Steve, Steve, Steve:
I knew you were a liar and a cheat; but this has crossed the line. You're
either a pathological liar or delusional. I hope it's the former; but I'm
starting to believe it's the latter.
I'll address what you write below and provide support from our e-mail
exchange in 2001.
(For the sake of those of you reading this, I will only provide excerpts
from e-mail where appropriate, If anyone wants to see the original e-mails,
I will send them to you upon request to (e-mail address removed).)
PC Datasheet said:
Here's the other half of the Neil Ginsberg story ---
I contacted Ginsberg about doing some work for me. He gave me a fixed cost
quote of $500. I thought that that was somewhat high and he said a fixed
cost bid is always high to guarantee that it covers the job. He then said
that he would work at an hourly rate and guaranteed me the project cost
would be lower. I accepted his proposal. Sometime later I checked back
with
him to see what progress he had made and was informed that he was only
half
done and his hourly fees at that point were at $750. Nothing had changed
in
the specs for what needed done. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to
figure
that the final cost was going to be near $1500. That is triple his fixed
cost quote. He had guaranteed me the project cost would be lower than
$500.
His guarantee was worthless and he never contacted me in regards to the
amount of time he was purportedly expending on the project. He kept my
initial deposit of $375 and I got a half done project whose finished cost
was suppose to be less than $500.
Steve
You originally said (E-mail 1):
All I need then is your estimate of the number of hours. I don't need a
formal quote, just a short email is enough.
Please note the word "estimate."
I replied (E-mail 2) with an outline of what I would do, along with a couple
of notes about items I had questions about and which would not be included
in the estimate. The estimate given was $500.
You then replied (E-mail 3):
Thank you for the quote! Your solution looks like what I need so I am
definitely going ahead with it. I got your email regarding your hourly
rate and estimate of hours and will go with you doing it on an hourly
basis.
Please note again the word "estimate" there and the note that it would be
done on an "hourly basis."
Continuing in the same e-mail from you:
Before starting I want to finalize the specs and your estimate of the
hours. I have some additions. Let me know if you can do them and what
you now estimate for total hours.
Note again the word "estimate" from you when asking for my new estimate.
A few days later, you wrote (E-mail 4):
Thanks for the analysis and suggestions!! Here are my responses to your
last round of questions and comments. I'm ready to go if you have all
the information you need. Please give me your new estimate of time
(probable and conservative) so I know approximately what your fees will
be and then I'll give you the green light. Thanks again for all the
effort you are putting into this.
Please note here that you again use the word "estimate" when asking for my
new estimate; that you ask for a range ("probable and conservative"), not a
fixed amount; and that you state that you want to know "approximately" what
my fees will be.
So, let's recap here a bit.
I contacted Ginsberg about doing some work for me. He gave me a fixed cost
quote of $500.
That's obviously not true. Time and again in our exchange we discussed an
"estimate" for the work. Nowhere was a fixed amount mentioned.
2) You then said:
I thought that that was somewhat high and he said a fixed
cost bid is always high to guarantee that it covers the job. He then said
that he would work at an hourly rate and guaranteed me the project cost
would be lower.
That doesn't even make sense. If one were to guarantee a cost, then it would
be a fixed cost, not an estimate. Furthermore, in e-mails 3 and 4, above,
you ask for a "new estimate" based on additions you made. How can even one
who is delusional think that a new estimate based on additions would be
lower than the original estimate??
3) You continued:
I accepted his proposal. Sometime later I checked back with
him to see what progress he had made and was informed that he was only
half
done and his hourly fees at that point were at $750. Nothing had changed
in
the specs for what needed done.
That part about it being "half done" is a lie -- but I'll get back to that
later. Regarding what you wrote:
"Nothing had changed in the specs for what needed done."
Clearly that's a lie. In e-mail 3, above, you write:
Before starting I want to finalize the specs and your estimate of the
hours. I have some additions. Let me know if you can do them and what
you now estimate for total hours.
Clearly, by your own admission, you had made additions to what was used for
the original estimate of $500, and that estimate was no longer valid, and
you were seeking a new one.
4) You concluded:
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure
that the final cost was going to be near $1500. That is triple his fixed
cost quote. He had guaranteed me the project cost would be lower than
$500.
His guarantee was worthless and he never contacted me in regards to the
amount of time he was purportedly expending on the project. He kept my
initial deposit of $375 and I got a half done project whose finished cost
was suppose to be less than $500.
I think this shows how good you are at persuading people (and I empathize
with those who are trying to point out your follies to this newgroup and get
your slick, snake oil responses). I'll address this in a bit. But I wanted
to point out that part about "He had guaranteed me the project cost would be
lower than $500." I don't see how anyone with half a brain can sincerly
believe that. Clearly you have half a brain. That means (again) that you're
either a pathological liar or delusional.
Continuing.......
I then sent you an e-mail with terms, and you replied agreeing to those
terms (E-mail 5). The second paragraph of those terms clearly stated:
"An estimate of hours would be provided before the start of the project.
The estimate is by no means a fixed price or upper limit. It is merely an
estimate of the hours to perform the work. If a change in the estimate
is required, no work will be performed beyond the original estimate without
express approval."
These were the terms that you agreed to in your e-mail (in addition to the
previous e-mails which reference the "estimate"). And now you say I
guaranteed you a fixed price for the job? Snake oil, Steve; snake oil.
After you replied to my additional questions (E-mail 4), I replied to your
response with a revised outline and some additional questions (E-mail 6). In
that said:
Right now it looks like an additional 2-3 hours from my original estimate,
based on the items above with revision number incrementing on new records
as
well as old, and with the caption document as-is with mail merge fields.
But
I'll give you an "official" revised estimate on the next round when there
are no more outstanding issues.
You then replied to my questions (E-mail 7) and said
Please proceed with this project. Email me your mailing address and I
will put a deposit of $300 in the mail to you. Can you have it done by
the end of next week?
My answers to your last round of questions is below. If there are any
new issues or outstanding issues, email them to me and I will reply back
to your email.
I then replied (E-mail 8) to your responses with some additional questions,
and stated:
Assuming that Option 2 is a go, the revised estimate is 3-5 hours above
the
original estimate (8-12 hours), making the new estimate 11-17 hours.
Please
confirm.
I said:
The end of next week [3/16/01] looks good as a timeframe to get it done
by.
On 3/16 you wrote asking what the status of the project was (E-mail 9). I
replied (E-mail 10) that I would be working on it over the weekend, and
should have it to you by that Monday (3/19).
That day and over the weekend we went back and forth a couple of times,
ironing out the last technical details.
That Monday at 3:30 a.m. I sent you the database with an e-mail (E-mail 11)
explaining some points, and noting that a few minor issues (a couple of
buttons for existing routines, along with one new routine) needed to be
completed, and that there was a little bit of testing that still needed to
be done. But the database was mostly (90%) complete.
At 3:40 a.m. I sent you an e-mail (E-mail 12) with a summary of the hours
worked. The total hours worked at that point was 13.2 -- well within the
range of the revised estimate (11-17 hours) that you had agreed to.
That morning, you replied with some technical issues related to the database
I had just sent you. We went back and forth a few times in e-mail, and at
5:05 p.m. that day I sent you a revised database (E-mail 13).
After more discussion (presumably by phone, since I don't have e-mails of
it), I sent you another version of the database at 1:47 a.m. on 3/20 (E-mail
14). This was after you were able to review and note issues with two
previous versions, all of which I addressed.
That morning you sent me an e-mail stating that you were "pulling the plug"
on the project; that you would not pay me for my time; and that you wanted
your $300 deposit (not $375) back. I sent you a final invoice that afternoon
for 18.4 hours (slightly over the estimate, so you were within your rights
to only pay for 17 hours, since I hadn't gotten explicit permission for the
additional hour, since it was the end of the project and it was only an
hour). You replied (E-mail 15) that I was "in breach of contract for failure
to provide a finished product and failure to deliver that product as
promised on March 16."
So, getting back to what you wrote recently.....
1) You said:
Sometime later I checked back with
him to see what progress he had made and was informed that he was only
half
done and his hourly fees at that point were at $750. Nothing had changed
in
the specs for what needed done. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to
figure
that the final cost was going to be near $1500.
a) The database was 90% complete. A rocket scientist would have put the
estimate at $835. But, apparently, you're not a rocket scientist.
b) As noted, much had changed in the specs for the original estimate of
$500. The revised estimate, which had been agreed upon was $765.
That is triple his fixed
cost quote. He had guaranteed me the project cost would be lower than
$500.
c) As noted above, that's a lie.
His guarantee was worthless and he never contacted me in regards to the
amount of time he was purportedly expending on the project.
d) The fictitious guarantee that it would be lower than $500 is your
delusion. And I did contact you with a summary of hours when I initially
delivered the database, which was within the estimate had I provided.
He kept my initial deposit of $375
and I got a half done project whose finished cost
was suppose to be less than $500.
e) It was a $300 deposit; the database was 90% done; and the revised
estimate was $765.
If you were really were concerned about the cost, as your bogus figures here
would lead one to believe, then you could have said that you didn't want to
pay over the 17 hours that we had agreed upon, and given me the option to
just finish up the hour or so that was left to do at that rate. I probably
would have agreed to do that. But since cost wasn't really the issue, that
wasn't an option for you.
But your original pretext was different. Originally, as noted above (E-mail
15), you wrote that the reason was that I was "in breach of contract for
failure to
provide a finished product and failure to deliver that product as promised
on March 16." What I find interesting about that is:
a) There was no agreement to deliver the product by March 16 (you asked if I
could have it by that day, and I said it "looked good for that date" --
hardly a binding agreement!).
b) When I wrote you on March 16 (E-mail 10) stating that I would have the
database to you by Monday, you not say that that was unacceptable.
c) If you were so concerned about the March 16 deadline, then why didn't you
pull the plug on March 17 when the database wasn't delievered? Why did you
wait until after I worked on it some more over the weekend; then delievered
it to you early in the morning Monday, March 19; then gave your feedback and
received another version from me later that day; then gave more feedback and
received another version from me early on March 20; then said you were
pulling the plug for not delivering it on March 16, and wouldn't pay for my
work? Why, if the supposed March 16 deadline was the issue, did you wait
until after you received the database on March 19-20 before telling me you
were cancelling the contract for not meeting the March 16 deadline, and
wouldn't be paying me for my work? Because that wasn't the issue either.
Though it became clear to me at that point that you were an unscrupulous
person with no ethical foundation, my estimation of you reached a new low a
couple of days later when I read your posting (under the pseudonym "Ron") in
CDMA a few days later, asking for help in completing the database that you
had stolen from me. I mean, it's one thing to not want to continue with a
contract. That's fine. But to take someone's work, and use it without paying
them for it -- and then to go into the very newsgroup where you found that
person and ask for help in completing the stolen database? That would be
funny if it weren't so sad.
So, why did I take so much time to write all of this? Well, first, because
you pissed me off with your lies here. But I shouldn't be surprised. Lies
are your game, aren't they, Ron? But, second, because I care about the
people in this newsgroup, and I see the way you are attempting to delude
them into believe that you're an innocent person who's being picked on. I
don't believe you really believe you're being picked on. I believe you know
that the criticisms are valid, but your lying nature has to try to make it
seem otherwise. You're a sad, sad individual, Steve.
