[clug] [OT] Ugly vicious swine Web developers

[Grant Allen]

Hi Scott,

Having helped some friends through a similar debacle through to the completion of two court cases, I can offer some anecdotal data to help you/them.

Don't embark on legal proceedings with the expectation of seeing a cent from the "cartel".  Your client's chances of having the court award against them are reasonable, but the track record of the cartel is such that they will simply fold, and do the phoenix-company trick 6 months later, leaving your client out of pocket twice.  It can be cathartic, and even fun (being an expert witness is kinda cool, but not quite Law & Order cool).  It won't bring back their money.

It sounds like you've already told them this in a variety of ways, but you should be clear with them.  Resolving their issues with the cartel, and creating their new website should now be treated as two different things.  But then again, they've spurned your advice once already ...

Ciao
Fuzzy
:-)

Scott Ferguson wrote:
>  Good morning shiny, happy CLUGers :-)
> 
> Not entirely Off Topic as it involves Linux as a back-end, Joomla! and
> Open licensed scripts...
> 
> Can anyone suggest a means of warning potential victims of unscrupulous
> Web Site Designers/Developers?
> Can anyone suggest a means by which victims of the same, can seek legal
> redress/compensation?
> 
> One of my current clients contracted a company based near the Gold Coast
> to design and develop a website for their company.
> The client want a simple, mostly static site, of about a dozen pages.
> The clients are good people, hard working, care about their employees,
> and "don't know much about computer things" (it's relevant).
> 
> When they hired this company (I'll call them the Cartel 'cause it's part
> of their business name) they asked me to look at the initial website and
> tell them "what I think" (as a favour).
> Being somewhat cynical I was immediately suspicious of a company that
> uses the word Cartel as part of their business name. The website itself
> was not impressive - inconsistent layout, minor spelling mistakes, a
> mixture of absolute and relative links, failed to validate and had a lot
> of dead links. But I've seen uglier, and messier, sites.
> 
> The hosting company (a local mob) seemed excellent, the techs are the
> owners, and much of the back-end runs Linux.
> 
> The company doing the design and development were a different matter.
> The more I looked at them (the principals) the uglier it got.
> I discovered that the main principal had a string of previous companies
> that had been de-registered - many of them suspiciously similar in name
> to well known companies. All his references appeared to be from
> relatives or created by himself (Linkedin etc). On the face of it he
> appeared to change industry every other year. Accounting, marketing (an
> sms advertising program for "escort service"), sales, meat export,
> graphic design, web site development etc.
> 
> The cartel website is very basic - but set off alarm bells for me. It
> contained a page of logos from companies the cartel alleged to have a
> previous clients - all fairly large companies. When I checked I could
> find no reference in those companies to the cartel having worked for
> them. Worse the page of logos wasn't a page with the actual logos just a
> picture of all the logos (with photoshop exif data). In my experience,
> companies are rather strict about the versions of logos used.
> 
> I kept digging - found a couple of web sites that were attributed to the
> cartel (for relatives of the main principal) but discovered that they
> had been built very cheaply by overseas developers through contracting
> site (odesk and others). No problems there... but why use a different
> (off-the-shelf) company to do so? Turns out some of the contractors
> weren't happy.
> 
> I documented all of the above and my suggestion (don't have anything to
> do with them) to the clients (and they ignored me).
> 
> Some months (and 5 figures) later they told me they'd fired the company
> - and asked if I could take over the site or recommend someone.
> Now that I've looked at the backend of the site and heard more of the
> clients woes I'd like to help them.
> 
> The client was told that the cartel owns the site - I've advised them
> that is not the case - the cartel never provided the client with any
> site documentation or passwords.... (I've recovered the necessary
> passwords and locked out the various means of remote access).  I have
> never seen a more borked backend! Both Joomla! and Mambo are installed,
> with every bell, whistle and dancing bear. Obfuscated scripts which turn
> out to have open licences - some running from off-site, a back up of the
> main mysql db inside the main mysql db!, no site backups show in the
> logs, huge error logs, insane file and directory permissions, more than
> 40 extensions, 22 templates, a recursive and addled directory structure,
> htaccess rules that would delight a script kiddy, rss feeds, mass email
> marketing plugins etc. Some of the non-functioning components have been
> created in ffffrontpage, others don't work because the file was edited
> (I suspect) in Notepad.
> 
> I'm not a lawyer but I suspect the client is a victim of fraud - that
> the company contracted to design the site deceived them to gain a
> financial advantage. The clients have been told by the cartel that they
> need to pay more money to fix the site.
> I can think of a number of reputable design companies that would quote
> $12K less to build a working version of the site.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any useful suggestions