[wp-forums] Ethical practices of consultants

[esmi at quirm dot net]

on 01/07/2010 01:21 James Huff said the following:
<snip>
> 3. The consultant takes more than 24 hours to communicate with
> clients (consideration should be given to emergencies, etc).

Impractical, in my opinion. Doesn't take into account email delivery 
issues, emails ending up in spam bins, clients who simply don't know how 
to use their own email software but blame everything on the consultant 
(been there, had that), dramatically different time zones and clients 
who assume you're at their beck & call 24/7.Don't know about anyone else 
but I do have a life away from this machine.

Far better to say that the consultant should communicate with the client 
in a timely manner.

> 4. The consultant dramatically increases the final price after the
> job is finished.

Not our responsibility! By all means encourage people to use formal 
project specs and either have formal contracts or letters of agreement 
but what happens after the agreement is between the client and the 
consultant. We do not want to become some sort of arbitration service.

I also feel that a formal "blacklist" is not a practical option either. 
There are too many "he said, she said" possibilities and it could 
rapidly turn into a real nightmare. I think we'd be better offering 
advice under the general heading "What to do if you want to hire a 
WordPress consultant". We can include a list of (our) ethical practices 
for users to bear in mind (The Good) and a list of "warning signs" (The 
Bad). We can also try to hammer home the "Make sure you know what you're 
paying for" message. But I think that's where we should draw the line. 
Caveat emptor and all that...

This is a pandemic problem in web development and it's not our job to 
fix it.

If we do reference the wp-pro list and jobs.wordpress, we should make it 
clear that we cannot endorse the quality of serves available. Frankly I 
think they're no better or worse than anywhere else.

If people have a bad experience or have been spammed by a "consultant", 
they're free to post about it if they feel they need to warn others. Our 
only responsibility should be to keep an eye on the thread and close it 
down with a polite request to please sort this out away from the forum 
if it looks like turning into a tit-for-tat row or a rant-fest. After 
all they will presumably all have blogs for this sort of thing. :-)

Mel
-- 
WordPress theme developer
http://quirm.net
http://blackwidows.co.uk