[TYPO3-jobs] Customers hiring TYPO3 Developers to steal sites

[Christoph Burgdorfer]

Hi Andi,

I would say, any business relationship is based on two main factors:

• Trust
• Expectations

Trust is simple: Either there is mutual trust between the business partners, or there is none. What's important here is: It's hard to gain and easy to lose.

Expectations is a bit more tricky: All business partners have to be on the same page when it comes to expectations. I.e. what to get in what time for what price at what quality. This requires a lot of "managing expectations". This is not an easy task, especially if agencies underestimate the importance of it, sell a service rather than a product and if the client is a bit "difficult". But it's crucial, because with mismanaged expectations the agency ultimately loses trust and therefore the client in a vicious spiral.

My recommendation for a service business: 40% of the communication with the client should be about managing their expectations. 30% about operational and organisational things such as chasing up stuff, and another 30% about proactive recommendations and ideas.

The point I'm making: Managing expectations is the most important part of any client-agency communication. It is how to avoid disgruntled clients who, once  there is no trust left, would do such a bad thing.

I'm not saying you did a bad job nor would I justify the behaviour of the client. You probably have delivered an amazing software. But if their expectations are up there with the stars it's impossible to please any client. And unless they had the malicious intention to do this from the beginning (which I doubt because of the contract) under-managed expectations is the only possibility how I could explain (but not justify!) such a behaviour.

Hope this helps,
Christoph

Managing Partner, coANDco

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> On 30 Apr 2014, at 04:24, Andreas Becker <ab.becker at web.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi All
> 
> In another case we would like to get your ideas too.
> 
> We heard already a lot about Developers which got not paid by customers and
> it seems that in Germany there seems to be quite a lot, thow we never had
> problems with customers of US (it is just the opposite of a lot of German
> customers like it seems - as US clients mostly pay in advance).
> 
> The current case:
> 
> A customer which has a valid contract with an agency pays 50%, but then is
> not willing to pay the rest. Instead he hires another TYPO3 Developer from
> Austria to steal the complete website! Before that customer also contacted
> Mittwald where he hosted his old sites.
> 
> An employee of Mittwald also verified that the customer asked them to move
> the site to their server. Also Mittwald developers used the Access Data of
> the customer to access the TYPO3 website on the Server of the Agency which
> is running under a Domain belonging to that agency. As one of their
> employees told us he wanted to check if it would be a login for to a panel
> (he also said that he has no big idea about TYPO3). Anyway!
> 
> The Austrian developer than installed bnbbackupext to pull a complete
> backup.
> 
> We don't want to discuss here if a customer should have admin access or not
> - this one had admin access - others have not - or VPN access etc - it is
> more about the TYPO3 Developers who access the site without prior
> permission, with the access Data they have got from the customer.
> 
> But we would like to hear your opinion and ideas about how you would handle
> the fakt, that other TYPO3 Developers or MITTWALD.de Employees move into a
> website on your server, even they see in the header comment, the URL not
> belonging to the customer etc. AND on several other places that the site is
> NOT developed by the customer and that it is a site in development.
> 
> And how do you deal with the "internationalization" problem?
> 
> i.e. a German Customer living and working in Spain asks Mittwald where he
> hosts his old site to move the site without the agencies consent from their
> server to Mittwald and than finally hires an Austrian in Austria do do that
> job as Mittwald (so they told us) only moves sites via FTP and SSH.
> 
> Lets hear your ideas and opinions what you would do in such a situation
> where non paying customers hire other TYPO3 Developers to get the TYPO3
> website.
> 
> Thanks to logflies on the server and in TYPO3 you have all IPs so you can
> verify that one IP came from unitymedia (probably a private account near
> Bielefeld), than the 46.... which belonged to Mittwald (already verified
> with them) and the third from Austria belonging to "Highway Customers -
> Telekom Austria". Also a Skype Recording has been send to the agency (I
> think it was not intended by the customer ;-) were the customer is talking
> to one of those developers who accessed the site and where an employee of
> the customer suggests to pull the website without agency consent.
> 
> Thanks for your ideas and answers.
> 
> Andi
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