I was driving home yesterday and when I stopped at a red light at a junction, saw a cyclist behind me weave his way past the cars and go across. What annoyed me was that this dickhead had one of those Go Pro cameras on his head to document the terrible motoring injustices done to cyclists, yet felt that it was perfectly OK for him to break the law. Hypocrite.

Argghhh.... Bloody clients.

OK - the situation is this. Somewhen in 2013, I get a call from someone who had been referred to me by a client. They are winding down entity A and setting up entity B. They lost their web master (who was based in Australia) partly because their web host didn’t like him being on the other side of the planet (I know, I know). So I get this Wordpress site to look after. Our first line of business was to move the site from expensive host to somewhere cheaper (actually my server, as I know how that and their support bods tick). However, they can”t get the password for the domain name because (and here is the underlying problem) the owner of the domain seems to be about 80 and has forgotten where it is, and his son kind of doesn’t really have the time/interest to locate it.

So we keep the site where it is. I get invited to meeting with them in London early 2014 - which was interesting - all ex-Abbey Road engineers who are trying to preserve recordings - but all over retirement age. One actually went back to Abbey Road to rebuild equipment for Oasis, but I expect they were all there when the likes of Pink Floyd and the Beatles were in full swing.

Anyhow contact after that dwindled, to the point where I got a phone call form one in summer of 2014 telling me that I’ll hear from them when they are ready to carry on. In June 2015, my other client (the one who referred them to me) asks me if I have had anything from then recently and I said that I hadn’t and he said that they move “glacially”. So I fire off an email to both the people who I should be dealing with asking about what the current situation was and whether my services were still needed. I got no reply, so I assumed then that the project was dead (or, maybe some of them had died taking it with them). The website, I expected, would peter out as bills stop being paid. Some kind of reply would have kept me interested.

Yesterday, I got an urgent email. Their service provider was concerned that it had not been updated to the latest version of Wordpress, and some of the plugins may be compromised. Can it be sorted out urgently or they’ll suspend it. Suddenly, they are answering emails! Still winding down entity A, but the website needs retaining. I did say that they had sent an email last year about what the situation was, for which I got an apology.

So I did what was needed, installed Wordfence which warns when updates are needed or if the site is compromised.

This just pissed me off - the day was pretty much mapped out, and I guess I should have just replied saying "tough - you haven’t contacted me for 2 years, didn’t reply to my email June last year so I assumed the deal was off - I can schedule this work in towards the end of next week". But I’m not a total git, and I thought that if I did the job it would at least ensure that they did know I was still active, and an invoice will be involved.

The moral of the story - keep your freelancers in the loop, and reply to emails. I’ll be adding this advice to the email that contains the invoice.

Also - WordPress. I’ve got a couple of sites running it just to see what it’s about, with Wordfence keeping an eye on them and alerting me to any problems. I get at least one such email a week - various updates needing to be applied. I keep them all up to date, but I’m kind of glad I don’t have a large collection of them to administer.

[LIFTED] you company, I don't have to send you photos before I return an unfit for purpose item - it's basic consumer rights. [LIFTED].

[LIFTED] Amazon. Emailing me to say some crap about sending too many items back in an unsaleable condition. I've sent three items back in this calendar year. Three. And the reason you can't pop them back on the shelf and sell them again is because THEY'RE [LIFTED] FAULTY! That's what I sent them back you 'tards.

Obviously I don't know the specifics of your situation, but I know at Toshiba we would always ask for photos of screen issues, simply because 95+% of them were physical damage rather than a hardware fault, and it pre-empted angry dealings when repairs suddenly turned out to be chargeable.

[LIFTED] Amazon. Emailing me to say some crap about sending too many items back in an unsaleable condition. I've sent three items back in this calendar year. Three. And the reason you can't pop them back on the shelf and sell them again is because THEY'RE [LIFTED] FAULTY! That's what I sent them back you 'tards.

Well I would be very hesitant to supply you with goods bought online if you had sent back 20 or more in one year.
I would label you as a high risk buyer and limit the value of any goods to those I could afford to lose.