#duke studios

This sad story relates to website development via freelancer.

I had one website developed with John / Duke Studios, which turned out a bit late and a bit burdensome but in the end I was very pleased with it and very pleased with the relative cost compared to others in my home country. Clearly you expect that the communication will not be so good when you are hiring someone in a foreign country and cannot just go through the design at a conference table. 

My error was then to re-hire John/Duke Studios for a second web development based on my first time experience. The bells should have rung when he asked for a much higher price than the first time, and a 50% deposit, which had not been done the first time. We eventually negotiated a reasonable price, albeit higher than before, and a timeline of a 3 or 4 days, and I paid the deposit, after which I barely heard from him, although I did get to chat to some other guy on freelancer who posed as him. Honestly the work done was terrible - it seems he just kept sending me someone else’s site with the name changed, nothing suitable at all for what I was looking for or had agreed in the brief.  The days rolled by and my delivery to my partners drifted, and John did nothing. I tried to contact by mail and nothing, I went on freelancer and he ignored me. Eventually I got hold of him, he said he was in a motorbijke crash,  when I said I wanted to re-advertise on freelancer to start again and he said he would do a proper job this time, complete within a couple of days or refund the cash. a week later, nothing and he refused to answer mails / skypes/ contact on freelancer. 

I readvertised on freelancer and the second one to bid, believe it or not, was Duke Studios / John Israel. I sent him a note laughing at him but no reply.

Clearly what is happening on these sites is that people do some work and ask for high ratings, but as soon as they have some high reviews they hire some people for peanuts and don;t care about the jobs, just suck the money in. Freelancer did not help with the deposit paid (they suggest don;t pay until the end and I agree now), and of course Duke refused to answer any questions. As Duke Studios insisted that I add the task on to the prior one (I did wonder why he did that and not start a new one), I cannot even rate the job as uncompleted and rubbish. So tow recommendations 

a) NEVER pay a deposit

We've just been across to our friends at Duke Studios to cut some more 'If Not Now, When?' clocks on their #motherfrickenlaser... always fun!