This is my experience, and it may not be the experience of everyone. I really hoped for this to go well. I'll start off with the fact that I wanted to support a neighborhood business as I am a small business owner and we all often support each other.
It started off really well. Claire was responsive and super friendly. We discussed a few ideas and she was super excited to create a few logo drafts. A few days later, she responded with her ideas. None of these looked professional or like there was professional effort put into them. That is subjective, however, and I can't discount any effort put in just because it didn't match the level of work I'd hoped for. So I politely and delicately expressed this to her and asked for guidance on the next steps. No response. After a few days, I followed up with her. She expressed regret that the designs weren't a good fit. She asked me for detail, which I provided in the subsequent email.
After that email, I never received confirmation. I never received correspondence at all. I waited the rest of the week, the weekend, and the beginning of the next week. I had attempted to follow up with her to ask if she wanted to continue to work together as I hadn't heard anything back. No answer. It wasn't until I reached out explaining that I was having a hard time getting any communication from her and it may be a better idea to just refund what I'd paid for the product. She quickly responded that the turn around time had barely passed and (in thinly veiled passive aggression) expressed regret that I couldn't be patient for her. I explained that I would be absolutely ok with any time frame if she'd communicated with me. I said "Got your email, working on it" would have been absolutely enough just to let me know anything. I reiterated that I just hadn't heard from her at all and didn't know what to think by that point.
She then responded with a different reason and it was that she had a family emergency. If she would have communicated that, I immediately would have responded with compassion and I would have told her to take all the time she needed. Life does not revolve around business. We all need to walk away sometimes and I can absolutely respect that. However, she hadn't communicated with me at all, so again, I didn't know what her intentions were or why she wasn't communicating.
We decided to go our separate ways and she'd agreed to a refund. I thanked her and ignored the passive aggressive responses via text because those can be taken out of context sometimes. I thought about asking for confirmation when the refund would be sent, but I didn't want to push and just hoped by now she'd just take the initiative to communicate once the refund was initiated.
Days went by, again, no communication, no refund. I text her requesting to follow up on the situation. She was very passive aggressive and said that she'd been trying to get a hold of me. (There was no proof of this on my end as I made sure to check). She sent me proof of sending me and email that was not in any thread we'd had. She sent over the refund and left with a sarcastic comment. I then responded that as a small business owner, I couldn't understand the need for nastiness, but if that's how she chose to run her business, so be it. She responded with laughing emojis stating that she was absolutely genuine and nice. I left that alone. I'm glad that this is over.
In a different situation, this could have been great to work together to develop something cool. I would've loved to show off whatever we could come up with. Even if we couldn't have come up with a cool logo, I would have never asked for a refund and I would have been very vocal about a pleasant experience.
Her lack of communication, professionalism, the entitled attitude when I would follow up or request very basic communication, and her responses made this a Yelpable experience. read more
