This is a warning for any WHT user who is doing business with (or thinking of doing business with) mediafirebrand.com

On Feb 9th Alan-Paul of mediafirebrand.com contacted us regarding a request we made to have someone to redesign our homepage for us. We only required the PSD created and Alan-Paul assured us of having a preview done within 24-48 hours. We took the next day to examine his references and portfolio and talked at length to ensure he was legitimate. On Feb 11th we provided the agreed on amount via paypal and he sounded very eager to start.

On February 12th we received an email from Alan-Paul stating that he unexpectedly sold his domain mediafirebrand.com and wanted us to provide our contact information to his hotmail account so that he could continue to work on this project. Here is the email:

from Media Fire Brand <info@mediafirebrand.com>
to
date Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM
subject Re: Website
hide details Feb 12
Hi Tim,

We're not too far off having the site ready for you to have a look at. We have however sold MediaFireBrand.com because of a large offer that came in so could you update your contact e-mail for us to sheep.go.moo@hotmail.com for the time being until we rebrand? Many thanks, this is the last e-mail we'll send from this account.

Kind regards,

Alan-Paul
Media Fire Brand


On Feb 14th I sent him an email asking on the status of the site and if he would have something to show me soon. On Feb 15th he responded that his designer was supposed to have mailed me the preview before he left to take his wife on a trip for Valentines Day. He assured me that he would contact the designer and email it to me shortly. This was the last time I would ever hear from Alan-Paul.

On Feb 17th I sent an email to info@mediafirebrand.com and the response I received was that Alan-paul was no longer part of the management team. I asked for Alan's forwarding contact info and never received a reply.


from info@mediafirebrand.com
to
date Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:01 AM
subject Re: Website update - livingcontemporary.com
hide details Feb 18
Hello there!

Sadly Alan isn't part of the new management at MediaFireBrand. Surely is there somthing i can assist you over?

Thank you

Salman Patel
MediaFireBrand
Management Team


Ive tried to contact Alan-Paul at the hotmail account he provided, the mediafirebrand.com email address and the email address that paypal has on file and Ive never received a response. I then tried to find his contact info on here and found this thread http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=925786&highlight=mediafirebrand . It appears that while Alan-Paul was trying to drum up new business on this and other forums, he was already planning to sell the site. I can only assume based on what happened in my case and possibly in this case ( http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=924737&highlight=mediafirebrand ) his plan was to take the money and run (or at least take the money and leave the new owner to sort it out). His profile here shows that he last logged in on 2/28 so I know he didnt drop off the face of the earth. Maybe he still reads the forums, I dont know.

Luckily due to the volume and high $ per transaction that we do with Paypal we have a dedicated Paypal account rep who was able to escalate our dispute for us and get us the refund back. However this post is made as a warning to anyone who is currently doing business with Alan-Paul. I can not comment on the new owner, however it should be known that the portfolio you see on mediafirebrand.com was not done by the current owner/designer, so keep that in mind. Also, a few emails to the new owner have gone unanswered.

On a side note, on Feb 17th we hired a new designer from WHT. I'll leave the name off for now but thus far its been a rough ride. We are almost a month in to the project and he has refunded 50% so far, hope to have the other 50% soon. If it doesnt work out you can expect a full review of the new provider as well. We just recently hired designer #3 (also from WHT, call me a sucker) but thus far its going good.

That's horrible. I loved their logo work.

Ive tried to contact Alan-Paul at the hotmail account he provided, the mediafirebrand.com email address and the email address that paypal has on file and Ive never received a response. I then tried to find his contact info on here and found this thread http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=925786&highlight=mediafirebrand . It appears that while Alan-Paul was trying to drum up new business on this and other forums, he was already planning to sell the site. .
The site was sold, to Sal, or Sam or whatever he chooses to call himself at the time.

My follow-up review of Steve Garbus should be coming in the next day or so. He is the guy we hired after MediaFire bailed.

I wish I could say it was a better experience.

Yeah last I heard MediaFireBrand was under new management. I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience!

Look forward to reading your review about Steve and I hope your third choice worked out.

I was ripped off by them as well, only it happened back in Dec. Seems like a lot of lies and BS are going on here as I was told that Alan left back in Dec/Jan -- yet he was still actively working with/for the company in Feb.

New management said they would be happy to refund and/or finish the work....then disappeared and stopped replying to PM's and emails.

First time I've came across a bad review of myself in 7 years and I'm not happy at all. camt and Tirade, each of you will be PM'd shortly in reference to the above.

As clarification, the business was sold due to unforseen circumstances that I needed to direct my attention to. The business was sold (as many who had shown interest can testify) on various conditions, one of which was heavily mentioned over and over again to interested parties, was the need to ensure customer satisfaction was fulfilled.

Once the company was sold, I had no control over the operation or processes that would be used to leviate between time and work deligation. This is why I left (at the time) happy with the conditions I put in place for the sale and the commitments that I had wanted the new owners to stick to.

In reference to the portfolio and remaining workloads, all source files were part of the sale due to the fact I had always kept safe backups for customers who would either lose (or in some cases, unintentionally ruin) the source files. I didn't want to have to contact all of my previous customers in excess of 400 to let them know I wasn't doing business anymore and I was sure the new owner at MediaFireBrand.com didn't want to place a news post or a link to either my e-mail account or a new domain because they could risk loss of business. A duplicate portfolio remains at the new site, alongside locally stored backups available to previous customers who approach us of their own accord.

I'm not sure which e-mails people had received stating that I was still working for the company, but when it sold - it sold. The company was managed previously whilst I was taking care of basic issues, outside of my control (before the sale). However, when the sale went through - all e-mail addresses and contact methods were switched to the new owner there and then.

I apologise in seeing a bad review of MediaFireBrand.com as it took a while to build the name up - but I guess I made a necessary bad decision at the time and these things happen.

I'll be happy to clear up any issues personally with anyone affected, namely camt and Tirade - for which, I remember both projects and still hold source files for each on backup drives.

Hope this clarifies everything and I'd like to direct any queries to my PM inbox. Thanks in advance.