the tables are turned, not sure what to do

[frankc]

I do VERY basic website design, and a fair amount of website management. I'm a volunteer at a local wildlife rehab center (http://foxvalleywildlife.org) and have recently become the conduit between the website designer and the Board. I'm coming in late to all of this, trying to untangle a mess of various registrars for different domain names for which we were not listed as Registrant (at the least), a former web designer who's been incommunicado, the works.

We have no contract with the current designer--just a contract for the original design work; everything else is a handshake agreement (yuk).

I just got a note from the designer, "Somehow the orders table in the database got deleted. So we had to reconstruct that and make a few other modifications. All the work took 2 hours at my $60 per hour rate. To whom should I send the invoice?" :wah:

That's a real shocker to me--to be billed after the fact for work we didn't approve or even know about. But then I'm an old guy. :blah:

The webhost does backups and restores--quickly within the last week, a week or more if the backup is from a week ago or longer (no idea of the cost, waiting for that info from them).

I should be willing to pay either him or what the webhost would have charged or his fee, and that's ok. But I just don't like the, "I did this and who do I bill?" attitude. He's done a nice design, but we're going to have to set some ground rules for future billed work. He does text changes and photo changes at n/c.

FWIW, I do not think this is a trumped-up charge.

My question is, what is YOUR policy on this sort of thing with your customers?

[Andilinks]

...and have recently become the conduit...Does this mean someone in charge abdicated responsibility and you just happened to be in the way? I think you need to take this matter to "the Board" and establish the "ground rules" there. Whomever it is that is going to be paying this bill for unapproved work needs to be fully informed of the chaotic situation. Papering it over and trying to smooth things over without addressing the lack of lines of responsibility will only postpone a day of reckoning which will be worse for having been delayed....what is YOUR policy...?I think the exact details of "becoming a conduit" are the issue here. Someone turned their back on a big mess and their relationship to "the Board" has to be examined before there can even be a "policy." Just my opinion. Best of luck Frank. :)

Andi

[squillo]

This kind of situation really depends on the relationship that has been established over time between the client and contractor, and it kind of sounds like you're coming to this halfway into things. I would give him the benefit of the doubt this time, pay him, and review things with the board or whoever actually makes the payment to see how maintenance work has been handled in the past. If he's viewed as a sort of temporary employee, one should expect this kind of occasional invoice (consider how much cheaper he is compared to a regular employee, and also think about why the former guy went AWOL).

I have one institutional client that insists on a formal estimate before any work is undertaken, and it simply ends up frustrating everyone. I'll be dropping them at earliest opportunity. Everyone else gets charged by the hour which gets invoiced once per quarter, though I try hard to stay within prior estimated guidelines.

From the view you've given us, however, I agree his approach to billing is a bit unpolished and leaves something to be desired.

best of luck
squillo

[Matt]

Hi Frank,

I would agree with Squillo here and even take it one step further. The reason the designer sent you the "where do I send the bill" e-mail may be that "the Board" has assigned you as his contact person. "The Board" may have been dodging responsibility for some time and he could be tired of it. He knows that you're not going to pay the bill, so he sent you an e-mail asking where he should send the invoice. It may also be the case that he does the minor updates at no cost because it's just too much hassle to try to figure out how to get paid for $15 of work. My recommendation is to give the designer the benefit of the doubt and not bite off more volunteer work than you can chew.

-Matt

[Jeff]

I would tend to side with the designer unless you or the board have information to the contrary. $120 to do emergency work that needed to be done immediately to get the site back online after something went wrong does not seem excessive to me vs. having the site offline for a day waiting for an estimate to be submitted, the board to approve, etc. Of course I don't know how important the website is to the operation, but I can't see myself doing the work to develop a database driven website if it was not worth ~$100 to the client to keep it functioning if some unforseen disaster occurred that could be fixed with a couple hours of work. (of course I don't make $60/hour either!) I'd pay the invoice but if you're not convinced that the handshake deal is getting you a much better $ than a formal arrangement, work towards a more specific arrangement where whatever people are working on the site are authorized to do up to x-hours of work before requiring approval or in x-circumstance, etc. etc. I think clients sometimes take for granted the asset it is having someone willing to watch over a site to make sure everything keeps functioning perfectly despite software upgrades, unforseen circumstances, etc. (and someone ready to take action if anything needs to be adjusted.)

[frankc]

Hi Frank,

I would agree with Squillo here and even take it one step further. The reason the designer sent you the "where do I send the bill" e-mail may be that "the Board" has assigned you as his contact person. "The Board" may have been dodging responsibility for some time and he could be tired of it. He knows that you're not going to pay the bill, so he sent you an e-mail asking where he should send the invoice. It may also be the case that he does the minor updates at no cost because it's just too much hassle to try to figure out how to get paid for $15 of work. My recommendation is to give the designer the benefit of the doubt and not bite off more volunteer work than you can chew.

-Matt
Yes, I am the designated go-between, but the board is all rather new and contracts with the desiger and webhost reseller all precede them, so I stuck my hand in the air and volunteered to help untangle the mess. He was fairly paid for the site redesign, and does the text/photo updates as a way to help the Center; their work is important and he's one of many who support it in meaningful ways, but this "here's the bill" situation is far too loose for me.

I've written him asking him to get an OK before performing additional for-fee work.

[frankc]

I would tend to side with the designer unless you or the board have information to the contrary. $120 to do emergency work that needed to be done immediately to get the site back online after something went wrong does not seem excessive to me vs. having the site offline for a day waiting for an estimate to be submitted, the board to approve, etc.
The strange thing is that the website wasn't dark (I have a service which checks daily). So while I'm sure the work needed to be done, it could have been for some rarely-used part like their simple online store through PayPal or something. More frustrating is that fact that the webhost would have restored it for free, had I known of the problem.

[Jeff]

http://foxvalleywildlife.org/
HTTP 500.100 - Internal Server Error - ASP error
Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) Sun-ONE-ASP/4.0.0 ApacheJServ/1.1.2 PHP/4.3.10 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Rewrit/1.1a

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Error Type:
ADODB.Recordset.1 (0x80004005)
SQLState: S1000 Native Error Code: 2013 [TCX][MyODBC]Lost connection to MySQL server during query
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Browser Type:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; Alexa Toolbar; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Page:
GET /index.asp

Time:
Monday, July 24, 2006, 4:21:08 PM


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Edit: never mind - up again after a refresh.