Jeff Rothe WordPress Templates *ripped off again*

Spawne32

Just to be clear, there are several folks with the name Jeff Rothe in the marketing world… I own a marketing agency in Charlotte, and did not sell you the aforementioned website. There is a Jeff Rothe illustrator / designer in the Indianapolis area, and a Jeff Rothe who is a marketer for Sears in Chicago. Do you know from where the seller does business?

jeffrothe

this is jeff rothe of Indianapolis, IN, from https://www.rothecreations.com

ive already sent in complaints to the internet fraud complaint center

complaints sent off to BBB now that he has refused to refund any part of my payments. I will make sure that it is documented so that next time someone goes to order work from him the complaints show up so no one else gets beat by this guy.

I just found this today. I am not looking to start a flame war, but I have to defend myself here.

Rob (Robert) Longo came to me originally 2 months ago looking for a ‘full’ WordPress theme. Initially he had told me that he had an individual who could code that could do any custom PHP programming needed, but he wanted a full theme. He went back and forth over that 2 month time, popped in, seeing if I was still available. He was trying to come up with the money and eventually on Aug. 11 he asked if we could separate out the design from the HTML coding, where I would hand off a design to him, and his guy would ‘HTML’ code the theme.

Sure, that is what I would do. I sent that off to him on a Friday and I didn’t use all of the time I thought so the price for him came in about 18% less than what I quoted him. (the 300 is correct at a fairly standard design rate). Instead of charging the full price, I charged him for the time I spent and that was it.

After he got my layered file via email he came back to me to demand that I give him more or less a full theme where his guy could (going back to the original idea) code little individual pieces that would pull from the Database. This is not what we agreed on when I gave him my price, we agreed I would make the design file and his guy would write HTML and PHP code for the theme files.

We spoke back and forth for the next two days trying to work things out from a late Friday night until later Sunday, and agreed this was a communication issue obviously. So, I offered at the end of that two days to build him out the theme, if he wanted to send me the remaining amount of money for the full quoted price.

Two days later he had already found someone else to do the job and only demanded a refund.

Fact is, the work was put in to his request, he got the final design file, and I didn’t charge him the full flat fee….and I offered to build him out what he originally wanted. I did what I felt was reasonable if I believe that this was a communication error and not someone trying to fraud me instead.

Just an update, submitted this to the attorney generals office of Indiana to their consumer complaint department. Since paypal has refused to dispute the claim after the work was never completed.

I’m sorry to see this issue has escalated for you two. My 2 cents on the issue is this:

1) Designer should refund the money and resell the design to another client.
2) Buyer should find a new designer for a new layout.
3) If Designer finds that Buyer uses his design then Designer should take Buyer to small claims court.

oh..

4) If Buyer wants to use the Design that Designer created as a WordPress theme then Buyer and Designer should agree on new terms for work spent on the design, and time to code it.

well, since someone else joined in first, i’m just wondering if the buyer knew/understood that he was getting an image file. jrothe is even ambiguous here,

After he got my layered file

(and yes, I know that .psd files are layered.)

I read this:

… separate out the design from the HTML coding, where I would hand off a design to him, and his guy would ‘HTML’ code the theme.

and figured he would be doing an HTML mockup and the “guy” would do the PHP work to create the mockup out of PHP.

.. sounds like a communication issue. I’ve no opinion otherwise.

the agreement was for a wordpress theme, i paid to have seperate graphics done in additional to the basic graphics that jeff rothe made to go with the theme itself, we specifically agreed on only one page for the theme given his price and that the custom coding required for additional non wordpress supported features would be handled by someone else. This was all clearly layed out before i ever even sent the first payment. Im not exactly sure what jeff rothe thinks that a word press theme consists of, but at this point we will let the attorney generals office of Indiana decide.

Im more concerned about making sure no one else gets ripped off by him again, ive successfully reported the issue to the BBB and the FBI internet fraud complaint department so he will be investigated thoroughly.

I have no problem refunding money to the buyer if the buyer wants to sign an agreement that the design provided via email won’t be used on his website and he contracts with another designer to design his website. I provided a layered Fireworks file actually, not Photoshop in this case, so everything is in that file that he would need to export an necessary graphics.

My only concern all along has been that I handed over an editable design file and then, my understanding of the project, was completely changed after the design file was received. I would obviously never have desired this outcome.