Back Paws

Well, my old boss Greg would be proud... I got up "on my back paws and barked like a big dog" today. At our meeting last week with our webdesigner, I thought maybe we'd have to take that route. But as I shared, the meeting went great and we were plain old giddy about our website. Then Friday came and bam, we hit a wall with Denise at 4:00pm with the crap she pulled. She's been a piece of work for us since it started, but the other people we have dealt with have seemed to make it worthwhile having them build our site. Today? Well, Denise pushed and ya know what? I'm proud to say I pushed back! Rufffff! :)

I think I mentioned the 'horse poop' she pulled with sending us a detailed list of costs from here on out for our website? To include 7 items that she broke down the number of hours they will take to do each one... to the tune of nearly 50 hours of work priced at a wapping discount of $95 an HOUR!? Shawna and I were speechless. Huh? Not to mention part of these 7 were things we asked them to do from the very beginning. After taking the weekend to think about it and trying not to think about it, composing our thoughts and seeking help from the Lord in prayer, we came to a point where we knew what to do. Let's meet with the designers face to face AGAIN and spell out what all they still need to do for us (at no charge) because we had already talked about these things. Mind you they don't take notes at our meetings, but Shawna and I do! As Phyllis taught me, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT. And that's where barking came into play this morning :)

I called to set up the meeting, hoping for Tuesday but Wednesday worked better for them, fine. She asked what the purpose of the meeting was and I told her, to discuss the "Additions to Website Functionality" (the title on her quote for what she claims we will owe). We set a time and hung up. I texted Erk and Shawna to let them know the time for Wednesday morning and I thought we were all good. Then in talking to Erk, the time I had set was a little tight with a meeting he and Jay have to attend at work, so I called Denise back to push it up a 1/2 hour. Again, she asked "what is it you want to discuss?" So we went down that road. As much as I was playing nice about my responses, this woman managed to push and push and out came the big dog, baby! HA! Ok, so I sound kinda cocky, but I gotta tell ya, it felt REALLY good. My adrenaline was still pumping after I was off the phone and I wanted to beat someone up! :) Don't worry, I didn't...

After I spelled out my documented emails and notes showing that we had discussed some of the things they are now trying to bill us for and standing firm, she backed down and said "yep, it will be good to meet on Wednesday." And yep, I'm hoping it will. This has been a LONG road with them, lots of patience and realization that they let our site sit for too long, then had someone work a weekend of overtime on it (not our fault they had to pay him overtime!) and now? We are ready to be live! I'll let ya know how Wednesday goes.