Worst client experience
Esabel Khoury & Khoury Bros. Engaged with my company, Jeweler Social, on the basis of providing web design & development services, among other marketing services for their jewelry store.
We started this project end of June after getting the run around for 6 months & continuously pushing back start dates.
After finally establishing a timeline, & after much hassle receiving a deposit to begin work, I had my team begin the process of designing & developing their new website.
This past Friday, July 19th, I received a notice that Esabel Khoury & Khoury Bros. had filed a fraudulent dispute with their bank for the deposit they had paid us to retain our services & begin work. Typically, we require a 100% total cost deposit upon beginning, but were willing to work with them.
We were barely 3 weeks into the project when they disputed the money they had already paid, leaving us out over $2,000, on top of hours of work we had already completed.
We tried contacting them multiple times & didn’t hear back for days until we mentioned taking legal action- it was then that the lies started pouring out.
They claimed to have contacted us multiple times, yet nobody from our company had heard a word from them since we started the project. This is normal, since we don't usually require client input throughout the project management stage.
We've turned down other projects to take this one, & let them know beforehand that although we already had a full schedule on our calendar, we could be accommodating since we believed we could be a major benefit to them, & vice versa.
We should have seen this coming from the beginning, but put too much trust in them to fulfill their end of the deal.
As of writing this, we are completely out of the deposit they paid, as well as our time, energy, & money already put into the project.
I highly recommend shopping around for other jewelers. If they are willing to engage in fraud with their marketing agency, I can only imagine what kind of fraud they may be engaging in with their customers.
Personally, I can take the fall, as I always take care of my team. I just hope they can live with screwing over the families of the people who worked on the project.
Not cool guys.