Rokk Media Ltd Outsources work to freelancers, then doesn't pay them. Alphington, Devon, United Kingdom, Internet

Rokk Media LTD are a web design company based in  Alphington, Devon, UK.  I was contacted initially by their account manager Hannah Ackford who offered me some website design work for a project called 'Geo Location'.  Their managing director Martin Dainton got into contact with me and sent me a Photoshop document of how the proposed site would look, he also stated their budget and length of time they thought it would take (which ended up being a day or so). 

He was quite sketchy with the brief and didnt seem to be able to provide much information.  I thought the budget and time-scale were unrealistic, but I wanted to do more work for them in future so I agreed. After completing the template as per the design Martin started to ask for an increasing amount of changes which weren't discussed.  I decided to do these changes as a gesture of good will but I did negotiate an increase in pay for this.  Martin agreed.

I was quite happy at this as Martin could see the work that had been carried out and indeed he could view the source code that I had written all throughout the process, as I provided a server for the files to sit on. After completing the template I sent the files to Martin at his request, along with an invoice.  My payment terms were 7 days.  After this time elapsed Martin sent me an email.

He stated firstly that he doesn't pay freelancers after 7 days, but after 30 days.  I thought this rather strange as to his company this would have been a small amount of money. He went on to state that he had to make various 'changes' to the template and that he didn't feel that he should have to pay the full price.  Keep in mind that this is the low end of 3 figures and took well over the allotted time and budget to create.

He also stated that he would like to negotiate a decrease in the price for the work despite it being carried out exactly as he asked. After responding to Martin he started ignore my emails, as did his account manager Hannah Ackford.  I am now in the process of trying to recover this relatively small sum of money because to me, it means a lot.

I got the feeling throughout my dealings with Rokk Media that they never had any intention of paying for the work and simply made up a list of excuses after accepting the work and the invoice. I would have been happy to terminate any agreement,  had not been able to view all of the code and all of the files throughout the entire process.  I do feel cheated by Martin Dainton and Rokk Media.

If you deal with them, beware of their 'overly nice' attitude.  If you are a freelancer I wouldn't recommend working for them in any shape or form.  If you are a client, I would also warn that they probably would not devote much time or effort to your project and may not even be doing it themselves.