand how they are still in business. I am not a young guy and have had some time to accumulate a little wealth. I am not rich, but aside from wanting to spend money on my new but not yet going business (thanks to origin3) I want to spend my money more on getting back at these xxxholes.

I am ready to request they give me all the code my money purchased, and take it to a respectful company. This will be the next test. I will formally ask for the code, which I bought, and if they give me any crap at all, I promise I will do whatever I need to do to get these guys/gals into court. I really am getting to old for all this excitement but it does feel right. My advise to anyone is do not, I repeat, do not contract with them. After six weeks they have all your money. You think they were slow before they got all your money? After six weeks you might as well talk to wooden parrot. I pleaded and pleaded for them to get this done as my investment was catching up to us. We could not go to planned shows which 3 we have already had to cancel. I told them of our investment and bills and we have no web site. I have the marketing money I need but no web site. This last phase I am going through now is the back end stuff or the store database. It has been 2 weeks with no progress, no communication, no nothing. Some would say, you have come this far, why give it up now? Well guess what? I also gave them money to host the site. Do you think that when I ask them for the code so I can take what I have to another developer, they will give me back the cost of hosting, even though it wont be hosted at origin3? Time will tell. I will be willing to join with the others here who have posted the same complaints about this company, and sue the hell out of them. You know it just comes down to principal sometimes. Hello everyone at origin3. Hi Mike Adams, Hi Dustin Dixon and Hello to Russ (one of the owners) who, by the way, never had the compassion to reply to me after I wrote a nice email to him. I hope you guys get enough bad publicity that you find yourselves pupping gas as the local 7-Eleven!

I will not go away and thats a promise.

Bob

Bremerton, Washington

U.S.A.