Zapdos

Your best bet it to talk to Barclays tech support, they should be able to trace the transaction and tell you exactky why it's failing.

Hi,
 
I am a little conufused about the actions of a bigger designer that sub-contracted me to deal with some of their spillover.
 
I met the person in question. They seemed pretty nice and liked my work and were keen to help me etc...
 
Since then I have had sporadic 'work'.
 
The only problem is that I will do some pre-lim designs and agree a quote and then the work never materialises. This has happened 3 times in sucession. Each time I am rather cheesed off as I work hard on a potential design on Photoshop send it over then no further word..
 
As this has now happened for the third time I really am smelling a rat. I think there is some sort of scam. What I do supply each time is neat and website ready designs.
 
Is it possible this salt of the earth person is just using me to get free design work? The reason I would doubt this is that the sites that I was briefed for in all cases never went online anyway (the excuse each time that the client never went ahead). Its plausible the client dropped out or was inefficient as you guys probably well know a lot of clients are about as useful as a square wheel when it comes to finishing jobs.
 
If this is a scam I am guessing this rogue designer is using my artwork elsewhere.
 
I have given most of the facts, what are peoples thoughts?
 
Since being in the business I have learnt fast it is full of charlatans.

Yes, definitely normal practice and one of the first actions to take as soon as both parties have agreed on terms and work is about to begin. It's also worth taking a deposit to prevent your client screwing you half-way through and wasting your time.
 
 
 
If you have some of the images (an image that he would have most likely wrapped in an <img> tag), you could run it through a Google search which would return with results of images that are the same or visually similar and then you may have an idea if it's been used elsewhere but my guess is that he's definitely used them in some-way... probably sold them or used them for his own clients (the client you were told about probably wasn't one of his real clients).
 
Sorry kid but this stuff happens - mistakes are made to be learnt from so make sure you do! Keep your head up and trust no-one

Always have a contract signed by the client. Yes, in this case, the designer giving you the work is the client. Never ever hand over anything that hasn't been agreed in said contract, and always make sure you get a deposit upfront.
 
Most of the agencies I deal with will cover this stage anyway, by that I mean they land the client their end, send them a psd etc, then when it is signed off it is passed on to me for the development stage.
 
In your case, I would have had 3 payment stages, 30% upfront, 30% upon sign off of said design(psd), and then 40% upon completion of overall project. You could even have split 4 ways if you like.

Having your own servers is VERY expensive and time consuming, don't bother.
 
Instead go have a search for "Reseller Hosting". The basic idea is that, like normal web hosting, you rent server space from a hosting company. However, with reseller packages you're allowed to re-brand the service and sell it to others yourself. The web hosting company handles all the servers, support, etc... you just do the marketing.
 
Nearly all web hosting companies offer the service, it's just a matter of finding a host that you like at a good price.

You just need to wait for Google to recrawl the page. It will see the term is missing and the page will probably go away.
 
It's a problem that I should imagine will be solved with a healthy dosage of patience