Recalling: Swindled Again In A World Gone Mad

FATELESS PROGRESS REPORT:


(In a Southern drawl) It's been good and bad times at the Fateless homestead, as always.  Recently took a small time-out for friends and beer.  Felt pretty good.  Work months leading up to that? 'Ell, let's just say they were same as any work week ya'll gotta' deal with: always cleaning up everyone else's mess.  (voice ends)

Seriously though, it got really bad for a minute there after getting ripped on by a web designer for way too much money, so my girlfriend advised me not to post my original pissed-off-and-apocalyptic entry.  She doesn't seem to think negative feelings should be expressed and/or shared with the world, whether the world is at fault or not.  Not sure if I fully agree with that philosophy, but I took her up on it--at that time.

So now here I am after the storm has begun to lift.  We'll see if it keeps lifting.  That break I recently took was well needed, regardless.

I did write a good chunk in that original entry while experiencing such bad depths, so I suppose it probably was better that I wait. This way you can see that I am once again sane before you read anymore, and you can see how before this was hopefully more like a bad dream.

However, I don't want to completely ignore and dishonor the proverbial Hell I was put through last month, so I'm pasting the OG-gansta' entry below.

As you read it, try to remember that I'm doing okay now because I took a good break, and I've been making good music, and most importantly, I have a new web designer who's actually doing his job and is cheaper than the previous-nightmares were.  Looks like the Fateless Flows site will finally be done sooner than later.  Prototype is even up already (not for viewing).  (And the designer's company is JB Web-builders.)

As for the rest of this, just take note: for any freelance web-designers who read my original entry (pasted below), if you know that you are a good person and a good worker then please don't take offense to it.  Under that circumstance, the entry will not apply to you.  Also, make no mistake, I recognize that a great many of you really are good workers, but there is something going on with tons of your co-workers that is fairly unsatisfactory to society right now.  I just wanted to warn you about that part of the entry before you see it.  I was in quite a state when I wrote it, as justified as that state was.

Without further adieu, here is the original entry (from over a month ago) that you've been hearing so many bad things about:

I'm going to let you in on what's been happening with the label over the last few months, but as you read it, I want you to remember that I'm okay and that, as always, I'm taking necessary measures to correct the following issues and barriers.  I prefer expressing and sharing my trials and tribulations in an attempt to make everyone aware of how meeting these goals is never easy--and to vent a little.  But yeah, this kind of thing is never a walk in the park.

Again, no need to think of me as apocalyptic, even though I may sound that way sometimes.  

Onward to say... 

Amazing.  Totally and utterly amazing.  It is now official.  For a second time over the last year I have been ripped off by a web designer.  And this one really takes the cake because the guy took me for a whole one thousand dollars.  I know.  I really didn't think it could happen.  After all of my life-experience and confidence and the other rip-offs that happened recently, I didn't in my wildest dreams imagine that I would ever again be conned into giving away money.  But yep, it happened, in a big way.

Relaunching my record label has now protruded into a record-breaking personal hurdle, one that is still being juggled with other equivalent hurdles.  This is probably part of the reason I allowed myself to be conned in the first place--there's just too much on my mind.  And wow... does this whole thing boggle the mind.

The reason I couldn't hire a company to design the site was because I didn't have the budget for that, and I was running out of the time it would take to raise more, but now look at me. For the time and aggravation that attempting to hire a freelance designer took, I may as well have hired two corporations!

I can't believe getting ripped off by a freelance web designer has actually happened twice now within a year.  The first time I was taken by a designer for $500 (last year) because of her incompetence regarding not saving her work.  A designer that doesn't save her work...  Wow.  She assumed that the host would always do that for her...  wow, WOW.

(For the record, her name is Lynn Weintraub.  Stay away--far away.)

But also, in general, my experience with freelance web designers over the last year has been strange to say the least.  Seriously exasperating.  I don't know what their problem is, but lots of them seem to have one.

I.E. - After the first freelance designer screwed me over, I sought out a second one on Craigslist (probably a big mistake right there).  I told each designer about what happened, and that because of getting ripped off previously I might now want to go a little slower, taking my time to think about things before a deal is made.  For some super-natural reason, more than half of these "potential designers" responded to that request very irrationally.  They did things like scolded me for not following standard protocol, or not knowing what I want, and one of them even freaked out and grew paranoid that I was a spammer/hacker of some kind.  I then posted a fairly vexed remark about this on Facebook, and wouldn't you know--suddenly tons of web-designer "friends" came out of the woodwork to continue scolding me before they even knew my case.  Excuse my french thinking, but what assholes!  (If anyone has earned the right to say that right now, it's me.) One even gave me a link to a client horror stories page so that I could "understand."  I went to this link, read it, and noticed that all of the clients in these stories were total morons.  I hate to boast, but they were all a far cry from my case.

For instance, here are two of these stories:

June 25, 2012

Client: Can you make this blue redder?

Me: Like, purple?

Client: No. A red blue. Or even a blue red. Are you colour blind?

After receiving a paid invoice… 

Me: This says you deducted 10% from the the price we agreed on for income tax. Do you know my Tax Identification Number? How did you file the amount to the government under my name?

Client: You don’t understand. If you’re a human being, 10% of all money you earn must be deducted from your earnings.

Me: Are you sure that’s how taxes work?

Client: My hands are tied. I’d give you the full amount if you weren’t human…

I really don't think I need to point out how these cases don't apply to me at all, and yet all of a sudden I was public enemy number one without anyone even asking questions.  At this point, someone needs to start a Freelance Designers From Hell website for the rest of us.  My theory about these designers is that they've had so many idiots as clients through the years that now many of them are impatient and hyper-paranoid.  This is no good for clients like myself who are just trying to get something done, and are simply not authorities on the matter (which is why we hire).  We require patience and cooperation, and most importantly, designers who are not basically criminals.

How did I fall for that guy's conn?  I thought I had finally found someone who was cooperative, so I totally missed all of the signs.  The name of his "design" company is Image IZ Everything.  This guy seemed so cool that I didn't even mind the fact that he was across the country in New York or his requirement that I wire him the cash.  That's how he suckered me.  Mind you, I still didn't send him the entire amount upfront.  Oh no.  It wasn't until after I had taken a week-and-a-half too long getting him the website content that he was able to guilt-trip me into paying the rest of the entire job.  After that, he simply strung me along for a month, basically refusing to do the job.

(If you care to read the more-detailed story about what happened, read my review of his "business" on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/image-iz-everything-bronx.  I will also be filing a report with the BBB soon.)

People like these last two designers should not be allowed to work.  Even freelance.  I'm surprised no one else has complained about either of them (unless that's just some search engine trick they've pulled).  So I will be reporting the both of them very shortly and writing a few bad reviews.  That is really all I'm left with being able to do at this point, when you consider the major hassle an out-of-state small claims case would be.  Compared to my real objective, that just wouldn't be worth it.  What is my real objective?  Getting this website finished and finally getting the label relaunched.  Through all of this error and emotion, the label and website is still the most important goal, so I'm going to try and keep my eyes on that prize.

But believe it or not, I'm really doing a great job of holding back my true anger and frustration right now.  I don't need this cr-p, any more than the rest of you do.  It's hard enough for us all to juggle the normal stuff in life, besides being taken by companies and/or people who feed off the aspirations and dreams of those of us who simply need help and support.  

I decided to take this year off from my travel project to try and heal my wounds, make some money and get a grip on my life again.  So far, within the last four months, all I've managed to achieve is: I crashed my car, got screwed over by a private car dealer after buying a lemon, ended up in new tax debt, helped my partner get over the death of her father, had a falling out with a long-time music colleague, and got screwed over by two web designers.  After all of that, somehow I still have the same "important list of things to do"--and it's still a mile high.  But to say I did a poor juggling act before the bottles went crashing to the ground would not be accurate.  These bottles blew up in my face as I was juggling them. 

It's just so amazing though.  To top this off: I've had over two dozen Fateless artists and colleagues waiting for this website for like... over 3 YEARS NOW.  Sure, this is partly because I've been on the road doing my travel projects SMP and TR, but excuses excuses.  Obviously many of these potential Fateless artists had to move on.  The road just took too long.  Even some of the folks who were helping me had to move on, which made my delayed task even harder.  And after all of my own personal trails and errors along that road so far, I now have to disappoint the remaining loyal artists a little further, due to a lack of ethics in the world.  It's astoundingly ridiculous.  

And I'm recalling something else: a close friend and colleague of mine recently started a label with another friend of mine, and it's doing pretty well.  They are also both web designers, and about 5 months ago they offered to do the Fateless website for free if Fateless would affiliate with their label.  I definitely respect their label (A&H).  It's a totally happening brand, so that would've all made sense as a green light, right?  Well, I would have done it if it hadn't been for this one little mantra of mine; I've had a lot of past friendships turn bad because we were involved in important work ventures together; so, at one point I vowed to not share any venture that is highly important, with a friend.  I would only share ones that we could get over easily if they went bad.  A new label and it's website venture isn't exactly easy, is it?  I turned my friends down because our extremely-slight difference in aesthetic vision made that venture too risky when considering it's potential size in the long run.  I turned them down because I wanted to keep them as friends, with no risk.  Should I be kicking myself in the ass for that?  Really.  I can't tell any more.

I mean, I've successfully preserved some of these friendships, but after all of that track-record tripe with "designers" just now, I'm having problems deciphering some of my mistakes.

I can safely say this much though: whichever artists remain standing by my side whenever this is all done, are truly the artists that deserve to be represented by Fateless.  Bless them in advance, if they exist, and I have a feeling they do.

Wish me luck,

Dean

Again, most of what you just read no longer applies.  The top of the page does, but not the angst so much. Everything is pretty much looking better, so just try to appreciate drama for it's entertainment value.  (smirk)

Dean