We are now several weeks past my last post where I said that I would report back on my experience. Although very pleasant, it has nevertheless become necessary for me to end my business dealings with this designer and look for design services elsewhere.
I have waited for weeks with no response other than an email about personal problems being encountered that was preventing my work from being completed. The last email assured me that one of my sites would be complete 5 days ago, and I have not heard any further response, nor is the site completed.
Had I wired money (a deposit) via Western Union, Paypal or Epassporte to India, I would be out the money, plain and simple. In this case I wanted to test the designers ability by getting one very small project completed first, at which point I would pay and proceed to contract out larger projects.
I do still need to find a balance between contracting out to cheap foreign labour and the often grossly inflated prices charged by many North American based designers. I am not prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for what amounts to only a couple of hours work -- as I have done on one occasion in the past when the designer simply took one of my existing sites and made some cosmetic changes to it, and billed me $200 for an hour or two of work that I could have done myself if my idea of re-designing my site consisted only of changing some colours and a bit of the layout.
Again, this guy from Aden Design is very nice, but nice doesn't cut it when work needs to get done.
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Originally Posted by drriley
I've contracted out two projects to him to start with -- and we'll see how it goes before I decide whether to use him to redevelop my entire portfolio of sites. Unfortunately, I have not been able to reach him/no response for the past couple of days, so I may have gotten to him too late ... and perhaps he is now overwhelmed with work, which would not be good news for me.
I'm still hopeful that things will go well. From my earlier conversations with him online he is very pleasant and polite. Then again, I find most Indian's whom I have met online or in person to be very friendly. Of course, a friendly demeanour alone does not a functional web site make. I'll report back on my experience.
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