I randomly logged into my online banking today to find we are almost $96 overdrawn, when we should have had $21 available, with over $1,500 being deposited on Wednesday at midnight.
I clicked the overdrawn account to realize that PayPal had taken the payment for Erin’s credit card from our checking account instead of the bill pay account as I had scheduled. I am obsessive when it comes to finances, and when adding a payment account through the PayPal platform, I triple-checked that I was adding our bill pay account, where I had transferred the $88 payment, to ensure it was available!
This is not the first, or even second time that PayPal had taken a payment from the wrong account, causing us to go overdrawn and get hit with ISF fees. I removed all payment accounts after I took out a consolidation loan to pay off this high-interest debt to avoid this happening a third time.
As Erin had run up a small balance on her PayPal Mastercard, I used PayPal’s system to log into my bank and allow for easy linking of accounts. I made sure to uncheck our checking account, leaving the bill pay account checked, despite this, our checking account got added, leading to our current predicament.
Despite an overall income of over $5,000 per month, we are constantly running out of money due to our loans, medical insurance premium, and credit card bills due to having extensive out-of-pocket medical expenses, on top of paying almost $700 insurance premiums, that’s after the ACA premium credit.
Erin says she prefers credit unions, as they are better than banks, but are they? our credit union, Meritrust is eager to charge us a $29 ISF fee. I know these fees are automated, but you’d think maybe they would flag it for review, and if a human reviews it, they’d see that the exact payment amount was transferred with the same PayPal name to another account and simply transfer the money from the bill pay to the checking account, or wait a day, for the account holder to realize what happened and transfer the funds back, instead of charging an already broke account holder an Insufficient Funds fee.
In my opinion, an ISF fee is a way to punish those who don’t have enough money to live on, going overdrawn when an unexpected bill gets taken out of their account, or even charges disappearing, then reappearing later, to make their lives a little harder than it already is. These ISF fees snowball, as each time an ISF fee is charged, the account holder has less and less money to live on each paycheck, eventually crippling the account holder to the point where they can no longer pay for the essentials.
I don’t believe for one moment that credit unions are any more ethical than banks, maybe it’s time for me to start withdrawing all my cash as soon as it’s deposited and stash it in my mattress? Obviously, I am being facetious, but I am sick and tired of working my ass off when every red cent is taken by basic necessities and never-ending debt payments, we’re supposed to work to live, not the other way around!
Happening right now, Republicans are trying to remove 4 Democrats from office, 3 Tennessee state house members, and a Wisconsin supreme court justice elect, you literally cannot make this shit up.
In Tennessee; after a recent mass shooting at the Covenant school, where three 9-year-olds and three adults were gunned down, 3 Democrat lawmakers joined a protest at the state capital calling for gun reform. Republican House speaker, Cameron Sexton claims the three representatives, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson, broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor”, which, obviously requires that they should be expelled for standing with the people who they represent.
But, being an alleged child molester, prescribing drugs to family members illegally, or urinating in other members’ chairs does not break house rules, none of these congresspeople were expelled. I would suggest that these actions were infinitely more severe than protesting gun laws with a bullhorn.
In the history of the Tennessee state house, only twice has a member, interestingly, both Republicans, been removed. In 1980, Rep. Robert Fisher was removed for accepting a bribe, which is ironic, given that bribes have now been normalized and called campaign contributions. A second representative in 2016, Rep. Jeremy Durham, was expelled for allegations of sexual harassment, legitimate reasons I’d say!
This shows the Trump effect in action, where actions have no consequences. Before Trump took office on January 20, 2017, Republicans had moral standards and punished their own. Today, I guarantee that the GOP would have circled the wagons to protect both of these representatives in 2023.
The Republican solution to the Covenant school shooting is more guns, putting forward a bill that would arm teachers, which is the GOP party line, thanks to them being, let’s call it what it is, bribed by the NRA. Arming teachers and militarizing our schools is not the answer to the question of reducing gun violence. How long will it be before a teacher accidentally shoots a student, or leaves their gun in a bathroom?
Anyway, back on topic, this is clearly a partisan move, knowing that no Democrats need to vote in favor of expulsion, as the Republicans have a supermajority, 75 members, no doubt from gerrymandered districts; when they only need a two-thirds majority vote to oust Johnson, Jones, and Pearson.
Moving onto Wisconsin, where Republicans are already talking about impeaching the newly elected liberal Supreme Court Justice, Janet Protasiewicz. Judge Protasiewicz’s election pushed the court’s bias toward the liberal side, and the right wing has lost their collective minds over it, as it’s likely to thwart the GOP’s plans to ban abortion and reverse the extensively gerrymandered districts in the state.
Republicans recently obtained a supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate and the newly elected Senator, Dan Knodl said he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz from her position as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. This, I would assume, as a non-expert on the legal repercussions of impeachment, would disqualify Protasiewicz from taking her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Due to gerrymandered districts, Republicans have a supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate, meaning they could push to convict on any impeachment of Protasiewicz from the Wisconsin state assembly.
Republicans like to scream about VOTER FRAUD when they lose elections, when in reality, they are the party who do the gerrymandering, voter suppression, and yes, most cases of people voting illegally, have been votes for Republicans, not to mention the 2021 insurrection. They know that in a fair Democracy, they would not hold any power, as their policies are not popular with the majority of Americans.
The two black representatives, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee House, while the white representative, Gloria Johnson survived the vote. I don’t know what is in the hearts of the TN GOP, but it does not look good, especially with the reputation of Tennessee being good ol’ boys.
When I started my day, never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that Liverpool, a team I have supported since I was six years old, some 40 years ago would end the day with a 7 – 0 victory over the in-form Manchester United at Anfield given the inconsistent season the Reds have had in 2022/23.
Liverpool came out of the blocks hard, winning the majority of balls, having the most possession, and piling on the pressure, but didn’t have a single shot on target. It was the visitors, United that had 4 shots on target on the counterattack, forcing a couple of decent saves from Liverpool keeper, Alisson.
Despite the first-half pressure, it was not until the 43rd minute that the deadlock was broken, with Cody Gakpo’s sublime shot from inside the 18-yard box across the face of the goal into the bottom right of the net. This came just 1 minute after Manchester United’ Bruno Fernandez had a goal disallowed for offside.
The Reds went in at half-time with a 1 goal advantage, nothing to get excited about, as recent history has proven, the second half against arch-nemesis, Real Madrid springs to mind, conceding five goals at Anfield. I was hopeful, but not expecting a win, but Liverpool put on a masterclass in the second half.
Jurgen Klopp’s team came out in the second half with intent, and only 2 minutes into the half, Darwin Núñez doubled the lead with a close-range headed goal. A further 3 minutes later, Gakpo scored his second goal, a nice little chip over David de Gea from a tight angle from outside the right post.
Next to get on the scoresheet was Mo Salah, who could not believe his luck finding the ball at his feet, after a fortuitous deflection off a United player, the Egyptian put his foot through the ball into the roof of the net. I’m watching in disbelief, the Reds are 4 – 0 up against the old rivals Manchester United.
The 75th minute brought a fifth goal, Núñez with another headed goal off Jordan Henderson’s cross into the box. Then the chants of “we want six” rang out around Anfield, and in the 83rd minute, Mo Salah obliged with his second goal, which took the Egyptian international past Robbie Fowler’s Premier League goal-scoring record for Liverpool, cementing his position as one of the Liverpool all-time greats.
But, wait, there’s more, Bobby Firmino, who recently announced he will be departing Anfield at the end of the season, in an effort to play more minutes, showed why he will always be a Liverpool legend, with a superb turn and shot, as it seemed the ball was running away from him, to make it 7 – 0 to the Reds.
I didn’t know how much I, and every Liverpool fan needed this result after the poor season thus far. But, let’s not get carried away, it’s a great result, Manchester United’s worst defeat since the formation of the Premier League in 1992. Liverpool needs to be consistent now to finish in the all-important top 4, which puts them back in the Champions League for next season, which they now have a great shot of doing.
If Liverpool can come away with another 3 points at Bournemouth next week, keeping confidence high, could the Reds do the impossible and turn around their 5-2 deficit to Real Madrid in the return leg at the Bernabéu? Liverpool only need four goals without reply to progress to the quarter-finals. It’s unlikely, but, I never thought Klopp’s team would put seven past Manchester United, so anything is possible.
My wife Erin recently received an official looking letter in the mail from Doc Help Needs, concerning her federal student loan debt, which raised immediate red flags, as Erin’s student loan was forgiven, due to her recent disabled status, the loan amount was grossly wrong, and the “Final Notice” statement.
Anything that states Final Notice should be viewed with skepticism, even more so when you have never received anything from this sender before. Always read the whole letter, what initially might seem legitimate will soon be proven to be a disingenuous marketing mailer, the bottom of the letter reads;
“Doc Help Needs is not affiliated with the government or any of its programs. We offer private, fee-based application assistance to aid consumers in applying for government offered programs. While such programs may be available for free directly by various government agencies, our services are fee-based and focus on application and document preparation. We do not charge fees for access to such programs, only to prepare and counsel application to these programs.”
The above statement keeps them protected as legally they have done nothing wrong. The letter uses deceptive language, giving the impression it’s the federal government sending out the letter, even referring to official government websites, asking you to create an FSA ID. This is concerning in itself, as if they have access to your Federal Student Aid login, they can effectively act as you, and do untold damage.
I’m not at all suggesting Doc Help Needs are looking to sign up for federal aid as you, they just want to charge you a “fee” for filling out the paperwork for you, think of it as Turbo Tax for student loans.
Let’s add a further red flag, does it not seem odd to you that they word it in such a way, asking you to sign up for an FSA ID. Surely, you would already have one if you had a federal student loan?
It’s clear to me that Doc Help Needs is preying on people’s desperation to get out of, or reduce their crippling student loan payments, not knowing these options are available for free.
Doc Help Needs has a Better Business Bureau rating of F and is reported as being a sole proprietorship founded in January 2021, based out of Huntington Beach, CA, with a listed phone number of (866) 229-7211, which is different from the number shown on the letter, that number is (866) 220-0147.
It might be a little strong to call it a scam, but it’s definitely disingenuous and misleading. As always, when I write these blogs, I’m hoping people will search the company name and/or phone numbers and find this post, before losing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to this company.
Here’s a full scan of the letter, sans our address.
It’s tax season, and we just finished filing our taxes, and the results are not what we hoped for. To complicate matters, Turbo Tax has a problem with the Kansas return, which has been rejected, we find out this is because Turbo Tax has a problem with Form K-40SVR, which does not apply to us, we are neither seniors nor disabled veterans, and we have to wait for them to fix their system to re-file.
Usually, we receive a $3,000 to $4,000 tax refund, thanks to child tax credits, but this year, due to earning 12.4% more than in 2021, that number was reduced to double digits. Filling in the numbers from form 1095A (Health Insurance Marketplace Statement), our refund dropped from $1,800+ to just $179 as we received too much ACA advanced premium tax credit in 2022, having to pay back more than $1,600.
We were hoping to pay off a couple of credit cards with our federal tax refund, but obviously, that is not going to happen now with a net refund of $35 after factoring in the $81 filing fees and $63 owed to the state of Kansas. These credit card balances have been run up due to medical costs since we have an inferior Marketplace plan, for 3 times the cost, you can read about our medical insurance woes here.
Obviously, I’m in no rush to file our state taxes as we owe $63, so I’m happy to wait for our federal refund to arrive, so at least the money we owe the state of Kansas does not come out of our own pockets.
Next year, it will get worse, as we can only claim one child as Conner has turned 18, and our income will increase significantly, due to Erin having a full year of SSDI (disability), in addition to (hopefully) a full year of part-time employment and I am earning about 4% more than 2022, so a combination of this will mean, we are likely to owe more than $2,000 in taxes, which I have no idea how we will pay.
About nine years ago, I wrote about a car extended warranty scam from Vehicle Protection Center, and now we have basically the same thing, but this time for home warranties, appearing to be from the County Deeds Records office, with a check for $199.00 labeled “Registration Fee Voucher”.
I’m not a homeowner, so I did not personally receive this mailer, but I work for a property management company and became aware of these deceitful mailers from Home Warranty Direct, or Home Warranty Solutions, who also come up when Googling the number 1-8000-301-5412, and the BBB complaints are the exact same as Home Warranty Direct, so I assume these companies are linked.
Interestingly, Home Warranty Direct is shown as being located in Saint Peter’s, MO 63376 on the BBB page for the company, like Vehicle Protection Center, this cannot be a coincidence. However, the other company using the same tactics, Home Warranty Solutions is based out of Phoenix, AZ 85037 according to the BBB, and has been around for a lot longer, seven years, as opposed to the 3 – 4 months of Home Warranty Direct. Neither of these companies has the exact phone number listed on the notice I’ve seen.
The notice reads;
IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUESTED
ATTENTION: [redacted]
This letter is to inform you that the property’s home warranty at [redacted] secured by [redacted] may be expiring or may have already expired.
Our records indicate that you HAVE NOT CONTACTED us yet to get your Home Warranty up to date.
Please Call IMMEDIATELY as this will be our FINAL ATTEMPT TO NOTIFY YOU 1-800-301-5412.
Without a home warranty in place, you are at risk of being financially liable for any and all repairs. However, you still may have time left to activate a Warranty on your home before it’s too late. No inspection will be required and final acceptance is subject to your ability to meet eligibility requirements.
We reserve the right to revoke your eligibility for service coverage after 5 days.
Here is a scan of the check from the mailer, with personal details redacted;
A notice beneath the check reads “Not all consumers have previous coverage. We are not affiliated with your current mortgage holder. THIS IS NOT A CHECK” – to legally cover themselves from prosecution.
The purpose of these mailers is to make the recipient believe it’s an official mailer from the County Deeds Records office, hoping they will call the listed telephone number. When the recipient calls the company, their representative will try to sell you a home warranty, which, this is my assumption, is worthless. Legitimate companies don’t use such tactics to fool the recipient into buying their service.
I write this blog in the hope that people Googling the phone numbers 1-800-301-5412, 1-800-301-5411, or 1-800-298-8414, or company name will find it, and not be scammed by these companies.
As so many of these scam-type blogs start, my wife saw an advert on Facebook on her phone for Able App, a personalized weight care app for Android and Apple devices, according to their marketing. Erin signed up for a trial, for a cost of $9.99 + tax, which according to what my wife told me, had no indication of automatically renewing, let alone renewing for $19 per week, which is a lot of money for what it is.
The only reason I caught this scam is that a third charge caused an insufficient funds fee on our bill pay account, which as the name suggests is for putting money aside for authorized bills, and no bills were due, so that account had no money in it. I’m surprised I missed the first 2 charges, normally, I am all over it when a new company name appears on my bank statement, which I check several times every week.
The first charge came in from Able App through PayPal on January 12, 2023, and was charged to my wife’s debit card, which comes out of our checking account, this charge was for $13.21, which is not $9.99 + tax, the sales tax should have been $0.61, no idea what the other $2.60 was for. The second charge, also billed to my wife’s debit card was for $19, on the same day as the $13.21, which already reaks of a scam.
The third charge, which came on January 19, 2023, is the charge that exposed Able App, as our checking account had less than $19 in the account at that time, and PayPal used the backup payment option, which happened to be our bill pay account. As I wrote, this caused an insufficient funds fee of $32, Meritrust, our bank, rejected the payment, but charged us $32 for the automated task of rejecting the payment.
So, the first thing I did was log into Erin’s PayPal account, and see the three charges, two from the checking account, and the third from the bill pay account. Immediately I cancel the recurring payment to Able App, to stop any further charges. Unfortunately, because the third payment didn’t go through, PayPal automatically retried the payment on January 26, 2023, which almost caused another insufficient funds fee, taking $19 of the $22.95 out of the bill pay account, but luckily, the bill that the $22.95 was earmarked for wasn’t due until today, which is after Erin received her bi-weekly wages.
We are going to dispute the second and third charges with PayPal, as these are not authorized debits, and probably the first one too, as that was not the agreed-upon amount. Once this is done, and assuming that is successful, we can request that the $32 ISF is also refunded. The main thing is that no-more payments are taken, as I have canceled the recurring payment to Able App on Paypal, thankfully, because Able App was subscribed to using PayPal, Able App does not have Erin’s card details, nor our banking details.
You can do your own research about this company, but from everything I read, our experience is common. And, the service itself seems to be misleading, with many reporting they never got the service as advertised, and found it very hard to cancel. And, even when they were told their subscription was canceled, they continued to be charged, either the next week or in some cases, months later.
Don’t let the star rating fool you, I suspect there are a whole bunch of fake 5-star reviews, it seems incredibly odd to me, someone who works in online marketing, that reviews are mostly 5-stars or 1-star, especially when the 1-star reviews all have a definite theme to them, as the old saying goes, there is no smoke without fire. Also, there appear to be two apps for Able on the Play Store, which is not suspicious at all. I never tell anyone to not use a service, but it’s a definite case of buyer beware!!!
The first life update of 2023; brings news of my brother Paul passing away. We rarely saw eye to eye, let’s say he did some things that were not acceptable to me, which led to us becoming estranged, and then I moved to the US of A, losing all contact with family back home. I found out about Paul’s passing through my niece Wendy, who managed to get hold of me through my wife, Erin on Facebook, as my Facebook account was locked down to friends of friends who can contact me or add me as a friend.
I’m unable to attend Paul’s funeral due to a lack of finances, but the bigger problem is my passport has expired and renewing it takes more time than I have before the funeral. Regardless of our differences, he was still my brother and I feel somewhat sad at the news of his passing. But from what Wendy told me, he had gotten his act together, kicking his drug habit and getting clean, which is great. Sadly I never got to see him ‘clean’ before becoming estranged, most of my memories were of him on drugs.
I don’t have too many good memories with Paul, but some I do remember as happy times were when he took me to Home Park to see Plymouth Argyle play in the 1980s, and fishing trips out on “Sea Witch”, the boat that my eldest brother David owned, this was the few times where we all were together and happy.
The positives of my brother’s passing are that I am now back in contact with my two nieces Wendy and Tracey, who have kids of their own, with the eldest being 20 years old. So, I find I am a great uncle to adult children…. that makes me feel old, but I did become an uncle at the age of six, so it makes sense.
while stateside, I am still waiting on my green card renewal to happen, it’s been 450 days since I applied for my green card renewal, and the status has not changed since October ’21. This is having a knock-on effect, I needed to renew my driver’s license back in October ’22, and if I want to have a driver’s license with the star that allows me to enter federal buildings and board flights, I have to present my green card + extension letter from USCIS. The issue at that time was, that my green card had expired and my extension letter was only for 1 year, my driver’s license was only valid for 83 days, instead of six years.
This meant that I had to renew my driver’s license again on January 12, 2023, for 1 more year as I received a second extension letter on December 10, 2022, stating that I am legal for a period of 24 months from the expiry date on my green card. I left it to my license’s expiry date, hoping my green card would arrive.
It got worse, I drove all the way to Derby, a neighboring city to Wichita, Kansas, as their DMV office is much less busy than the Wichita DMV. Only to find out that the vision form that I just got from my ophthalmologist was an old form, which they would not accept. So I had to drive all the way back to Wichita, with the updated form, get it filled out again, and return it to Derby DMV. I drove almost 100 miles this day between my home, my eye doctor’s office, and the DMV. The silver lining is that at least because I went to the Derby DMV, the wait time was minimal, it would have been 2 – 3 hours in Wichita.
While talking about my vision, as mentioned, I was at my ophthalmologist’s office on January 12 and did the usual battery of tests because of my diabetes. And my vision has changed slightly, but I wanted to make some changes to my prescription. I wanted to ditch my Transitions, opting for clip-on sunglasses instead, as Transitions don’t work in the car, which is where I need darker lenses the most. I added Varilux to help with focusing between close and far objects, which combined with clear lenses, should help me with nighttime driving, which is somewhat problematic with my current prescription.
My 18-year-old son, Conner has held onto his part-time job at Ollie’s and has been getting some good hours. Now that his employment seems to be stable, I am going to introduce him to adult life, making him transfer service for his phone, which is just $22.17 per month onto his own account, being responsible for paying for it himself. And suffer the consequences of not paying, like being cut off as it’s a prepaid plan, which will be a problem for his employment as they need to be able to contact him.
We also want him to save some money towards his driver’s education course, he will have to save half of the cost and we’ll pay the other half. Conner says he has saved a couple of hundred dollars, I have not seen his bank account balances, so I don’t know if that is true or not, but I hope he is being honest and has saved some cash, he needs to get driving, I am not willing to be his (unpaid) chauffeur forever.
My 13-year-old daughter Alya has competed in three school robotics competitions since the last update and has done really well. Her team has reached the semi-finals in all three tournaments, which is amazing as at each competition, there have been 30 – 50 teams. Finishing in the top four out of 30 to 50 teams is excellent, and I’m so proud of her for this achievement. I wish I had this available to me at school, 30+ years ago, kids in the 2020s have so many more opportunities than Erin and I did at school.
We are powering through our medical insurance deductible and max out of pocket at a pace, which is great, but we are still to get the bills, we are looking at $1,500-2,000 already, which is not great as we don’t have the cash to pay it, after paying the $658.17 premium every month. We have to get to $4,900 max out of pocket before insurance starts paying 100%, minus copays, which we still have to pay.
So it really is a mixed-bag update, some positive news, some sad news, and the usual money struggles. I don’t know when the next update will be but watch this (web)space for the next exciting installment!
About a month back, I wrote about how I was switching from HP to Brother printers because of the cost of replacement ink, and the use of color ink while printing a black only document, meaning I ended up with a load of black cartridges with 20-30% ink remaining, because the color cartridges were depleted.
So, here are my thoughts on the Brother MFC-L2750DW, not a review as such, I didn’t do any specific tests, to compare to other printers, I just used the “machine” as Brother likes to refer to the L2750DW. Please note, that I will not be going in-depth about the interface, just the core functionality.
I’ll start with the build quality, which I would describe as generally good with some flimsy, rattly parts, namely the touchscreen, which rattles when touched, but it works fine, despite the lack of quality feel, and the print and scan catchers (is that what they are called?) which feels cheap and plasticky, but it stops the prints and scans from falling on the floor, so it does its job, but for $300, I’d expect a little better.
Print quality is acceptable for our use case, which is printing mostly text documents. But, I have noticed some small issues, for example, when I print something with a lighter color solid background, there is a little inconsistency of toner application, with a darker line despite the background on screen being a solid color. And, when there is a darker image, with darker highlights on screen, it prints as a mostly black box, losing the detail of the image. Again, we did not buy the machine for photo printing, so it’s not really an issue, just be aware that less contrasty images may print with a less defined result than on screen.
Now we get to the issue I have with this machine, the unscannable area on the flatbed scanner. If I place a document against the frame at the back left of the flatbed glass as described in the manual, it cuts off 0.12in at the top and right of the document. I know of unprintable areas, this is standard for most printers, but I have never seen unscannable areas on a flatbed scanner. I have owned many scanners over the years, and none had this issue, so I question why the Brother MFC-L2750DW has this issue?
If I use the auto document feeder (ADF), it does not have the same issue with the unscannable areas. I contacted Brother support and they said this behavior is normal, pointing me to this help article. The Brother iPrint&Scan software has options to deskew scans, but it seems not to work in my testing, placing a document on the flatbed glass further away from the plastic bezels scans the whole document just fine, but it does not deskew or straighten the scan. Normally, I’d use the plastic bezel surrounding the scanner glass to align the document to be scanned, this is a no go with the unscannable area.
I have found a 3rd party scanning software called NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner 2), which does all the things that the Brother scanning software fails to do, which makes the MFC-2750DW better, mitigating the hardware shortfalls of the scanner, which I primarily use the machine for, I don’t print much.
The printer and scanner ADF does allow for full duplex printing and scanning, this feature works just fine, although on some occasions while scanning the rear side of the document, it scans skewed, I have had this issue with multiple brands of scanner over the years, it does not happen a lot, so I can live with it. I never used the fax functionality, as I don’t have a landline, and have not sent a fax in more than a decade.
Overall, it’s a decent all-in-one printer, scanner, and fax, it gets the job done, but knowing what I know now, would I still buy it, probably not! The unscannable areas of the flatbed glass would be a deal breaker for me. But, as I already have it all set up, with the help of NAPS2, I can live with it.
Around 26 months ago, I wrote about why I dislike working with third-party web developers, and 20 months ago, we, that is, the company I work for, decided to refresh the design while upgrading the website to a WordPress backend, and the design is still very far away from being ready for prime time.
Our requirements are bespoke, as our back office software is integrated into the website, being ported from our previous website with this company, one of the reasons, we stuck with a company that I really don’t like working with, read the blog linked above for information about why I dislike this company.
My specific issue is with the designer on the project, who despite multiple requests for changes, the design has somehow gotten worse. We have issues with how our data is displayed, displaying incomplete data, and sorted in the wrong order, different from the set backend order, not to mention the crazy inconsistencies of layout and design. And, the mobile version, all I can say is what the actual f**k.
The more I dig into the design, the more it seems that webdesign 101 coding has not been followed, building the whole website in a WYSIWYG editor called WPBakery, which don’t get me wrong, I use on our property websites, but I create a template, including CSS layout for WPBakery to work inside. This allows me to make wholesale changes sitewide with simple changes to the CSS stylesheet.
The limited use of CSS, and redefining the core HTML tags creates inconsistency, some areas have the correct spacing, while others do not, and some are wildly off how they should be rendered.
The initial brief for the photo gallery was to have an apartments.com style gallery, but what they created was not even close, and when questioned about this, the response was “we cannot do that”, so we asked for changes to make it work better, as it looked terrible. Upon getting access to the WordPress admin, I realized why, they’re using plugins, and not custom code as we were led to believe. Then still messed up the fix we requested, everyone else understood what I wanted, but not the web design company.
And, despite being months behind schedule, this company basically abandoned the project for 2 months, and only picked up the baton when we called them out on their lack of forward progress.
This whole situation stinks of we don’t care, to present a product with so many layout issues, looking like a complete amateur created the website while learning how to code is not acceptable. I have been designing websites for 20+ years and would never present a product like this to a client.
There is more, but I won’t bore you, suffice to say, I’m close to saying f**k it, I don’t want to work with these people anymore, and if anyone asks me about this company, I would tell them to run away as fast as you can, especially as this company is not exactly a cheap option, I expect better for that sort of money.
