ComplaintsforThinkPod, LLC

• Initial Complaint

  04/14/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  On 9/30/2021 we hired Thinkpod Agency to design our website. We signed their contract which did NOT include any termination clause. We were concerned with this and brought up our concern about having a quality of service guarantee. The owner of Thinkpod Agency gave us a verbal satisfaction guarantee. She shared that in 20 years, she has never had a dissatisfied client and felt confident in her services to offer us a 100% satisfaction guarantee. We paid a deposit of 1872.50. Thinkpod agency presented us with an initial timeline with multiple checkpoints and deadlines. You can see from the owner's 11/8/2021 response to my email asking for an update, how our relationship had started. The agency was delayed at every point of the development phase. They missed hard deadlines for copy, design, and never had our project managed effectively. We were given more than 5 different go live dates- by Thanksgiving, before Christmas, before January 1, by January 13, January 20. ALL 5 deadlines were missed. Every time we brought up our concerns to the company it was excuse after excuse - multiple sicknesses, personal matters (ie family issues, court appearances), overload of work, etc. On 1/31/2022 Aubrey stated to us in writing that she would refund our full deposit if we were dissatisfied and verbally told us this on 1/24 and 1/31. On February 1, 2022 I emailed the owner with our request to sever our relationship and asked for a refund of our deposit as she promised. I emailed again on 2/4, 2/7, and 2/14 asking her for a response. Finally on 2/14 Aubrey responded extremely unprofessionally telling us how little money she had in her bank account and that her "mention of giving (our) money back was out of pure shock, wasn't legally binding." We want to warn other companies from being taken advantage by Thinkpod agency. We also are kindly asking for intervention in this matter in helping us to get our full deposit returned to us. See details and emails

  

  Business response

  07/29/2022

  Business Response /* (1000, 6, 2022/04/22) */ We appreciate the Better Business Bureau and its intervention in this situation. We have been accredited with the BBB with an A+ rating for years. We value that - just as we value our relationship with every one of our clients. This situation, with a previous client - ****, and owners *** and***** *****, is an unfortunate one. **** signed a contract with us for website creation that included design, content, SEO, market research and so much more. In our almost 24 years of business, we have not faced a similar situation. Our team worked hard on this project - there was a huge amount of scope creep here that stretched us beyond our budget for ****. I should have spoken up, reminded the clients of what was included in their contract with an offer to revise, and taken the time to educate the clients on what was happening - but client satisfaction is always my focus, and we were hoping **** would choose TPA for their long term marketing efforts. So, we kept going, trying to meet every request. This did impact deadlines and we communicated any and all delays as soon as we saw them arising. We were 95 percent complete with ****'s website, and ready to launch within days when **** expressed their dissatisfaction with the project's progress. We did offer to refund their deposit and communicated with **** that a termination contract was required for our protection and theirs. Because our initial contract did not outline that they would need to sign a termination contract agreement, **** argued that they did not want to sign anything further. Truly, this was for everyone's protection. It laid out terms of repayment, covered confidentiality terms, and outlined what was rightfully TPA's due to the contract being void, and **** not having paid for their services. This includes all content written by my team, the unique tagline created by our team, web design, market research (personas, etc), and more. **** argued that they would not agree to those terms as they brought us the color scheme and content and that they would not agree to "not using their business name in a tagline." Any content specifically from their old site, is of course theirs. Of course, we are not arguing ownership of their business name or rights to it in a tagline - just that they cannot use the specific tagline our writers developed. We are talking about new content and designs by our team, exclusively. The contract **** initially signed for us states, "Everything we create for you is yours. We strive for life-long partnerships and growth. However, if you should choose to move on, we understand and would respectfully provide you with everything you have paid for. It's all yours to keep. We hold no ownership over any of it and will assist with the transition to your new partner agency." We are 100 percent willing to resolve this and put it behind us - with repayment settled if **** is willing to sign our termination contract. We regret the way this entire situation has progressed and had hoped for a much better outcome. We never want to leave a business partnership in this way, and this is in fact the first time we have faced this. Unfortunately, we have to protect our work, or we could face other situations where clients allow us to basically finish a project and then voice dissatisfaction and end up with all of our work, for free. We do wish **** the best in their endeavors going forward. Consumer Response /* (3000, 9, 2022/04/25) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) After reading the response provided by Aubrey at Thinkpod agency, I can say I am not surprised by the untruths with which the response was riddled. It is our belief that Aubrey is trying to justify her right to keep our deposit money. I would like to point out several of these in detail and provide the reality of what transpired with email details. First off, we were crystal clear about our project scope and desires from the day of our interview process with Thinkpod, through the entire contract signing, and entire relationship. We never changed our course or scope of the work. Aubrey's team made the decision to switch from a template design and we were notified on 11/2 via email from Aubrey. "I'm still a bit of a hot mess, but I'm looking forward to meeting today. Just one quick heads up - Tony took your design and ran with it. So, we're running behind on it... but, you're getting a custom, professional design (instead of a template design) for the same price. He's just not capable of sticking to a template, lol." Any other suggestions of edits and changes we made were within the original scope of work. Aubrey also made promises for additional work to be done at no-charge due to the horrible start we had with delay after delay. On 11/8 we received these words in email from Aubrey - "Tony did a great job, but it's not the vision I had for you guys, so I'm editing it a bit. But, it will be out tonight. Total side note - I promise that this is not how this agency operates. Typically, I can be sick for a day or two (or take a day off here and there) and everything still runs smoothly. We suddenly had a massive flow of new work come in, which is awesome. And, one of my gals, ********, had to cut back hours at the same time, which is not awesome. So, we're behind schedule. Getting a custom design out typically takes a week or two, but I feel like it's been closer to 3 weeks for you guys, which is far too long to wait. After getting more familiarized with your site and workflow through Active Campaign, I know that we will need to redesign and brand the promotional landing pages and emails to match the site and keep everything consistent. Throughout all of this, I've been hoping that you'd let us do those designs and the development at no extra charge as a massive apology for the delay for the initial designs. We'd like to be in this for the long-haul with you guys, and really don't want to scare you away with this initial impression." As you can read directly from Aubrey's email, these delays were not due to our revision requests rather they were caused by sickness on her team, changes to custom vs. template made by Thinkpod NOT ****, edits that Aubrey took on herself, staffing issues at ThinkPod, and excessive workload. We also did not see design that evening. We received 1 page design wire frame on 11/9. As mentioned before, ThinkPod was delayed at every point of the development phase. They missed hard deadlines for copy, design, and never had our project managed effectively. We were given more than 5 different go live dates- by Thanksgiving, before Christmas, before January 1, by January 13, January 20. ALL 5 deadlines were missed. Every time we brought up our concerns to the company it was excuse after excuse - multiple sicknesses, personal matters (ie family issues, court appearances), overload of work, etc. The communication with the agency was also highly lacking. On multiple occasions our emails never received a response and many concerns were not addressed. After missing 2 go-live deadlines***** *****, emailed Aubrey on 12/30 with our concern again on the delay of our project. As you can see from her words in her email response to us, it was her team again that was the reason for delays. She also very clearly says how "pretty simply" our site would have been for development. "This week has gotten away from me. I apologize for the delay on the timeline - Bridget and Tony are both out until Monday for the New Year holiday. Tony and I met today on the inner page design, and it's coming along great. As for timing, as soon as we've got the designs approved, we'll start on the development. Between development, content placement, SEO, and proofing (both internally and through you guys), we're looking at approximately 2-3 weeks before launch at the earliest. Your site is pretty simple in regards to the number of pages and functionality that need to be developed. So, that timeline could be shorter, or longer depending on the time to proof, edit, etc." - Aubrey 12/30 email. 2-3 week would have put us live between 1/13 and 1/20. By 1/19, we were still waiting on copy content and designs for review from ThinkPod. On January 24 we had a live zoom meeting with Aubrey in which we shared our concerns yet again. The same as she had done all along happened. She promised our site was going to be done soon and gave us a new deadline of the end of January. By this time, we only saw preliminary wireframes and design for a few pages, never had a full complete design review of any page, and was still waiting to see designs for multiple pages. On 1/27 we got another email from Aubrey stating more delays in copy were because of sickness - "Bridget's whole family has Covid, which is why she has been behind on the content quote." On January 27th I sent an email which you can see below clearly asking yet again for a new go live date. I clearly stated our missed deadlines and asked for updated one. By January 29th we had yet to receive a response from Aubrey, so my husband***** sent an email again reiterating our dissatisfaction with the service and communication from Aubrey and the entire Thinkpod Agency. On January 31st Aubrey responded and stated in writing in this email that she would refund our money. She misquoted the initial deposit her email as we paid $1872.50. The 1/27 email from me, 1/29 email from***** and 1/31 email from Aubrey are below. We immediately booked a live call with Aubrey to address this, and she was extremely unprofessional and defensive in her position with our website again giving us nothing but excuses. She promised they were almost done with our website and gave us yet another live date now of February 4, 2022. We knew that would never happen based on where we were with design review and with the past months of experience with Aubrey and the Thinkpod Agency. She told us again verbally that she would refund our deposit in full if we chose to end our relationship. We asked Aubrey to hold off on work for a day so we could decide if we wanted to sever our relationship with full deposit refund or move forward. On February 1, 2022 I emailed Aubrey with our request to sever our relationship and asked for a refund of our deposit as she promised. I emailed again on 2/4, 2/7, and 2/14 asking her for a response. Finally on 2/14 Aubrey responded extremely unprofessionally telling us how little money she had in her bank account and that her "mention of giving our money back was out of pure shock, wasn't legally binding." "One last thing - but, you're not dealing with a huge agency here. You're dealing with a small agency with no money in a "savings account" sitting around somewhere. And, when it boils down to it, you're really dealing with one person - me - who's about to lose her apartment for insufficient funds and is looking for alternative living arrangements for my two boys and I, is lost in divorce attorney paperwork, hasn't had a savings account since Covid started, and stayed up night after night to research your competitors, work on designs and edits, answer all of the emails as fast as I could, caught Covid in the middle of it all and still never slept and kept going I'm an actual person. Here's my bank account right now after paying my team to do extra work for you guys, leaning on the fact that we were supposed to be doing digital marketing later for you and would HOPEFULLY make it up." - Aubrey 2/14 email. Image of bank account showed $-1875.50. Aubrey stated in her response to the BBB complaint that she is 100% willing to refund our deposit. However, her termination agreement has unjust and unrealistic terms for which we can not agree upon. She is asking us to sign over intellectual property rights to material and **** company specific data that we brought to ThinkPod, which we created and own. For example, we brought the color scheme to thinkpod as we have a trademarked logo that our graphic designer created and complete graphic vector files that we provided to thinkpod for our design schemes. We also created our personas and provided them to thinkpod at the beginning of partnership. These were created in depth with our business coach and we invested a tremendous amount in these. Regarding copy, there are several pieces of copy which we had former marketing partners and previous copywriters create for us, - see attached document for fu Business Response /* (4000, 11, 2022/05/05) */ Please see attached* I truly feel like there is a massive misunderstanding here, and that we have failed as communicators - which is our job. Our entire team is disheartened that we have somehow arrived here. We, at no time, have tried to keep materials that **** owned prior to our agency relationship with them. We are not trying to keep their logo, their existing web content or images. If **** feels that way, we apologize. We would not ever try to take what isn't rightfully ours, or intentionally hurt a business. That goes against our faith and values, and is simply cruel. We would gain (no pun intended) nothing from attempting to do this. Our terms are simply that content created by the TPA team, along with website design and functionality created by the TPA team not be used by **** going forward. Because the business relationship ended, and the deposit is to be returned, **** did not pay for any of that material. They do not own it. Yes, they were involved in approval processes and asked for edits in content - that does not make the content theirs. Our team of writers researched and developed that content specifically for them and made tweaks as is typical of client approval process. We often deal with our clients in a personal manner. Many of our clients we count as friends. We care about their livelihoods, their family, their health. Because of that, we often share - very honestly - any circumstances in our own worlds, because clients share with us. Business is personal to me, and this is a lesson learned the hard way about the downfalls of operating that way. Seeing my personal information, and my team's personal circumstances used in these complaints without regard for our privacy is hurtful, and frankly illegal. We appreciate BBB's policy of redacting those pieces of information before a complaint goes live. There are several errors in ***'s timeline. We are not going to spend the time to dispute these things line by line. That would only serve to keep an ugly situation going. Instead, we want to focus on the core of the issue and try to resolve this as quickly and peacefully as possible. That is all we want. I assure **** we are in no way trying to keep their deposit. We simply want to reach an agreement that protects the work of TPA. We are willing to compromise, and in fact are revising our termination agreement at this time to clarify details and update payment terms. It's our hope that this will bring resolution, and peace of mind to *** and*****. That is what we want - to clear up this entire situation, and to depart ways on as good of terms as might be possible. Again, we wish **** the best going forward. Consumer Response /* (4200, 19, 2022/05/16) */ As of today 5/16 we have not heard from Thinkpod Agency with an updated termination agreement as she has made false statements. I waited to respond to BBB giving Thinkpod ample response time. Based on our interactions with Aubrey during our entire relationship and when we terminated, we do not believe Aubrey has any intention on paying back our deposit as she originally promised. She is simply using legality in the form of a "termination agreement" to justify her right to our deposit. As we stated multiple times and in light of the financial concerns for Thinkpod Agency, we are more than willing to accept a reasonable repayment plan. We only wish to get our refund back in full and put our horrible and unprofessional issue with Thinkpod Agency behind us for good. Business Response /* (4000, 21, 2022/05/18) */ TPA would like to clear up some confusion apparent in ****'s latest BBB response. Our updated termination contract was in fact submitted to the BBB with our response on 5/05/22. *** and***** should have (from our understanding) been able to view any attachments in our response, similar to the way we are able to view attachments sent by them to the BBB. We had not sent an official DocuSign as we were under the impression we should wait until everything was finalized through the BBB. We believed sending it to **** in advance of their response would seem presumptuous and cause them to be further upset. TPA very much intends to pay **** back, and it has never been our intention to withhold that from you. Please see the attached PDF showing where **** can view the updated contract in the BBB response/process (to assist, all the attachments are at the bottom of the link sent by BBB - and the contract is with our 5/5 response.) If they are ready to sign, I will send it through DocuSign. I would very much like to peacefully and professionally resolve this. Again, we wish **** the best. Consumer Response /* (4200, 27, 2022/05/23) */ ***Document Attached*** Please see attached revised counter termination agreement. Per request by BBB, we made necessary revisions. Business Response /* (4000, 29, 2022/06/02) */ We are grateful that **** is willing to compromise on the termination contract, and that it looks like we are closer to a resolution. There are several revisions that we are uncomfortable with, however, and would like to discuss. All references to intellectual property rights were removed from the contract, essentially granting **** access to all of the work our agency performed. We are willing to make concessions in this area, but will not agree to full use of all the work done. We are not comfortable with this revision and will not agree to such a contract. Additionally, **** is asking to be refunded the full amount of their deposit, including sales tax. From my business and tax law understanding, this is not typical. We are not comfortable refunding back taxes from 2021 that have already been accounted for in our 2021 tax filing and sent to the IRS. Finally, **** removed language acknowledging both parties were in breach of contract and that both parties agreed not to hold the other responsible once the terms of the contract were completed. We do not want to split hairs but believe these are large omissions from the termination contract. We are simply not comfortable agreeing to this very edited-down version of the contract. We are willing to continue the dialogue but believe **** needs to be willing to compromise on the terms of the contract as we have. Our last contract submitted to BBB was already revised to include intellectual property compromises based on these conversations. We will send **** a new contract to review, that hopefully allows both TPA to compromise on terms but still be protected under the law. Consumer Response /* (4200, 31, 2022/06/06) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) We would like to take a moment to address a few items mentioned by Aubrey B*******. First regarding the breach of contract. We did not breach our initial agreement and based on our values and morals will not sign off on any agreement stating such. The only party in breach was Thinkpod agency on multiple accounts, of which we itemized in our submission with multiple deadlines being missed. Those multiple breaches alone render our agreement null and void, as such a full refund should be made. Regarding the tax piece, as confirmed by our accounting experts, Thinkpod should have accounted for the service fees and taxes in tax year 2021. Just as they will have to make an adjustment for the service fee refund, they too will need to make a tax adjustment in year 2022 for the tax paid that will be refunded. This would be the same if you buy material in Dec 2021 and return it in Jan 2022. Regarding the piece where the parties agree not to hold the other responsible once the terms of the contract are completed, we are willing to include that language. We have compromised greatly with our willingness to evaluate and sign further documentation from Thinkpod agency and with a confidentiality/non-disclosure/non-disparage clause. All other adjustments proposed in our final version were firmly recommended by our legal counsel, and we must heed their legal recommendation. Much time and money has been spent thus far, and we are still in the same position we were in back on February 1, 2022 when we severed our relationship with Thinkpod Agency. Aubrey B******* promised to pay us back our deposit (stated in writing and verbally multiple times without additional clause) and no deposit money has been repaid. Thinkpod had the opportunity in their documentation at the inception of our relationship to incorporate termination terminology and did not. Trying to create this after the fact has been extremely emotionally draining causing us undue stress, time consuming, counterproductive to our business, and cost prohibitive at this point. It simply is not fiscally responsible for us to continue to involve our legal counsel to address this matter. So, after much thought and deliberation, we kindly decline making any further compromises to our final version aside from "the parties agree not to hold the other responsible once the terms of the contract were completed." As we have stated multiple times to Thinkpod Agency directly and in our filing, we ask that Aubrey B******* honors her word and pays us back our full deposit. We wish to close the door on this truly unfortunate experience with Thinkpod Agency and hopefully learn a lesson from this situation. From: ******** ***** Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2022 3:03 PM To: Aubrey B******* Cc:***** ***** ************************** Subject: **** Next Steps Hi Aubrey, Thank you for your patience as we contemplated our next step. After much thought and consideration, we have decided that it is in our best interest to terminate our project with your team. In light of everything we discussed yesterday and ultimately your response to our feedback, we think a relationship moving forward might be strained, and we don't want that strain to flow over into the work. For a successful partnership, it is imperative that we can be fully transparent, give feedback - great, bad, and in-between - regularly and as needed, and know that our intentions will be viewed as good, and with our only desire being for betterment or improvement for situation. It's our desire to partner with a company that truly wants to be partnered with us long term, as we are viewing this project and digital marketing for our company as a continuous journey Please understand that this is not a personal insult in anyway. We wish you all the best - abundance and success professionally and personally! Attached is the paid receipt for our deposit. Please respond with your receipt of this message and advise when and how the full deposit will be refunded. Thank you in advance! Here's to Making Your Life EXTRAORDINARY! *** From: Aubrey B******* Sent: Monday, January 31, 2022 6:10 AM To:***** ***** ************************** Cc: ******** ***** ********************************************************************** Subject: Re: Website Changes - *** Notes Importance: High Hi *** and*****, The website is still being developed - that process takes a few weeks, most of which happens behind the scenes. During this process, there have been changes made to content, features, and functionality that steer away from the approved sitemap and designs. Understanding that **** is not one of our typical clients with a large budget, we haven't turned back around with change orders... we've just kept plugging away. In fact, I just responded to one of our designers and two of our developers regarding your testimonial carousel request. It's either custom development, or a paid plugin - I chose to pay the $150 for it, and the additional 6 hours of the developer's time to configure it, instead of turn around and ask you guys for money to cover it. We are actively working on your site, and our intention is to continue to actively work on and complete your site. However, if you're unhappy with the progress made, we will return the $1350. Please let me know how to proceed. Aubrey B******* Owner, Thinker ThinkPod Agency Business Response /* (4000, 41, 2022/06/23) */ ***Document Attached*** Attached **** will find our revised and final offer for a termination contract that allows both parties to close this issue once and for all. ****'s failure in their last response to address TPA's concerns over intellectual property rights of the work performed is concerning. We are unwilling to compromise beyond what we have in this area. As a matter of principle and law, the work performed by our agency belongs to TPA based on the voiding of the marketing contract between TPA and ****, and ****'s initial deposit in the process being refunded. (First payment sent in good faith on 6/20/22 that **** will sign this contract and allow this to be resolved.) We also have spent time and money on legal counsel in this issue -- and have offered early on to have TPA's counsel speak with ****'s counsel in an effort to close this peacefully. We received no response to those offers (email copy included). Like ****, we would be appreciative of this being resolved through BBB so that any further expenses can be avoided. But we will take steps necessary to protect the work we have performed, should that become unavoidable. We believe this final contract allows both parties to compromise, and meet in the middle with a final contract that closes this matter as amicably as possible. As always, we wish *** and***** ***** of ****, the best in the future. Consumer Response /* (4200, 43, 2022/06/27) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) We appreciate Thinkpod's response. However, after so much time and money has been wasted on this matter, we must move beyond this issue and cut our losses. We believe that a business's word and reputation are 2 of the biggest assets that they will ever have and can grow positively. It is unfortunate that Thinkpod Agency is unwilling to honor their word and pay us back our deposit, which they promised both in writing and verbally multiple times without any additional clauses. We provided our final compromise to Thinkpod's requests with our last submission. As previously stated, all adjustments proposed in our final version were firmly recommended by our legal counsel, and we must heed their legal recommendation. We would like to address the intellectual property specifically, as Aubrey mentioned it in her response. We already shared our concerns about information and content that we brought to the project. We still have this concern with items that Thinkpod Agency mistakenly is including in their agreement. There is also much ambiguity around the itemized property, and as such we cannot in our right minds agree to this language. We have compromised greatly with our willingness to evaluate and sign further documentation from Thinkpod agency, with a confidentiality/non-disclosure/non-disparage clause, and an extremely generous 12-month repayment plan. Thinkpod agency was in breach of our original service agreement on multiple accounts, with multiple deadlines being missed. Those multiple breaches alone render our agreement null and void, as such a full refund should be made. As we mentioned before much thought, time, and money has been spent thus far, and we are still are in same position we were in back on February 1, 2022 when we severed our relationship with Thinkpod Agency. It is our belief that Thinkpod Agency never intended to pay us back our deposit and has only used this process to justify their actions. Thinkpod had the opportunity in their documentation at the inception of our relationship to incorporate termination terminology and did not. Trying to create this after the fact has been extremely emotionally draining causing us undue stress, has been time consuming, counterproductive to our business, and is cost prohibitive at this point. It simply is not responsible for us to continue this process. So, after much thought and deliberation, we kindly decline making any further compromises to our final version. We want to thank the efforts of Better Business Bureau for attempting to help us recoup our deposit. We appreciate the opportunity to share our horrible experience with Thinkpod Agency and hope that it will help other companies in the future to avoid this situation with this company. We wish to close the door on this truly unfortunate experience with Thinkpod Agency for good.

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩