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I have yet to find a web designer who isn’t flaky. Over the last eight years, I have dealt with a number of so-called web designers, and every single one of them delivered their own brand of craziness which dissolved our business relationship and left me hanging. Seriously, they can’t ALL be like this, right?

There was the gal who wouldn’t load up information for months on end, but had no problem billing me when the yearly hosting renewal approached. Never mind that I asked her to complete the work which she had neglected to do, before I would sign up for another year. When she refused, I refused. Then she charged my credit card anyway, changed all my passwords to MY website, and told me I had to pay a cancellation fee on top of the yearly renewal, and that I would never get the passwords. So I fired her.

Then there was the exuberant guy who seemed so excited to revamp my website. He begged me to let him work on revamping it. He ended up dismantling my site, literally sat in front of my during a meeting at a coffeehouse and said, “Oh shit, this isn’t good”, then completely bailed on me and wouldn’t respond to voicemail messages or texts. Fired.

Then there was the guy who generously offered to set up a landing page for me. I was so happy with his work that I inquired about his services for my medical website. He gave me his rate, and I agreed to it. As a courtesy, I informed him of when I would get paid (payday was eight days away, and I was planning to send him payment in full at that time). He flipped out, said that I needed to pay him RIGHT NOW, then wrote me a four page essay on how his best friend had suddenly died, how much he hated life, and how he no longer felt that life was worth living. Fired.

The next guy did a bang up job of consolidating sites and using an eye-catching template, but then he sat on work which he promised to do, left things unfinished. I kept getting a different story as to why he was dragging his feet. it was always, “so sorry, I’ll get to it tomorrow.” Tomorrow would come, and nothing would be done. Then he pulled a bait and switch and said that if I wanted him to finish the work which he had promised to do for over a month, he said he would have to charge me extra. He actually got nasty about it. Fired.

The last web guy I dealt with promised to give me an outline of all the things he was planning to fix on one of my sites, and insisted that I wait to pay him. Days turned into weeks, and when I realized I might have to prompt him a bit, I sent him an email inquiring about the status of my website. I got a response in which he apologized and said he was overwhelmed and simply lacked the time to work on my site (so why the f&#% did he take on the assignment in the first place?). Technically he quit.

I am sick and tired of web designers. They do whatever they want with your site, and if you don’t like the way they have done it, they’ll argue with you about why their vision is so much better than what YOU want. They sit on work, and how dare you even ask them about the status of the work. Some will even hold your site hostage and prevent you from accessing what is rightfully yours.

I am back at the helm with my websites, with FULL CONTROL over them. If I want to add something, I know I can rely on myself to do it. I have experienced major learning curves to master all the different interfaces, platforms and mapping, and am damned proud of myself for figuring it out.