Oooh! Editing to add photos of the text messages, that the junior assistant and I exchanged, in…read morewhich I alerted him that his approach was likely illegal (as I mention below, MULTIPLE opportunities given to him to walk it back) and which he took to mean I was threatening legal action. Eye roll. What a clown show.
Well here's the update that I promised, unfortunately it's not in the direction I was hoping.
I got an immediate response to my review below, with multiple requests to remove the review. I stated that I was open to updating or removing it, if things improved, and we ended up having a couple positive meetings. So much so that we elected to continue to work with them on the next phase of the project.
So over the weekend (Sept 12-13), they sent us the contract for the next phase. We signed it and sent over the requested payment. I was hopeful! I was mentally drafting a positive update to this review!
On Monday I received acknowledgement of receipt of the signed contract. Immediately following that, I got an email that said, and I quote "Before we can resume, please remove the Yelp review so we can start fresh and have a positive experience moving forward as we help you with your project." Guys, my jaw DROPPED. (My husband sent me a simultaneous "WHAT THE F***" text lol) Let me reiterate, we had signed the contract, sent the payment, and THEN received an email saying they wouldn't begin the work until a brand new condition had been met. We were completely floored.
But okay, I thought, benefit of the doubt, the guy that sent that email has the position of junior assistant on the website, maybe he doesn't realize that what he's doing - withholding work that has been paid for unless we meet a new requirement that we never agreed to - constitutes a word that rhymes with shmextortion. So I responded that this requirement is unethical, inappropriate, and possibly a breach of contract. I gave him every opportunity to walk it back, and then reached out directly to the firm owner to verify that this was in fact the position that Bitarchitects was taking.
The only response I got is that we can terminate the agreement, so that's what we did. To their credit, they processed the refund relatively quickly.
So yeah, I don't know. I can only speak to my experience, of course. The other positive reviews indicate that other people have had better experiences with them. But this all does make me wonder if other reviews have been manipulated in a similar manner. So caveat emptor I guess.
Because I fully expect they will respond and try to spin this in some way that makes me look like I'm the unreasonable one, I'm attaching screenshots of the actual email exchange (just the initial exchange, because the junior assistant started texting me after that email and it went on for a while, until I went back to email to contact the owner). Redacting names and email addresses as a professional courtesy.
