Discovery Towers Multimedia Group reviews and complaints

Do not do business with Richard Sample from Discovery towers / Websites by lynn or philippine website design! Here's the deal and you can research it yourself:
You request a free mock up and he will send you back something like http://www.m31.websitemockup.net
You will notice that if you keep the pattern m32.websitemockup.net and m33.websitemockup.net and so on you will see very nice mock up pages but if you look a little further you'll notice that none of the sites actually get done. What I mean is that if you go to the website url that they made a mock for you will notice it is done by another company or it is an old site meaning that RICHARD SAMPLE ONLY DOES "SAMPLES" and never completes a site. Try calling him 305.704.7450 or 916.596.0936 "Hello it's Rich, I'm the owner..."

This is Rich and it seems that the original person has now recruited new "help/friends" to harass our reputation. Communication is critical and if we did not reply or respond to phone calls in months is a bit overkill. It's interesting how they focus on phone calls only. We do our best to maintain a good line of communication but sometimes people just simply lack "Common Sense" and we actually tell them that we no longer wish to deal with them. It's better to simply give them their money back and say goodbye.
We are not perfect but we do our best. We never ever take anyones money and run as we would again not last long if we did. This one person has been attacking us for over 2 years now and simply will not let up. Please review our complaint web page on our site to view our concerns and if you ever have a complaint, how to resolve it with us.

A final note is that we find it interesting that those that are complaining are keeping themselves anonymous. This in my opinion is sad as they won't allow me to deal with them directly. We were able to track down one of the additional complaints above and it was a 16 year old just having fun... GO FIGURE!

Rich built a site for us, and it's not functioning properly. When a potential client tries to contact us, the email will not go through. An error email pops up. I've been trying to get a hold of this guy for the last 2 months. Emails, phone calls, heck I've even pretended to be another potential client but still no call. I would avoid these guys if at all possible!
In the beginning he also said that his whole system was lost, and had to recover...er...something like that...

Stay away!

This company took our deposit in December of 2009. It has now been over 3 months and we have nothing. Not only that, but they have not responded to any of our emails or phone calls since January. I cannot say strongly enough to stay as far away from Discovery Towers as possible.

I stand corrected, This company is pitiful. The websites are elementary at best. I have not heard from this guy in almost a year. I have incorrect information on my site and havent been able to get in touch with them. no answers to emails or phone calls.

Im Moving to a new a new hoster and having my site redone completely. I have no other choice. The money I saved by using them I just lost. In fact now Im going to have to pay twice as much.

Stay away... This company just plain sucks.

Having now read the reply from the owner, I can see the arrogance and ignorance in his tone ("needy people", "use some common sense", etc.)

"Those that are obsessive and don't seem to get it are the ones that carry a grudge and try to make problems using these kinds of forums..."
Well I get it because I was taught it and I practice it, and I'm not being obsessive, just warning the public of my friends' experience - they aren't difficult to please, yet you failed to do so (and they can't even begin to understand the technical shortcomings I've pointed out throughout their site).

Relating to my friend's experience, if he was asking for tweaks and features outside the scope of his project, it was never communicated to him that this was the case so you can't use that excuse if you don't tell your customer (project management: fail).

Not responsing to any questions in 2 weeks after final payment was made, regardless of whether the questions were part of the scope of the project or would require additional fees (customer service: fail).

It sounds like I'm not the first 'designer friend' to tell a Discovery client that their site sucks. Read my above technical complaints (web design 101 issues in my opinion - developer: fail).

Ask yourself this before moving ahead"

"Do we answer calls 24/7 ? Nope... Thats what voice mail is for... Do we reply to our emails... YES all the time... We do have to work on projects some time during the day so answering calls all day long can be a bit much especially for needy people."

Do you want a professional design company, or a couple of people with limited technical knowlege and availability who are working out of an off-shore basement?

I can confirm the lack of professionalism with this comapny.

As a web developer/project manager (certified, 10 years experience), , I have taken over a friend's site for a couple reasons.

The first reason, my friend is not able to get the simplest tweaks (or even a response regarding them) completed within a week or more on average, especially now that the final payment has been made. As a result, I feel customer service is poor.

The second reason is the lack of technical knowlege I saw when I got my hands on the HTML/PHP files they devloped for the site. Broken links, styles that don't display correctly across browsers, and a lack of utilzing the database and PHP to its potential.

Examples of this include the fact that categories for our products are hard-coded into the pages making them difficult to change (as opposed to creating them in the database) and multiple PHP pages for each category that use the exact same template (instead of using a query string and a single PHP page). This results in having to make minor tweaks to several pages instead of just one - very inefficient.

Other obvious fails include the lack of simple if/else statements to prevent pages from trying to display content that doesn't exist (from empty fields in the databases), and the lack of page titles in the documents. Instead of the company name, page titles were left as 'Title'.

In summary, the lack of a timely response was unacceptable and I seriously question the technical ability of the developer(s).

As a result, we have moved the site to a different host, and I am know the developer in charge of cleaning up the messy code and brining the site to its true potential.

Not sure about the first two comments, however, I would love to give them a try. Problem is I can never get anybody on the phone. I have left several voice mails and emails and no one calls me back. I understand they might be busy, but no return phone call in three, four weeks. That is not a good way to show case your company.

As Discovery Towers most recent client I would have to say that the above complaint is completely inaccurate. The experince we had with them on our website project www.remoteenterprise.com. Our opinion of them is very high. Rich is very professional, knows what he is talking about, and bends over backwards to give you what you want.

He delivered us a very professional website, and threw in some freebies to boot! It did not take months or even weeks, he far exceeded our expectations as far as delivery.

He delivered a mock up website, let me submit my changes, let me look at it, change my mind some, and add some functions we had not talked about in the beginning. To top it off he did not upcharge us as I can guarentee anyone else would have.

This complaint should be dismissed as a "crybaby complaint" and removed ASAP. Discovery towers is professional, innovative, affordable company to work with, In fact we will work with him in the future.

I urge you to check out our website and make your own decisions about Discovery Towers and Rich. Feel free to contact us through our site for a reference.

Jamie maguire
Chief Architect
Remote Enterprise Inc
www.remoteenterprise.com

Regarding our Aweful service.. I am the owner of Discovery Towers. We've been in business since 2001 and can be verified by going to the "WayBackMachine" which is an Internet Archive system... Google it and you will see.

We've had 3 complaints in the last 36 months with BBB.org... 3 out of hundreds of happy clients.

I'm an American married to a Filipina... DUH.. she is a graphic designer...

Only the obsessive and compulsive carry a grudge for over a year. Did we have issues back then, YES, did we fix most everything YES. Did the client get more demanding and wanted extra work that was not agreed on? YES

Did the client start asking us to redo this and redo that? Yes more than normal? Yes

Everyone knows someone that is hard to deal with, and unfortunately this was one of those scenarios.

I've had two unsresolved service issues simply because we never got the information as we had MOVED! Those businesses are now OUT OF BUSINESS so it's a bit hard to resolve and hardly worth the effort..

If I was such a bad guy then why am I still in business? If I'm such a bad business person, why aren't there hundreds of complaints filed?

Everybody that has a business and has been in business for any length of time knows that they cannot please everybody all the time... We tried our best but that was not good enough.

As far as losing money, I guess the 8 weeks that we worked on the project don't count at all... We fight for the work we've done and expect to be paid for it. Thats why we ask for a 50% deposit and the final when the job is done... So there is some protection for the client.

This is some deterent to those that want you to do a lot of work, copy it and then cancel the project 1/2 or near the end of the project.

We do "Free Sample Website Mockups before people sign up with us so they can determine if we are on the same page, but when they bring in outside sources constantly advising them to change this and change that, then we recognize that the outside source is making it difficult and it's quite hard to say... why don't you just use your designer friend that giving you all this advice instead of using us?

Those that are obsessive and don't seem to get it are the ones that carry a grudge and try to make problems using these kinds of forums...

The business owner always seems to get the short end of the stick. "The Customer Is NOT Always Right"

Do we answer calls 24/7 ? Nope... Thats what voice mail is for... Do we reply to our emails... YES all the time... We do have to work on projects some time during the day so answering calls all day long can be a bit much especially for needy people.

Most people are easy to work with, understanding and that works both ways. But sometimes you give an inch and they want to take a yard and then some and expect you to do it.. for free..

Regarding Lots of Unfinished projects? Huh? even this guy doesn't get it right... We do a lot of free sample website mockups and they are all posted on the Internet for anyone to see...

Sometimes a customer will like the mocup, we then start working on it right where the mockup is located then maybe at anytime later, they get the domain name they want, and we create the hosting and simply upload the working mockup to the hosting leaving the unfinished mockup in place on the mockup site so potential clients can see the work we do...

So it appears as if we did not finish but in reality they all get finished and eventually the older mockups get replaced with new mockups so if you are trying to monitor our work, it's a bit tough to do unless you're the client.

And Finally, where is the consideration of the customer.. they pay a deposit right away.. We do the job on time as agreed... They all along are telling us this is so important... please hurry... We bust our butts, get the job done and then the client says... Uh, is it ok, if I pay you the balance next week, Next month or try not at all... This happens more than you think...

So when you select your next designer.. Use some common sense, be understanding and don't expect more than what you agreed on.. and don't add more as if it's no big deal... Unless you are prepared to pay for it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of business...

Thanks,
Rich