WARNING: AVOID Beaver Bob [DRAMA]
 

Back in beginning of October (2007) I was messaged by Beaver Bob on ICQ saying he would program my site for $1,000. It was a little out of my budget but it was ok because he assured me he was a reliable coder and would get it done ontime.

He told me it would take him no longer than a month, so i gave him a month a a few days deadline (November 14th). I paid him half upfront which was the agreement ($500)

Well the date came around and he was no where near done. I asked him what is taking so long and he said it was a lot of work. I understood i thought it might have been so i didnt complain much. Another month passes by and he persisted to give me unmet deadlines. "It will be done friday, no it will be done sunday"

So i of course told the sponsors i had lined up the dates he gave me the dates. And every time they werent met. I looked like an idiot to them and of course after months of this going on i lost nearly all my sponsors, which was a few thousand dollars over time. Not to mention i paid a few article writers money to write articles that are no not usable because they are outdated.

And what does "Beaver Bob" do? he gets mad at me for me being mad that his job is months late. He has "other projects he is working on." And then he even got mad when i told him mine should be priority because it is months late, but no apparently the right thing to do is take on more jobs after making commitments.. After all the money he lost me he has the balls to be mad at me for texting him which would cost him $0.50 a text tops.

But then of course he started making claims that what i asked him to do "Wasnt part of the original agreement" and he said "Im not going to get all this done i dont have time, i will make it so it is able to launch then you can pay extra for the rest"

Apparently today was the final straw, 5 months of working on the 1 month project he finally decides he doesnt want to finish it. Nearly half a on a project he told me would take one month.

I probably could have articulated my words a lot better but im pissed off. Most of you probably wont read all this so ill sum it up for you nice and simple.

Avoid doing business with Beaver Bob... unless you want to wait nearly half a year for him to tell you he doesnt want to finish the project.

And Beaver Bob if you are reading this.. :321GFY

Sorry, forgot to mention that i texted him because he stopped responding to my emails and the only way he would answer was either a) i sent him an email asking "Where the fuck are you" (which apparently is offensive?) or b) i texted him.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Damn that's all bad.

I hope you get the situation resolved .. and if not at least other people know.

that's shitty business. Did you end up getting at least something done, something that you can use? Did he end up keeping your $500 you paid up front?

I think it boils down to one thing, never pay for anything in advance, unless you have previously worked with a guy and know 100% he's an honest and reliable guy. Have him program shit and install on his server. Only if you see final product and are satisfied with the way it work, only then could be the right time to pay any money.

He did do some of the work i wont deny that, i dont know the quality of the work i have to have someone over but its not nearly finsihed. So im not going to file a dispute to get my money back.

I just hope everyone learns from my mistake and avoids him. As i was saying to him this is horrible business and very unethical

Funny you should mention that, the first conversation we had consisted of me saying im uneasy about paying upfront since ive been screwed over by so many programmers in the past.. But i just want everyone to learn from my mistake..

PS: IF any of you know a RELIABLE programmer let me know! :thumbsup

Crap, hope you get things sorted somehow

sucks man. Good luck on the dispute.

Beaver Bob .... :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

who is next ?


Dick Vanessa .....

Damn thats a real mess right there.


What are you going to do now? Write it off as a loss?

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Professional, ethical programmers are hard to find.

I am still looking for someone to help with mainstream sites I run. I hope you get this resolved.

That really sucks ..... talk about frustrating.

That sucks, man.

Youre telling me? Youd be surprised how much money i lose :mad:

find out his address, we'll pay him a little visit.

i'm only making one post in this thread, apparently two other guys "screwed" this guy over on this same site before I took it on.. do you really think three different guys walked out the same project for the same guy for no reason at all? i've done plenty of business with many people in this industry, and theres many who will vouch for me. I don't need to explain myself or go into anymore detail. Banthis talks about me being unprofessional, but I will not do anything for someone who talks to me the way he does - unprofessional. I spent WAY WAY WAY more than $500 of my time working on his site, and i cut him one hell of a break after days of him arguing with me and trying to convince me that I could do his site for less money.

good luck to the person who takes this on. I have nothing more to say about this.

:disgusti just wanted to add in somethin on Banthis's behalf. I am talking to him right now via ICQ, and i normally speak with him daily. AND i wanted to vouch for him. Now, I am sure he was professional at first, but when you agree to a ONE MONTH project and it turns into a FIVE MONTH project, THAT is unprofessional and you cannot expect the site owner to be professional at that point. If you agree to something than you better keep up your end of the bargain. I know if I agreed to do something in one month, and it still wasnt done after 5 months, i wouldnt expect someone to be professional with me. its just common sense. I would never ever do business like that. If i have a deadline, i meet it- end of story. :disgust

Hi there Staci (and the rest of the gfy readers),

I have no idea who you are but let me say a few things here from my perspective on the matter.

I know that Bob took on a project for Banthis for a pretty good price, a college humor type site that needed some programming done, there was a list of things to be done and they both agreed to the deal.

After a some of the work was done Banthis started throwing in things in the mix that also needed to be done, it's not uncommon for people to do this with programmers, designers etc. At some point Bob said, "no I am not going to keep doing more and more without charging you extra for it" Of course Banthis (who claims to have all kinds of money and cars and what not) couldn't or didn't want to pony up some extra cash. He also kept throwing into Bob's face how he had to save up for the $1000 for a long long time to begin with.
But all that really doesn't matter but it does show a little bit of where this is going. Banthis wants a Collegehumor type site completely custom built for him for $1000 bucks, we all know that is not going to happen.

Then on top of it all Banthis wanted a function that gave him the ability to rip videos out of sites, Bon refused (Bob owns some paysites as well and told him that morally he didn't think that he should do that. (this was besides the list) although he called it url ripping/grabbing or whatever.
(makes me wonder why he needs to rip peoples videos in the first place but ok)

All this shit built up to Banthis becoming the rudest mofo expecting he can walk out with a Cadillac from the Toyota car dealer ship.

I think if he was upfront about ALL the work he wanted or he was reasonable when he added more work to say "I will pay the extra" then Bob would have continued and he would have had his site up.

Bob has literally done 10's of thousands of work for us. Then again I don't text message or bug him on Sunday mornings whining and crying like a little girl.

Just my 2 cents as someone who has seen this happening from the sidelines.

I had pretty much the exact same experience with him, only i got paid zero. Good luck :thumbsup

Seems like this thread backfired :1orglaugh

http://www.scoobytuner.com/graphics/backfire.jpg

Problem is that people don't want to pay the right price for good programmers.

If a guy can earn 50-75k a year working for a compagny, he should make at least 150k working for himself...

Amateur programmers are under bidding the real ones, making it pointless for the good guys to do freelance.

You end up with a bunch of kids.

If you take on a job and agree to be paid X ammount of money, it's your responsability to get it done, even if you are losing money.

You're the one that underbid.

I've lost money in deals many times, but I've always held up my end of the bargain.

Are you Bob's publicist? Bob could have said all that, funny how you had to step in and explain the situation when he couldn't.

I sure am. :thumbsup


Didn't read the whole thing did ya?.. it's ok, I understand it's Monday morning

You dont even have an excuse for your actions, for fucking me over for 5 months making me lose thousands. Youre disgusting i want to keep this thread a live to make sure no one has to go through what i did.

And for the record the other 2 people who walked away were for different sites and they both scammed a good portion of GFY (HadePass / Calmdev)

I would LOVE to see what you are saying backed up, I have been patient as hell and NO i did not add on extra features they were all laid out but of course Bob claims he"only saw list one"

I gave him a LIST of things that needed to be done, if he didnt want to do it he shouldnt have agreed to the project. And if he wasnt going to finish, he should have atleast told me instead of keeping me waiting 5 months, there is NO EXCUSE for that.

Furthermore i was more than patient and polite with him. I dont know a single person who would have been as polite as i was to him. But after MONTHS of waiting it got to me and i wanted it done. Do you realize how much of an idiot i look like when i told my sponsors about the date it the site would go up literally about 25 different times. Obviously you are partial to "Beaver Bob" and you cant look at it from my point of view so theres nothing further to be said to you.

As for you saying i texted him on sunday morning like a little whiny girl? You mean i texted him months after the deadline giving him a final deadline, sending him a text message that costed him a few cents while he costed me thousands? I think he can pay the few cents

Sure did read the whole thing and nowhere did you explain why Bob couldn't have said all that and you had to, but then again, you're just a lowly publicist.

Missed this lovely paragraph..

Are you kidding me? There were wasnt extra, but Bob coincidently forgot about the 2nd list of things i gave him. He said (4 months into the project) that if i wanted that stuff to be done i would have to pay extra. I knew it was bullshit and he was trying to get more money out of me but i agreed. So dont say he would have obviously you have NO idea what you are talking about.

Face it, your buddy "Beaver Bob" was wrong, nothing justifies what he did.

I dont understand why people dont do formal written agreements.It cuts out all the bullshit. Its simple you do this list it all and for that I will pay you whatever that number is. You both sign scan it and email to each other and then its very clear and cuts out the he said he said.

This has nothing to do with being partial to anyone, I am explaining to you that Bob has done tens of thousands dollars worth of work for me, and I have never had an issue. Sure sometimes things change as the project goes on. Nothing will ever go smooth in life but I guess a young 19 year old kid like yourself will find out one way or another.

If someone would do me wrong or cost me money I would also call them out, but you are only telling half the story and you act as if he cost you thousands of dollars. You are at fault by telling your "sponsors" dates but yet throwing in more work. Like I said earlier you are a lowballing whiner who is trying to get a Cadillac for the price of a VW bug.

As far as the timeline goes you let it go as far as he did, I believe there are 2 at fault and I guess your maturity didn't allow you to come up with a solution between the 2 of you, which in this case would simply be adjusting the price when you throw in more work. But you can cry all you want, I don't care it's not my deal. I have had great experience with Bob and will fully vouch for him if needed and I am sure I am not the only one. Now go on with your day and focus on your site instead of living your life on GFY all day. :thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

I dont know what he told you but like i mentioned many times, i gave him a full list of things that he "coincidently doesnt remember"

Enough about me expecting a cadilliac, you mentioned that brand too many times. I expected what i asked him and what he agreed to simple as that. He told me he would give me a functional site with the list i asked for.

Look the bottom line is if it was too much work for the money i was paying HE SHOULDNT HAVE AGREED ON IT.. or he could have told me and not kept me waiting.

It's pretty simple, you get what you pay for. :2 cents:

If you pay a low fee for programming work, expect missed deadlines, issues, etc...

In the end, the few bucks you saved probably cost you more in lost time and frustration.

Not saying that is the case here as it's a he-said / she-said type situation, and for all I know Bob agreed to only 5 hours work at $100/hour. But I'm just guessing that wasn't the case :upsidedow

Exactly, it doesn't have to be any long formal agreement a simple email or one-page thing agreed to by both parties is usually sufficient.

Somehow lots of people seem to skip that step and just have vague ICQ discussions, etc...

my last comment on this, yes i did agree to give you a FUNCTIONAL site for the price that you spent days trying to lowball and barter. Functional, meaning not all the bells and whistles you might have wanted for your site initially. you are seriously one of the nitpickiest people I've ever done any work for, as well as the cheapest.

for example, when you see something on the list of requirements as vague as "commenting", that could be very simple or very complicated, and more often then not you wanted it complicated. You were paying for the simplest, most straightforward functionality, and you knew this when I gave you the massive discount that I gave you. Nothing was good enough and I spent entirely too much time and wasted too much money working on your website.

I admit I was wrong for taking on the project for such a low price and I had a bad feeling from the gettyup. I believe I expressed that to you a long time ago. I learned my lessson not to ever negotiate my rates with someone in the future. Yes, that was my fuckup.

As for lazycash, I don't need to explain myself to you or anyone else on this board. I do not care. and for the record, I have not taken on additional projects since taking on banthis's site - not that its any of his business or concern. And I'm not looking for any new clients I have plenty to do with my own projects, and a small select group of clients who pay me what I feel my time is worth, don't hound me day in and day out, and don't talk to me in a rude, condescending, and unprofessional manner.

This seems to always happen in this biz..

A. there needs to be a CLEAR set of features/functionality agreed to at the start.

B. When a programmer gives you a date, multiple it by 1.5 to 2.0.. trust me.. If you know the programmer you can adjust those numbers accordingly, but no one can schedule an unknown accurately and most people are optimistic.

C. Break the payment up into delivered feature sets. Say 4+ deliverables or weekly/biweekly... If the programmer knows that a bit more work will get him more money, he'll do it.. but if things are stretching on for months, it eventually becomes not worth it. Ensure that the existing source code must be delivered for each payment.

D. The programmer needs to make a strong stand on "new" or changed features. i.e. you make it clear that anything new etc. will need to be additional money and will happen AFTER the core deliverables have been completed...

E. EVERYTHING in writing!... i.e you talk about thing on ICQ, then you follow up with an email confirming everything.

F. It's a good idea as well that the programmer keeps a log of what he's been doing and any issues that come up.. As well as a bug database etc. that the client can enter stuff into.

I used to manage both internal and external programming teams/companies.. These are just a few of the things I did and had the programmers set up.

If you don't need to explain yourself, then why are you doing so? Wasn't there at least some point before five months that you could have told banthis that you would not be able to finish the project in the time frame you gave him?

Exactly... Which is one of the reasons I rarely take on a contract job.. When you start out at $50+ an hour, 99% of the WMs out there run the other way and then come back whining about how they lost 1000s of dollars because some cheap programmer fucked them over...

As stated earlier you have to get everything in writing, exactly what the project will entail. This protects both sides. If you don't get a complete estimate and scope of work then either side should expect it to go wrong, and more than likely will go wrong.

If customer goes out of the scope of work a project change must be written and approved, with any cost changes (if any).

Go through all the motions or you will get screwed.

Well said

$1000? that's it? *warning sign*