Comments

Claim title: Misleading and Unprofessional

[06/05/2010] Brian Kent: 5.06.2010

The posting and complaint by this person is extremely unprofessional, unreasonable and totally unwarranted, in every way. Significant Facts are simply misrepresented and/or conveniently not included.

In spite of repeated attempts from our executive team to help resolve this conflict, not once has this individual attempted in any manner to reasonably communicate with us in any format to resolve this dispute.

San Diego Media has been in this industry for over eleven years and we are 100% confident that we managed the consulting/discovery process with this client in a professional and fair manner. As we do with all our clients.

Both parties signed the consulting/discovery proposal on Friday, February 19th 2010. The document states that the discovery process would take place over four-six weeks. Our pre-contract discovery process and workshops are comprehensive and thorough. The results of that discovery were presented over two sessions beginning April 1st. There was a total of 27 business days between signing the agreement and presenting the results. This is assuredly within the 4-6 week window that was agreed to by both parties.

Our standard discovery agreement was modified at this clients request, and it was agreed that if initial site development and integration costs grew by more than 30%, that a refund of ½ the consulting fee would be returned. This was to be calculated less any yet unknown customization requests that grew out of the discovery process.

With this client, the final cost of the of the development project and integration, not including the special customizations requested, was actually $62,530 or $70 less than our rough estimate. The signed agreement gave us a flexibility of $18,780 (30%) fudge factor and we used none of it. The special customizations required by this client, added about 10% more to the final cost, still nowhere near the 30% flexibility threshold stated in the agreement.

In this discovery agreement, the final cost of the eCommerce Infrastructure and Support was list as TBD or "to be decided," which is our standard practice at that stage. Pre-discovery, we just don't know enough about the client's needs and requirements, to recommend the ideal and appropriate Infrastructure solution until we know more.

In regards to the ongoing cost of Infrastructure and software support fees,
San Diego Media has a flexible array of programs available to our clients. When this company's representative visited our facilities and was in our data center, the options available were discussed and he selected our mid tier option that included a high-performance dedicated UNIX data base server over our shared infrastructure, so our proposal was presented with this options selected and priced accordingly.

There has never been a question or doubt that all of our Infrastructure options were available to this client. If they selected to be on our shared platform where costs begin at $1,995 a month system, all they had to do was say so, and the proposal would have simply been recalculated.

It is also interesting to note that the person lodging this complaint won't even mention their personal or business name, but does not hesitate to libel our company and multiple members of our staff personally. This is the only such review ever posted on our company in its eleven-year history of conducting our business honorably.

San Diego Media has made no attempt to harm this company in any way, and even in this response have gone out of our way to not name them or to identify any of them personally.

If any other business entity has any general questions or concerns regarding this dispute, and wishes to discuss them, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Brian Kent
CEO, San Diego Media, Inc.
brian.kent@sandiegomedia.com