Not sure if I am the only one who get clients like this one, but hear read me out.
Potential client calls and asks for a pricing quote. We assess the scope of work and present him with certain numbers that we think are reasonable and well thought. Clients immediately (i.e. without any sort of consideration) replies that “5 years ago someone else did the site for this guy for XXX dollars, why are you charging more?”.
Indeed, why?
Well, here, there and everywhere. Another Indian spam-design company… oops, did I say spam? Noo! They are “ISO 9001:2000 certified organization providing world-class IT solutions since 1991” company, based in Salt Lake Kolkata, India. Long time outsourcing partner with “large client base in India as well as in USA, Canada, UK and Australia”. You know – big guys. The cream of the crop. The brass. What’s interesting though, is that these guys even provided their pricing:
Website design starting at US$ 300 – Web programming at US$ 10/hour – Flash design starting at US$ 75 – Logo design starting at US$ 45.
What I still fail to realize is why would any self-respecting web design company fall for that? It is widely known by now that especially indian programmers are producing especially bad results and (this I know from first-hand experience) even Americans from India refuse to work with programmers and web developers from India.
Generally speaking – there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing or India. It’s just that combined they don’t work. Especially, when I start getting as much Indian web design spam as I do get *various body parts* enlargement spam or nigerian spam letters. Sorry, folks, but if you spam – no cookies for you.
Just called Lenovo for the status of my old laptop repair. So far they only got the replacement fan yesterday and fixed the whole unit today and shipped it today as well. In the meantime, they moved to new software so now reps look up orders in two versions of support software, giving wrong trouble-ticket numbers and messing up other stuff.
Good news – I’m putting Vista and Office 2007 Beta2 on my old laptop tomorrow.
Bad news – need to sell the old laptop ASAP.