Lewis S.

Absolutely terrible. I emailed them on the 17th of February to have a site coded in order to help out with the work load we had on at the current time. I received an email back on the 19th of Feb stating that they could turnaround the site in 4 business days and they were ready to start straight away. This looked great, so I gave them the go ahead. Upon sending the files, I received another email saying (a direct quote!) "Being honest I haven't expected such quick answer and decision, so likely we'll be able to turn things even a bit quicker, say by Saturday. But this is not guaranteed, just an estimation. Guaranteed delivery - by 9am UK time, February, 25. Of course I'll keep you posted with daily updates about our progress.".

Obviously by this point, I was pretty impressed, so I waited and let them get on with it. I received a quick email on the 20th saying "Just wanted to confirm that we've started coding yesterday as promised. So far we don't see any troubles or questions. Work goes smoothly.". I then received another email on the 22nd saying "All is fine, Monday is good for delivery".

On Monday the 25th, I receive the email I was waiting for - "We're preparing to roll-out theme today. Will let you know when you can check it live.".

From then on, I didn't receive any emails. This obviously got me wondering if they'd hit any issues. I emailed them, but didn't receive a response until the 27th of Feb - "Actually expected time was Tuesday morning, but coding took a bit longer and we haven't even passed full set of testing, but I think that we'll get it during a Wednesday.".

Without copying and pasting every email, this went on for many days. I then stopped receiving emails for 4-5 days at a time and things started slowing down. Eventually, It got to the point where I really needed the files, so I was sending emails hourly for updates. One of the members of staff sent me a message saying "Trying to keep calm, but it's very hard. We're working whole day with these issues and you're constantly pressing on us. Please wait, otherwise we'll restore backup and let you to do the job!".

Normally, I would expect an email like that to be a fair comment, as constant emails can be distracting. Though, this was on the 21st of March, 1 month after they had 'Guaranteed' delivery of the project.

Needless to say, I have pulled the plug on these files. It's absolutely appalling customer service and I honestly would have preferred them to just say 'We can't do this project'. Instead, I was promised deadline after deadline which they failed to reach. Because of this, I have lost a client, will face a very large loss on the project we were working on and will never recommend XHTML Factory to anyone.

I understand that delays can happen, but bad customer service and delays of over a month are not acceptable.