Customer Paradigm

I’ve experienced just like Donny B. who wrote the comment in 7÷30÷2014.
I was scouted to take a lead on the new site launch for a small company because of a long delay on the project. My boss who initiated this project chose them because they claimed themselves as Magento Expert and Web development professionals.
To make a long story short, I had a hard time to work with them and the outcome was okay but disappointing than my expectation on 42K invested site. They are nice and friendly people but it doesn’t guarantee a quality work. I almost feel like they took advantage of their kindness to cover up their poor performances.
They failed to pick up our needs and pains. My request was not just to change the color from blue to red or increased the size from 7 to 11. My point was to make it looked more standing out and nicer. So if web designer thought that green was better than red, I’d like to go green or whatever color that made our website better. We were hiring them to give us a sort of marketing strategic touch up not just copying my guideline and samples. We didn’t have IT team in house at that time, so all I could do was to rely on them. It was very frustrating when I found out that they never get it. It seems they don’t have enough professional designers or developers.

There was no follow up process. They missed many items delivered by email and phone. At the end of the project, one of our coworker proposed to use Google sheet. Since then, the process was much clear and faster. How they did not have that kind of process as an agency? It is a mystery.
I recommend to have an enough time to build up a plan and scope, especially if you don’t have anyone who have a knowledge on web development in house. Not perfectly designed plan will cause a lot of problems along the process. Because they won’t be happy to hear your new ideas and suggestions and won’t be excited to be creative, flexible and cooperative but sending out the 2^nd quote. They may be good at simple website or blog but not the website carrying 2,500 products on Magento.
They had a problem in internal communication between CEO and project manager. The project manager didn’t know what his CEO promised to my boss. They were not in sync. The promises they made hasn’t been kept. I’m wondering if they forget or ignore. Whatever the reason is, it is not a professional attitude.
Personally, it was a good learning experience but it was a painful experience for business. We miss our launch time for the best season and rework the website with new web developer.
They need a new paradigm to keep their customer happy.

I first contacted Customer Paradigm when my Magento site was down and not working, and the Customer Paradigm team was able to fix it in less than half an hour! I then asked them to fix what was actually going on with the site — it was that someone had turned error logging on and the server was filling up with log files.
They ran their code audit report on my Magento site and found that a bunch of bugs left there from the last programmers. :|
They know what they’re talking about, and are great to work with. I’ve found their team to be top notch, and I have no complaints about anything. A lot of other companies hide behind voicemail and you can never get a real person on the phone, so it’s such a blessing that these guys were easy to contact.
Thumbs up from me!

As a small business owner, I understand that my employees and I will make mistakes. Taking responsibility for those mistakes and taking the opportunity to make it right sets quality businesses apart.
In early June we were told by two different project managers that there was about 40hrs left to finish the site to our specifications and that the site would be finished for our Test Launch date of July 18^th. We had Weekly meetings to keep up to date and to make sure there was nothing in the way of our launch date.
As the launch date got closer, we noticed that items we were told were being completed were still broken or non-​existent.
As late as July 9^th, we were assured that Customer Paradigm was still on track and promised a working site up to our specifications by July 17^th. When communication broke down and the project manager missed our Wednesday meeting on July 15^th because he was «sick,» We decided to go up the chain and get some answers from Jeff Finkelstein.
We quickly realized that Jeff Finkelstein was at least 5 months behind on the status of our project.
After Jeff Finkelstein (owner of Customer Paradigm) found out that his staff, continually lied to us and his developers screwed up the responsive build Jeff Finkelstein told us that It was going to cost us an ADDITIONAL $ 35,000 to $ 45,000 to finish a website that was originally contracted under $ 35,000.
He has already received $ 30,000, and all we have to show for it is a broken site.
Thankfully, I held back payment for the last invoice of $ 5000 that was billed in June when we noticed that simple items that we were being told were going to be done by weeks end were not complete.
I gave Jeff Finkelstein multiple opportunities to make this right.
At this point we are asking for companies that Customer Paradigm partners with to apply pressure. I will update this post if he decides to take responsibility.
Update: Just found an employee review on indeed that parallels our experience:
«Project Manager (Former Employee), Boulder, CO — February 5, 2014
Pros: casual environment, opportunities for those who want to learn magento
Cons: lacks leadership, high turnover, only benefit is health and strict 2 wk/​yr pto
While Customer Paradigm boasts a very attractive eCommerce platform to develop on, the company lacks any strong leadership to take the firm to the next level.
Very few procedures are in place, so it can, at times, feel like a free– for– all.
There is high employee turn over due much in part to the lack of leadership or any employee perk encouraging longevity or loyalty.
Bottom line: not enough value is placed on developing or retaining employees.»