Hi everyone, this is Sheldon from Vbulletinskinz.com. I usually do not go about posting on forums; however this post from Shykicka has compelled me to. To provide an overview of the situation, Shykicka aka Matt, has only provided a one-side to the story and made it sound like I’ve scammed him and run away with his money; when apparently it’s the other way round wherein I haven’t received my 50% for the time invested on the project. Following is how/since when we’ve been dealing with each other:

Matt first contacted me on the 28th of Jan’06 requesting a custom skin for Htmltalk.com. After exchanging several emails he came to a conclusion of actually hiring my service on 2nd Feb’06. An invoice was issued on the same day, via 2checkout, and dispatched to Matt; he cleared it the same day too. However, on the 12th of Feb, he sends me an email saying that he sold Htmltalk.com and would no longer need a custom skin, thus requesting a refund – Zap he gets it the next day – usually doesn’t take this long, but that week I had a lot of invoices to go through!

On 16th May’06, he gets back to me, checking if I still remember him. And on the 20th, he finally decides to have me design three custom skins for his respective domains: Sqlforums.com/xbox360talk.com/csstalk.com. He had some questions that needed to be answered, so we decide to talk about it through Msn on the 23rd. This time I made sure I sent him three invoices, each for every project, just in case he was to change his mind again in having them refunded. Matt also requested for a logo design for the three projects, so I decided to have another joint invoice for the three logos – we’re now talking about four invoices in total. He was given a discounted round figure of $3000 from the actual fee of $3300, inclusive of the logo design. Matt to this point is very quick in clearing his bills, I have no complains there, and he did clear all his invoices to stay par within the queue. After confirmation of payment, the client is put into the queue on the waiting list. Once the previous clientele projects are taken care of, I move on with the next client in the line. I then go about requesting the client to provide me a detailed descriptive briefing of his vision with regards to the forum design. The client would need to provide me the smallest detail of what he/she would expect in anyway possible – the more descriptive the client is, the better I understand in creating the design. Following would be Matt’ detailed brief:

Okay, basically I'd like the projects to be worked on in this order: sqlforums.com, csstalk.com, and finally xbox360talk.com. I have 3 major rules though. 1) No dark-themed skins. Like gamesforum.com is dark-themed, I'm not interested in any skins that are dark. 2) No template-looking skins, for example something like domainhabit.com and domainnametalk.com is something I would NOT be interested in. 3) No small fonts. I'd like regular sized fonts used such as http://www.itfreaks.com/forum/ . Small fonts such as http://swishtalk.com/ is NOT what I am looking for. Now first let's talk about sqlforums.com. -I'd really love something that looks like http://www.itfreaks.com/forum/ . That looks like a very comprehensive design. That would be very nice. -A design like http://dbforums.com/ would be nice too. I'd love to have something like itfreaks though. -It has to look professional, so that it can be friendly for SQL Server/Oracle developers.

So I’ve got three pointers explaining to me the generic requirements of most of my clients. I did send an email asking for more info, but didn’t get a response.

Furthermore, I had mentioned to Matt that his project may initiate during the end of March or the first week of April. However, things didn’t go as planned due the humongous amount of clients I had, so I requested to have the design shown by the 12th of April. The day arrived, but sadly I couldn’t have anything ready, and I was frank with Matt telling him the same, and further requested to a next week commencement; I had gotten his confirmation on the 18th of April – so both parties were aware.

Things were so caught up with me, that I had forgotten to renew my domain vbulletinskinz.com. And it was Matt who gave me a heads up saying it had expired. Anyway, it was the 18th, and Matt contacts me saying it’s the day we start the project, and I go ahead and confirm what he says; 23rds is the day I have to send the mock design. But I send it to him on the 24th to his usual address of contact ShytKicka @ aol.com. This was the day I had to leave the city due to an emergency and I only got back on the 27th.

Once I get back on the 27th, Matt tells me he hasn’t gotten the design via email. Taken aback by surprise all I could tell him is that I could send it to him the next day because I didn’t have a copy on my local machine. He goes on in telling me if I could log myself into my mail server and resend it from the Sent Folder. I couldn’t do that because I download the emails on my machine, as I do not keep a copy of it on the server; neither do I have copies saved to my sent folders online. I use Outlook to download my mails and have copy’s saved in my Sent folder within Outlook. So the only option is that I go back and send it from Outlook Express. The next day being a Friday, a weekend here in our country, I rush to the office and send him the design and luckily make a copy of the source onto my USB. I return back home and towards the evening I’m being told that he hasn’t gotten the design yet. !?!!?!! I regenerate the design from my USB and send the design to him via Msn.

This is the first mock-design created:

www.vbulletinskinz.com/previews/sql.gif

Matt says “It looks good overall, but I don't like the red colors in the category space.” He then points out that why there was text from Rawfoodchat.com(a previous client) and a banner on Weightloss(a banner from my sister concern Bannersmall.com). Now the reason I have the table(printscreen) from Rawfoodchat is merely because it shows exactly the dimensions/spacing etc of a Vbulletin table with the type of content it may have and how accurately it may look, without me spending time to create layers in Photoshop to achieve such results. The banner being included, its just a random placeholder from bannersmall to fill in the space, thus to have the design look complete.

Matt then goes on about how he wanted certain things changed, mostly color changes; he had issues with the usage of Red/Yellow. And I give him the reasons as to why I think the colors are applicable based on the genre and the feel of the design. It was here the question about the logo design was raised. I had forgotten that Matt had made payment for a logo design due to the individual invoices created earlier. I did mention to Matt that a skin I create mostly revolves around the logo design to keep everything balanced and coherent. However, there has always been another point to it – a skin can also be created without a logo, but based on a specific model; in Matt’s case, his liking for ITFreaks.com. I created the skin for Matt, keeping my previous design(ITFreaks) as a base model. Clients like Domain Habit / Behind The Curtains / Game Banshee / Search Engine Forums etc were designed without having a logo on the canvas; they were added towards to end of the design process.

Anyway, as of right now, we had issues with the following
- Change bright titlebar colors
- Shift leftpanel to right side
- Design logo

And I get started with the changes; Suddenly Matt asks me the big question! “Did you design this for sqlforums or did you make this way before?” Of course I’ve designed this custom skin exclusively for Sqlforums based on the three pointers I had received. I could not have used another design from another client, because there had never been a situation when my design was rejected – I don’t have extras :P. I further went on about requesting Matt to be open about everything and tell me exactly what he wanted etc. Yet again, he requests me to refund the money to the last two projects, Xbox360talk.com and csstalk.com, and I mention to him that by doing so you no longer remain on the waiting list. He agrees to it, and the next second I refund the invoices. That done, I send him this revised design:

www.vbulletinskinz.com/previews/sql1.gif

He happens to like the new change but not as much; and he then asks if I could start from scratch.

It has never occurred to me until this day that a client has asked for a complete overhaul of the design I’ve created, so I put forward a scheme, like most designers would do by principle. I told him that I would create his logo first, and once you have that confirmed I would expect you to provide me a ‘detailed explanation of your brief,’ like every other client. However, if you do not like the design I create, after having the latest requirements, I shall have a 50% refunded back to you. The remaining 50% stands for the time invested in the project, as no project is initiated without a commencement fee. In addition, I mention to him that if you think I won’t be able to handle the job, you can request for the 50% right away. With no hesitation, he goes and request for a refund for the logos along with the 50%. I would say, it was his mistake to do so, because he had to chance of providing me a brief and me creating something along the lines. If only he could wait for a few days, he could have something worthy.