I have been asked to take over and work with various Indian programmers, after they have baffled the website owner, don't get me wrong, I'm sure many Indian programmers do a good job, I've just never come across any.
I did a quick tally last night, and I figure I have worked with 14 different Indian programming companies. And I know my name is on a blacklist somewhere on an Indian coders forum, because I insist that a website works, because the last programmer told me so, when he was getting angry with me, he rang me and said, I should never have worked with you, blah blah blah, I thought that was pretty cool, people are being warned about working with me, because I insist that the work be done correctly, that everything works, and when it comes to beta testing a site I would find every tiny problem.
That's a pretty good name to have I would say. I'm proud of it.
As an example of some problems I have come up with, problems that I've come up against, the first place I worked with, I assumed that if a feature was mentioned that that feature would then work, that's a reasonable assumption I would say.
One I particularly remember, because now I think it so funny but got me so mad at the time. We worked on a site that had 3 levels of website user, the top level coaches, then registered members, then general site users, a coach could sell products or services through the site. And one feature was the ability for coaches to say that website members that made bookings for a seminar before a specific date would get an early bird special discount price. That's a pretty normal way of working right?
When the site was finished, sure enough the coach could there was a place to put an early bird price, but at first it didn't show on the page when a website member looked at the details of the seminar. When I made an issue of this, the programmer said he didn't even know what that early bird thing meant, so just put a text box, so the coach could add this.
I thought well fair enough I guess, different countries different ways of doing things, so I explained how it should work. That was fixed duly, and all seemed well. Until I was beta testing as a registered member and noticed that although the features was there, and it said on the seminar page there was a discount, that when a member made their order, they were charged the normal price not the early bird price. Thinking this was just an oversight, I approached the company, and asked that it be fixed, this is where the problems started.
They said that that feature was in the list of what a coach could do, but was not listed for what a member could do, which was true, it wasn't listed, and because of this the site was now going to cost more to make this feature work for members. I must say they put forward a very good argument, and to the novice building their first website they would have probably paid.
However, I hit the roof, and walls of the reply email, saying that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, how it didn't even make sense that it or any feature wouldn't work for all people that were using the feature. Anyway to cut a long story short, I eventually got what I wanted and didn't pay anything extra for it. But that was only the first of many many such issues there were something like 62 different parts of the site that the coder actually didn't know what the work order meant, so simply didn't add the features, or added a half assed job, once the coder even admitted to me on MSN that he had hoped that a particular feature was forgotten, because he didn't have any clue how to do it.
When starting to work with these company's you will also get a multipage proposal for building your website, this will be 35 plus pdf pages, and seems to list every last detail, but a word of warning, never under any circumstance assume anything. I did in the above mentioned example, and if I hadn't of known, could have had a different outcome. They always quoted a new price whenever I mentioned a different feature not working, and if I would have paid them all, the site would have cost over 3 times as much as the original quote said.
Oh another problem we had that was really funny, on the proposal anyone visiting the site could ask the coach a question by clicking on a link which took them to a form page. However because it wasn't mentioned on the coaches list that they would receive this form, the submitted form didn't have a place to go, it was really just a dummy form. How pathetically dumb was that.
My main problem with them is they prey on unsuspecting new website owners, people that really need a helping hand, and understanding that the idea of a site will evolve as it is being built, they are offering them a cheap website, and pretending to be wonderful and helpful, ringing up talking for hours on the phone. When most often rip the poor client.
Best Regards Lynny Brown - Best SEO Results, from the BEST SEO!!!
San Diego Born, English speaking SEO.
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Lynny help1@seobyCanz.com
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