Welcome SOHOjobs.org Members

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
SOHOjobs.org Home Page -> SOHOjobs Subscribers Only Forum -> SOHOjobs Web Designer Testimonial -> Why you must be VERY careful when you choose a Web Designer for your Business
Post Info TOPIC: Why you must be VERY careful when you choose a Web Designer for your Business
SOHOjobs Moderator


TEAM SOHO

Status: Offline
Posts: 1410
Date:
Why you must be VERY careful when you choose a Web Designer for your Business
Permalink  

This is a testimony to the fantastic work of one web design firm and the incompetence and unethical behavior of another.

This is simply our true story and our humble opinion.


SOHOjobs.com / SOHOjobs.org / SOHOjobs.net has been online since 1998 and has undergone many changes as we have grown. In 2008 we realized it was time to make a substantial upgrade to the site. We decided on DesignB Studios a small firm out of Loudoun County Virginia (http://wasdmz2.courts.state.va.us/CJISWeb/) owned and operated by Brian Reynolds. This was our mistake.

This atrocious ordeal with DesignBStudios was filled with lack of skill, incompetence, mismanagement and complete insolence on the part of the design firm. This nightmare with Design B Studios dragged out well over a year. The result was a broken, unfinished site that was never delivered despite a price tag well over $30.000 (paid in full by us, by the way). When we demanded the unfinished site after paying the final payment as per the contract, DesignB Studios attempted to extort additional funds from us, refusing to turn over the site unless we paid. 

Moreover, DesignB Studios obtained a misspelled version of the SOHOjobs URL and attempted to benefit from our brand by putting up a misleading website filled with advertisers. This form of typosquatting is highly unethical, especially when the squatter is a paid contractor for the domain! DesignB Studios not only registered the domain name in bad faith, but then put advertising and affiliate links attempting to profit from our traffic while also driving click-thrus to our competition. (They did NOT include any links to the actual SOHOjobs website).

We've read other posts which can be found online by searching for "DesignB Studios" that would lead us to believe that we may not be the only company that has encountered these problems with DesignBStudios.  At this time, we cannot attest to the factual nature of these posts as we are still attempting to locate and talk to these individuals. As a result, we can only tell you what we have discovered online from our own research. We encourage you to do your own research as well. Had we only discovered these posts online before we contracted with Design B Studios we surely would not have found ourselves in this situation.

In the end, and for more than $30,000, all we ever received from DesignB Studios was long, irrational and babbling letters from Mr Reynolds about the various reasons why he was unable or unwilling to deliver the completed project, or why he thought he was entitled to even MORE money!  This is now simply a matter for the courts to work out (and from the looks of the Loudoun County courts website, Mr Reynolds is no stranger to them!)


---------------------------------------------
What is typo-squatting

Typo-squatting refers to the practice of registering domain names that are typos of their target domains, which usually host websites with significant traffic.

From the business perspective, many of the typo-squatting cases involve bad-faith domain registrations or trademark violations. Worse yet, it is not uncommon to see a typo domain displaying ads from competitors of the target-domain owner or even negative ads against the owner.

Source: Strider Typo-Patrol: Discovery and Analysis of Systematic Typo-squatting, Yi-Min Wang, Doug Beck, Jeffrey Wang, Chad Verbowski, and Brad Daniels, Microsoft Research, 2006

----------------------------------------------



Every cloud has a silver lining.

In this case the silver lining came in the form of Design209.com
Design209.com came highly recommended not only for their design abilities but for their ethics and customer service. 

Design209.com has shined, designing a clean, functional site quickly and without complications. Design209.com was able to listen to Team Soho and develop the user friendly web experience that SOHO'ers expect. They were up front and honest about SOHOjobs functionality and the time required to finish the project (which, as a result of the breach by the other design firm, was just a matter of DAYS).

Throughout the process we were continually impressed by Design209.com's
attention to detail and their ability to think of how the site would function for the user. They offered advice on how to make the site more dynamic for our members and even added programming work to help us better manage our users on the backend. Design209.com did this on short notice, working with us day and night until the site was complete. They quickly turned over all work and helped us set up the site on our server and transition our members. 

Design209.com has an impressive skill set including SEO/SEM Proficient In: Adobe, Wordpress, Silverstripe HTML, CSS, PHP, CMS, as well as live payment gateway implementation. In addition to those skills, Design209.com is intent to stay one step ahead of current web designers. Expect to see SOHOjobs Facebook, Iphone and Droid applications very soon! 

We are so pleased to have finally found a design firm that we can build a long term relationship with and intrust with all of our business needs, today and in the future. We highly recondmend Design209.com for all web based media projects. 


Thank you Design209.com. If only we had found you first. 


We would be happy to provide additional and detailed information about our experiences with these two very different design firms and the outcomes of these projects at your request. Email Us (info@sohojobs.org) 


Team SOHO
SOHOjobs.com / SOHOjobs.org / SOHOjobs.net




-- THIS TESTIMONIAL WILL BE PUBLISHED ON THE NEW SOHOJOBS WEBSITE WHEN IT GOES LIVE!

-- Edited by SOHOjobs Moderator on Saturday 20th of February 2010 03:33:11 PM

-- Edited by SOHOjobs Moderator on Sunday 21st of February 2010 10:53:30 PM

__________________
SOHOjobs http://www.sohojobs.org / info@sohojobs.org
SOHOjobs Moderator


TEAM SOHO

Status: Offline
Posts: 1410
Date:
Permalink  

Registrant:
Design B Studios
42395 Ryan Road Suite 112B
Brambleton, VA 20148
US

Domain Name: SOHOJOB.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Design B Studios
Brian Reynolds
42395 Ryan Road Suite 112B
Brambleton, VA 20148
US
(571)216-6056
brian@designbstudios.com

Domain created on 21-Aug-2003
Domain expires on 21-Aug-2010
Last updated on 05-Sep-2009

Domain servers in listed order:

CUSTOMER.BUYDOMAINS.COM 
CUSTOMER2.BUYDOMAINS.COM

-- Edited by SOHOjobs Moderator on Friday 19th of February 2010 05:11:57 PM

__________________
SOHOjobs http://www.sohojobs.org / info@sohojobs.org
SOHOjobs Moderator


TEAM SOHO

Status: Offline
Posts: 1410
Date:
Permalink  

no

Let us remind you all that we PAID IN FULL approximately $32,000 for Design B Studios to design a website for us. They took our money and never delivered the site. Then they typosquatted on our domain name and attempted to profit from it. (Then they tried to cover their tracks... but we have page snapshots!)




Here's a copy of DesignB Studios registration of our company brand:




Here's an image of the website that DesignB Studios put up on our URL showing how they clearly attempted to not only profit from our brand but actually divert people away from our real website. (None of the links on the DesignB Studios typosquatted page actually linked to SOHOjobs.org or SOHOjobs.com - not even the first option on their navigation bar that actually said "SOHO JOBS" )

Seriously, how rotten is that??? !!!!




And here is a copy of the Web Archive showing that DesignB Studios has blocked users from seeing the previous version what they had up on our domain. Interesting.






If any of our members have been confused or misled by this typosquatter, please let us know. We need your stories for our lawsuit. Please send any experiences you may have had to info@sohojobs.org




-- Edited by SOHOjobs Moderator on Saturday 20th of February 2010 03:43:58 PM

__________________
SOHOjobs http://www.sohojobs.org / info@sohojobs.org
JU99


SOHOjobs Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 1
Date:
Permalink  

WOW~~!!! This is so awful. I can't believe a company would be so unethical.

I was very confused by the sohojob.com website so I really appreciate you clearing that up. I guess I accidently left off the s and ended up there. I couldn't find a login area or anything and somehow ended up on one of those scam get rich quick website things. I've been a member with you guys for about four years now and really like your service so I really didn't get it. It is because of you guys that I am working from home now.

But, that site definatley said "SOHO JOBS" on it so it is very misleading. I just can't believe that was your web designer that did that to you!!! That is really terrible.

bleh


I think these sort of things have a way of working themselves out because what comes around goes around for people like them.


__________________
LFjrob


SOHOjobs Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 1
Date:
Permalink  

Yeap, I got tricked by them too. I thought I was going to the real SOHOjobs website. I clicked on the link that said SOHO jobs and got some other website that wanted me to sign up. sometimes you don't realize that you might leave a letter off of a website name when you are typing it in so that is really rotten. I was really confused and sent the team Soho an email asking for help. I've seen a lot of cases where these typo people have gotten in trouble for this kind of stuff that they are doing to you. but I don't think I've ever come across a case where it was a web designer who bought the domain!!! 

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.


__________________
Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.
SOHOjobs.org Home Page -> SOHOjobs Subscribers Only Forum -> SOHOjobs Web Designer Testimonial -> Why you must be VERY careful when you choose a Web Designer for your Business
Tweet this page Post to Digg Post to Del.icio.us


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse 		Powered by ActiveBoard