Charles Winters contracted to build two websites for me. He
told me it would take 5 days. Two weeks after starting he told me the first
site was 50% complete, and therefore he needed his second (of 3) payments. I
questioned the work, he responded that he had completed the background
programming and that the site was essentially complete. Trustingly I paid the
second payment. He then told me that the server on which my site was hosted had
problems, so he needed to move the site to his own servers. This “issue” led to
2 more weeks of delay.
He called me desperate for money, requesting 50% of the
final balance to be paid early. His phone was about to be disconnected and if I
did not give him the money, he wouldn’t be able to be in contact and therefore
could not finish the job. It was either $200 immediately or no websites. I
foolishly gave him the money. He then began “working” on my second site. He
took the existing site offline, and proceeded to lose all the data. He blamed
this on a second server company crashing before he could back up any data.
(Funny – it had been working perfectly for a year before he accessed it).
Every day for 4 weeks he told me the next day my sites would
be complete. Each promise was a lie, met by excuses about his car, his
roommate, ex wife, child, traffic court, and whatever reason he could conjure
up that day. I finally demanded to be reimbursed. A 5 day agreement had turned
into 6 weeks. My original functional site I had given him to improve, was gone
without backup, and the complete site to be built was not complete and
certainly not functional. He refused reimbursement saying that he had done the
work, nothing was his fault as the servers were at fault, and he believed he
had done the work (whether or not the sites existed). I threatened to sue him,
his response was to threaten to destroy any site I ever built in the future, he
would destroy the materials I gave him, and unless I signed a release saying
that all work had been completed satisfactorily, I would “be sorry”.
Charles Winters is a pathological liar and incompetent at
website construction. In one 8 hour marathon work session, he managed to add
one jpeg to a website. I do not believe he ever intended to do any work. He has
caused me 6 weeks of unrelenting stress for a job that was supposed to take 5
days, he took my money, my books of photo’s to be used for the sites are
probably gone, and after all this time, I need to start again with someone new.
I do not recall a more unpleasant transactional experience.
