When outsourcing I learned to stick to my rules

[valerieSONORA]

Have you ever paid someone to do something and they did a crappy job that you had to pay someone else just to fix it?

On DP I hired someone 2 design and install 2 banners. They wanted payment up front. I stuck by my guns and said sorry, but I always pay upon completion. But if you look at my itrader I have a 100% reputation for paying immediately upon completion.

So he designed 1 of 2 then asked for full payment.

So I said ok and payed him for both designs.

The first was mediocre, but I'm not picky, I'm pretty easy to please.

The second one I didn't like at all. I asked him to change it, but he said he couldn't and then he went adios.

Lesson learned: From now on I will only pay after 100% completion of work. I have never not paid for a service. If I hadn't have paid him until completion I'm sure he could have changed that second banner to make it look a little better.

Only exception to this rule is if I already know the person and they have a reputation for doing good work. (Like JayXtreme does awesome work)
But if I'm not familiar with you, nothing in advance.

[JayXtreme]

Awwww... thanks for the kind word there...

On a side note...

I did a l'il summin for AG and let her decide the price, and said she didn't have to pay anything if she didn't want to... to my pleasant surprise as I was going through my payments received a few days later.. I had a VERY nice payment from the lady above..

Never did thank her..

AnnoyedGirl YOU rock!!

Peace

Jay

[valerieSONORA]

Jay I really dint know what that was worth cause I'm a tech dummy I am sure it wasn't nearly enough. I took a stab in the dark but I was thinking you were owed probably at least 2x as much.

[ShayRockhold]

Unfortunately, AG, the opposite is also true.

Doing work and then not getting paid is a bummer.

I know you pay for your stuff, but some people don't.

[valerieSONORA]

That's also true Shay. I guess both sides have to be careful.

[Jonathan Heusman]

I have found this to be a good rule of thumb in life just in general. When people get their money, it's as if their desire to please the customer goes down to 0. They have their money so they have no motivation left to do a good job.

You live and you learn.

[Leanne King]

The worst outsourcing experience was a project that went along for 6 months - it was finally ready for view on the designer's web host. I paid half. The designer, seriously, was hospitalised after and still is in care. It took 2 months for me to track him down and another month after that to get the domain registrar to send what was there of the files and then get someone else to fix Lesson learned - if you are paying at milestone get a copy of the files

Leanne

[jonhel]

I aim for a partial payment upfront so that I know if the client "does the dirty" then I'm not left high and dry working for nothing.

That to me seems a good win-win.

It's a tricky subject though when dealing with someone you don't know.

Jonathan

[Michael Silvester]

Hi Annoyed Girl,

Great lesson to be learned there!

Thats the whole reason that I use rentacoder.com
I get to put my money into "Escrow", that way both
parties know the money is good.

And I dont release it until I'm happy with the job.

Works like a charm.

Take Care,

Michael Silvester

[valerieSONORA]

Yeah, escrow is good Michael Silvester. I usually go to DP cause you find ppl who can start on projects fast for reasonable prices without having to wait and go through the whole bidding process and picking someone and all that.

[VENT]
What ticks me off is I originally paid someone a very reasonable rate for 2 projects, the 2nd one totally sucked, I hated it and he said that was it, so I just dropped it.

Now I have to pay someone ELSE on top of that to fix up the crappy job guy #1 did.

Just wasted money, wasted time. And me being annoyed
[/vent]