I met Charles Warner when he was out shopping a solution provider for his ‘DailyComedy’ project.  He had hired Roger Black to do the design, they knew exactly what they wanted and now all that was left was the process of finding the right company to build it for them.

So I bid on the gig - to use the PeopleAggregator.  But we didn’t get the gig.  FiveAcross did.

Well I wished Charles good luck and told him “don’t say I didn’t warn you……” ’cause the whole FiveAcross thing just reeked a little.

Well guess what?

Here’s what Charles just sent me:

You told me so and you were right!  FiveAcross was awful.  The platform didn’t work and was partially the cause of the demise of Daily Comedy.  Please read my blog, “Don’t Do Business With FiveAcross,” at http//:www.mediacurmudgeon.com and feel free to distribute it.

What pisses me off about this - the most - is that when the shit was hitting the fan, the folks at FiveAcross weren’t honest enough to let Charles know what was really going on.

They obviously were running out of money, losing resources and building on an unstable foundation.  They even promsied functionality that was impossible!  Companies like FiveAcross make our job that much harder.

Now we have to make up for them, and pay the price that their lying and incompetence brought down on US!

This is the dirty little secret about our business.  I don’t know the percentages - but a huge number of projects that get funded and hired for - never get finished.  Or they’re implemeted so poorly that the company just goes out of business.

There are all these dot bomb stories of millions and millions of dollars expended - with no results.  This is what makes being an honest player so hard!  There are so many slimeballs out there!

A lot of times when I tell people we have a lot of our code is produced in India, they immediately say “Oh - well how good are they, cause we got horribly burned in India.”

So let me just say this:

- our folks in India are incredible, high quality and work their asses off

- and we other folks around the world - working just as hard

- we intend on being the best of breed at the best price - and nothing will stop us

- and we practice the notion of fair, equitable capitalism, where morals, ethics and honesty matter

- that’s what builds good relationships

- and that’s why we have companies coming back to us - for more - seconds and thirds

To me that’s the only way to do business.

So my sincere sorrow is extended to Charles and to anyone else doing business with FiveAcross.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 11:08 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.