Note: this is my story about Lisa Preston. All opinions about Lisa’s personality are my opinions only. Everything written is what really happened, as I don’t lie, manipulate, or blame others for my mistakes or actions.

Lisa Preston from Peteborough, Ontario

http://www.graphicswithimpact.com
www.contactlisapreston.com
www.durhamdomains.com
www.canadianimpact.com
http://canadianimpact.ca/
canadianfreelancers.com
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/lisa_preston/

Tweets by LisaPreston
http://www.squidoo.com/canadianimpact
http://www.awesomemlmtools.com/graphics/salespage/index.html
http://www.classmates.com/directory/public/memberprofile/list.htm?regId=347959231
http://actingonfaith.com/ – a religion forum? Lisa needs more help than starting a religous message board.

We look for people who respect others, deal in honesty & people who admit when they are wrong. My personal opinion is that Lisa shouldn’t be running any business. She isn’t qualified, doesn’t believe in customer service, doesn’t believe in giving the client what they paid for & those 2 things are a MUST for any business owner.

http://www.canadianinternetmarketers.com/lisa-preston – like I always say, marketing has NOTHING to do with whether a person can run a business properly. You’d think after 10 years of running a business online, Lisa would have gotten the hang of it by now.

http://www.peterboroughshopper.com/
support@contactlisapreston.com
lisa@durhamdomains.com
lisa@canadianimpact.com
paypal@canadianimpact.ca

45 Leahy’s Lane
Peteborough, Ontario
K9H 2G9

Lisa Preston was hired off of a message board called http://www.ablakeforum.com/ as a graphic web designer.

She was difficult to deal with almost from the start.

First she complained that my Thunderbird e-mail receipt feature was crashing her e-mail client.

In all my years of running businesses online, I’ve NEVER had anyone tell me that their e-mail client couldn’t work because of a feature called “e-mail receipt”, which is standard in almost every e-mail client.

Clearly Lisa’s computer isn’t set up to handle a real online business. Even if she’s on a MAC, so what. My assistant uses a MAC & he has no problems getting e-mail from me.

Because I wasn’t about to change my entire office just to suit Lisa, I had my assistant Andy deal with her.

He sent her the specs for the first design.

With the exception of that first design, everything after that went downhill & was such a major disaster, that we wasted tons of our precious time just trying to get our money back.

In the end Pay Pal sided with Lisa Preston saying that because we ordered something that was virtual, we can’t get our money back. So beware people, you can buy something online, & Pay Pal will side with fraudulent sellers even when they don’t give you what you paid for. Pay Pal loves to play both sides of the coin & has no standard rules.

One minute they will use the “virtual” excuse to side with the buyer, the next minute they will use that excuse to side with the seller.

Of course the fact that the Internet is virtual & comprises of selling services that are virtual in nature seems to have escaped Pay Pal’s attention, but that is another issue altogether. Now I know why a ton of the graphic web designers online demand to be paid via Pay Pal, so they can rip clients off & then have Pay Pal side with them.

It was my fault for even paying Lisa via Pay Pal. Everyone knows that if a site doesn’t have another form of payment & they ONLY have Pay Pal, that they aren’t a professional trustworthy company.

I had just forgotten that factoid. I take responsibility for that.

We feel you as a public should understand how we were treated by Lisa Preston & how she ripped us off.

So the story is this, we paid for that one design & we received it within 2-3 days, great – no problem.

Then we hired her to do a 2nd design, but this time we didn’t hear from her for days.

Turns out, her sister had a house fire & was now living with Lisa Preston.

I was truly sympathetic to her sister’s plight, so I didn’t demand anything, & was very patient with the entire matter.

Suddenly my assistant got an e-mail from her saying that someone had hacked into her server & that everyone should resend any e-mails they sent her.

He did.

We still didn’t hear from her.

I finally took over because my assistant Andy was unable to reach Lisa.

I had to take extreme measures after e-mailing her at ALL of her e-mail addresses & still getting no response.

That’s when I decided to out her on the http://www.ablakeforum.com/ message board’s scam area.

Anthony Blake has a forum specifically for outing fraudulent businesses.

Suddenly, within less than an hour Lisa private messages (PMs) me.

Amazing that she doesn’t respond to e-mails, but the minute you out her on the http://www.ablakeforum.com/ message board, she’s right there responding.

Finally after 2-3 PMs, my assistant gets the design. In total it took 3 weeks to get it. I believe Lisa claimed she had sent it out a few days after we paid her, but we never got anything from her, & no communication whatsoever.

I thought everything was settled with Lisa Preston’s personal problems & she could get back to work, but in order to make sure, I had Andy e-mail Lisa to make sure she was going to be able to work & do more designs, because I didn’t want to be waiting 3 weeks for another website design.

She e-mailed him back & said everything was okay, but we should wait until Monday. We gave her 2 more days & waited until Wednesday.

We ordered/paid for another design & BAMMM, she went missing again.

She didn’t respond to any of his e-mails, & after 2 e-mails & 9 days later, I submitted a ticket on her site telling her I was NOT HAPPY with once again being treated in this unprofessional way.

Still no response, so I did the same thing I did last time, this time with more anger, I outed her on the http://www.ablakeforum.com/ message board.

I waited, & waited hoping I’d hear from her, but I didn’t, so finally in the afternoon I put in a dispute with Pay Pal regarding the 3rd design that we never got from Lisa Preston. We had paid $97 (Canadian dollars, which isn’t even specified on her site, so I thought I was paying in USD, when really I was paying more because the USD was so low) for a design that supposed to be completed in 48-72 hours and after 9 full days of waiting, we still couldn’t get any response from her!

After I submitted the dispute with Pay Pal, instead of Lisa contacting my assistant or me, she proceeded to write up her defense to Pay Pal, lying about pretty much everything & then blaming us for even ordering work to be done LOL

You need to understand that her site is open to the public. That’s what sites are for, to take orders 24/7. She doesn’t say on her site to contact her first, she has Pay Pal order buttons RIGHT ON HER SITE. So to blame us for doing what surfers are supposed to do, especially AFTER we checked with her first, is well, _________ you can fill in the blank.

She also tried to use this fire sale she was having for her sister as an excuse, saying she also hadn’t slept & she was doing us some BIG FAVOR for doing our design first before dealing with this fire sale.

It’s clear to me Lisa is very immature. She tries to manipulate others into feeling sorry for her.

Poor Lisa, we should all feel sorry for her while she keeps clients waiting & then pretends like she doesn’t know what’s going on – see me crying?

Not only that, we get locked out of the http://www.ablakeforum.com/ message board because the owner of the board Anthony Blake is a friend of Lisa’s & she is a moderator on there, so it’s clear to me that he’s a hypocrite. When his friends disappear & don’t do the job they are hired for, that’s okay, but for everyone else it’s not, & like I said, he has a forum right on his message board to “out” such people/companies with the exception of Lisa Preston, you can’t complain about her, she is exempt from this rule.

It’s very clear to me after everything, that Lisa likes to blame others instead of taking responsibility for her actions. We don’t tolerate this kind of behavior, as we are ethical professionals who pride ourselves on speedy responses to all of our employees & clients & we ALWAYS give our clients what they paid for.

Not only that, you will see below how she lies in order to defend herself. She says the stupidest thing I have ever heard, she expected US to know what was going on in her personal life. To me that means that Lisa thinks the entire world revolves around her, & her clients should know what she’s up to every single second of the day.

Based on her responses to Pay Pal, she actually expected us to know she wasn’t going to have time to do designs because of this fire sale.

I didn’t know about this fire sale, her website didn’t say NOT to purchase anything because she will be busy, AND, she was asked if she was free to do the work & she said YES!!!

Also, not ONCE during any of the 2 times Lisa disappeared did we get an apology from her. Hey, if one steals money from clients, do you normally expect them to apologize? Nope, only ethical, honest, mature people would do that.

Then she has the nerve to tell Pay Pal that she had given us an area on her server where she stored our designs. I told her twice that I NEVER received any such login information. Even Andy told her this, but of course she lied about that too, & tried to make it seem like we went in there, took the design & then lied about receiving it.

The first 2 designs we received from her were via e-mail, & if Lisa can’t remember that, perhaps she needs to have her head examined.

After the first incident with Lisa where she went missing, I asked her for her phone number, as I didn’t want problems in the future.

Do you know what she said to me?

She tried to make is seem like because she’s an online company, she doesn’t use the phone LOL

Darlin, I run an online business, but I use the phone all the time to call my clients.

I have also invested in a toll free number so they can call me & leave me voice mail messages, but then again, I run a real business, & I care deeply about all of my potential clients & clients.

I return ALL e-mails, & if I’m every late by even 1 day, I’m very very apologetic, because no one likes being ignored by a company. Not returning e-mails is one of THE most common complaints from clients about online companies.

I even had Andy ask her for her Skype handle, but she didn’t respond back to his request either.

He even tried to reach her via MSN via her hotmail e-mail address that she claimed wasn’t used for e-mail, & ONLY used for MSN, but she wasn’t online.

So:

1. Lisa didn’t respond to e-mails
2. Lisa didn’t respond to her ticket system later claiming her assistant was only allowed to respond to tickets about the fire sale (see, she didn’t care about existing clients, only getting new clients & addressing their inquiries)
3. Lisa refuses to give out a phone number (rule #1, NEVER hire anyone who refuses to give out a phone number. Question what they have to hide. You should read what she wrote to Pay Pal, LOL, she told them she doesn’t even have a phone. LMAO. Yeh, & I’m living in the 1920’s.

A company is a company is a company, I don’t care if it’s online or offline. Clients should be able to reach the company they are dealing with.

Any professional company who cares about their clients makes sure they feel safe & secure when purchasing. They also do this in case something goes wrong with e-mails & Lisa had HUGE issues with her server & e-mail & you know what I would have done?

I would have gotten myself a gmail account, sent out the e-mail address to ALL of my clients, put it on my website & had everyone e-mail me there until such time as I was 100% sure that my server & e-mail were working fine.

In my opinion, Lisa Preston is untrustworthy, she lies, plays mind games, & blames clients for her actions.

Not one thing Andy or I did warranted this treatment from her, but this is how she treated us.

As a side note, Andy & I finally figured out that Lisa has time to post on message boards, upload her ads to directories, do EVERYTHING, but do the work she was paid for & deliver it to us, her client.

She doesn’t even have time to respond to e-mails because that is isn’t important to her. I personally think Lisa craves the attention she gets online, so she is constantly socializing with people instead of caring for her clients.

I really don’t care how great some of her other clients think she is. THIS is how she treated US!

Michelle

—————————————————

Just to show this isn’t a one sided opinion, I forwarded Lisa’s Pay Pal response to Andy, because she was talking about him as he was the one who dealt with her 97% of the time.

Here is what he said…

Lisa’s response to my Pay Pal response:

In the midst of frantic preparation for the Fire Sale, I received an (unsolicited) pre-payment for a site design. In spite of the fact that it set my launch behind by a day and a half, I completed and uploaded the new design on July 11th at 8:57pm in the same folder I always place her work on my server. I forwarded the standard link and instruction to her assistant, who then later (on the 13th) emailed regarding book cover designs.

Andy, my assistant’s response

Actually, I had emailed on July 4th, after our first design was finally completed.. complementing on the design and letting you know we were happy with it. I also let you know that we were interested in getting more designs done. It seems from our previous dealings and your site, that prepayment is the norm. Unsolicited or not. In this email on the 4th I asked the following:
“Michelle wanted me to check if you’re free/available for more work yet? I know things may be crazy busy with the server problem getting fixed and then everything that backed up during that time taken care of.”

Your response was as follows:
“As for additional work, give me the weekend to finish fixing some stuff – a couple of sites were damaged beyond repair and need to be rebuilt. I figure I should be cleared by Monday.”

We waiting until Monday had passed, and submitted the work on Wednesday. If more work was not wanted, you had an opportunity to say so above. “Unsolicited” – Not looked for or requested; unsought.

On the 8th, I emailed Michelle’s instructions for the new design. Also had sent an email on the 10th. Then again on the 13th. I have gotten zero responses from you, no emails at all from you since the 5th of July when we had received the changes to our last design.

I did not get an email with any link or instructions. No emails at all on this subject.

Lisa’s response to my Pay Pal response:

In his email, he also indicated an apparent issue with address book updates, and that “some emails may have been missed.” As far as I knew, since he was now asking for information to do further work, that they were happy with the design.

Andy’s response:

Yes, this was the email I had sent on the 13th. I had noticed that I was sending emails to lisa@canadianimpact.com, an email that had previously (during the server problems) had a problem with receiving. So I sent this email on the 13th to lisa@durhamdomains.com opening as follows:

“I’d like to start this email with a check in on some emails I sent. I realize now that my address book hadn’t been updated to the address you used in the last email I received, so I’m not sure if those emails made it to you 🙁 I had sent 2, so just want to be sure they arrived, and if not, I can email them again to this email address.”

If I don’t get responses… how should I know they were received? Previously emails had not been received and I had to resend, so I wanted to make sure this was not the case here again. The emails obviously did go arrive since you’re mentioning them here. You just didn’t response or confirm.

Lisa’s response to my Pay Pal response:

Because of the setback, I have been hyper-focused on the Fire Sale, and all support tickets were being handled by an assistant. Issues with the script used for the Fire Sale have been massive, forcing me to handle every transaction manually. I have not slept more than an hour at a time in three days. I have not received any further contact until today. My assistant has also remained focused on the support tickets generated by the sale as well, and has not been given access to other areas of my support desk, so was unaware of the ticket sent.

I was notified by the forum owner where I administrate a marketing board that this person had (for the second time) publicly attacked me, causing massive issues in the process for the Fire Sale. I’ve been dealing with those issues all afternoon, then received notice of this dispute.

Andy’s Response:

There is a section of that forum specifically for posting situations like this. You have used it to complain about clients. Others use it to complain about other stuff. Yet we are not allowed to make a post that someone we hired seemingly disappears? That person moderates the forum so I guess they are the exception to the rule? Absolutely silly.

Lisa’s Response to my Pay Pal response:

Despite the fact that the design has been sitting in her dedicated folder for days (had she bothered to look) she files this dispute. I find it odd that further purchases were made as she indicates complete unhappiness with my work “bordering on criminal” I believe she said – and is discussing future work in emails from just 2 days ago.

Andy’s response:

We would have been more than fine to have waited for when things settled down to submit more work. We even checked to make sure it would be ok. You said it would be fine after Monday. It obviously was not fine if all the above was true. A simple bit of communication would have been helpful.. a reply to an email.. even a note that things were busy. Of course if the design truely was on the server and completed, and an email sent with it, we’d not have had any cause to worry about why we weren’t hearing anything from you. We’d have “bothered to look” if we knew where to look.

We were extremely pleased with your work. I just don’t understand how emails that were sent were not received, and my own emails received with nonresponse. To us it looked as though we had asked to be sure you were ok with more work, we got the go ahead, we placed the order, we heard nothing for a week, no response to emails that were sent…which in the first design we hired had been the norm (until the hack issue). I always seemed to get a response quickly. This time around I didn’t. As far as I knew here… the instructions for the design were not even received as I got no response to them.. no questions, no confirmation.

I understand (now) that the Fire Sale is going on. I didn’t know so until now. Early/Mid June you had mentioned you were setting that up, but I was unaware it was starting at the same time as us placing that design work. To use the Fire Sale as an excuse for the lack of communication implies that we knew of it happening. We weren’t informed; as far as we were concerned, it was business as usual. I sent emails, no response. Michelle placed a ticket, no response. I even installed MSN Messenger to try and find you online and was unsuccessful.

Lisa’s Response to my Pay Pal response:

As the funds are now “in escrow” due to this dispute, and as a result, cause an issue with the Fire Sale funds (meant to help a family in desperate need), I have removed the design in question from the server.

Whether they downloaded it or not is a question I’ll have to ask my host to check up on before I reply further.

Andy’s Response:

I can tell you right now nothing was downloaded. No links or instructions were received. As said above numerous times, no responses at all were made to my emails or the design that was ordered.

Lisa:

This will take several days, as I simply do not have the time to focus on that while the Firesale is having such issues, which have been enflamed by the attack on me in my forum.

Andy’s Response:

If you did not have time to do the work without having a negative impact on something more important, if you did not have the time to response to communications (yet can make forum posts and such), if you did not have the time to look up records… you shouldn’t have told us it was fine after Monday, you shouldn’t have your site set up to automatically take payments for “unsolicited” work.  As it says on your site…

“I offer several different packages (listed below). If you don’t see what you’re looking for, please feel free to contact me to quote on a custom package that will suit your needs. Otherwise, simply click the “Order” button on the package of your choice, and once payment is processed you will be directed to a form to fill out your project requirements.

All packages have a 48-72 hour turnaround.

If my schedule becomes filled up and this turnaround isn’t possible, I will contact you ASAP to let you know.”

That pretty much is asking for unsolicited work. We asked before we ordered, but obviously needn’t have done so.

You said above “In spite of the fact that it set my launch back a day and a half“. You offer a service, available for anyone who navigates to your site. Yes, how dare they pay for a product and expect to receive it as stated. It is not our fault we set you back a day and a half. To imply that clients (whom you actively seek and have a web business to do so) are nuisances that impede on your personal schedule is a bit much. They too have schedules. Hiding behind a Fire Sale that is for a good cause doesn’t negate the fact that you offered a service, people paid for the service, people didn’t receive the service. I could head out to Africa to feed the starving children, and my employer would be well within her rights to terminate me. Sleeping at home or being charitable and just, the work I’m being paid for isn’t getting done. A business is a business.

After everything Andy & I had to go through, I personally kept hoping that Lisa would just give us the design so we could end this mess, but she didn’t.

She never contacted us, like I said she never apologized, all she did was point the finger at us when we did nothing, but protect our business.

Her behavior & actions clearly showed us she didn’t care.

I am sure once she sees this she will lie & make up stories about what happened, but nothing in here is a lie. We didn’t blow things out of proportion, what happened happened exactly as we stated, & once again, real businesses care about what their clients think & feel.

If a client has a problem, they fix it, they don’t blame the client for the company’s mistakes & then NOT give the client what they paid for.

This is how we know that Lisa Preston doesn’t run a real business.