On December 19, 2007, Eltroway Corporation located in Florida hired Chris Winn's company "Eshilon Design" for some web development services. At first Chris was very responsive with his emails. Suddenly Eltroway was passed on to someone named Robert. Robert stated that he would be the point in contact as Chris was having health issues. Eltroway proceeded for weeks dealing with Robert.
Meanwhile, here it is, February 1st and the web project is still not done. Chris told a representative at Eltroway the project should be completed around the first or second week in January 08'. According to Eltroway, several emails were sent & from different email addresses as well to rule out spam filtering. They called his contact numbers and left several messages and also left messages with his answering service.
Eltroway's next steps were filing a PayPal claim. Eshilon apparently responded to PayPal and sent Eltroway an email. Eltroway finally received some sort of email with an attachment. It turns out, the attachment was the web project that Eshilon sent. The project was far from complete and did not encompass most of the functionality which was sent to Chris Winn back in mid December. Eltroway responded to his reply regarding the PayPal dispute and still to this day they have not received a response.
If you have been ripped off too, Please leave a comment on this post.
Comments
March 3. 2008 18:39
Daniel
Hi, I am having the same issue with Chris. In late January, I hired Chris for a small project and he very enthusiastically responded via email and phone calls. As soon as I paid my initial deposit, radio silence. He has yet to return a single one of my calls. The project was supposed to have a working demo last week and I have yet to see even a single design beyond the front page.
If anyone has had the same issues, please post again so no one is suckered into this guy's scheme.
March 3. 2008 19:55
Daniel
Big misunderstanding. Chris Winn is legit; the reason he was slow in responding was due to a change in course by me and he did not even charge me extra for this.
March 4. 2008 01:01
Evan Morris
I have been ripped off by Chris Winn and Eshilon Design also. I hired him for my website in October 2007. Since then he has been in and out of contact with me. Sometimes responsive other times I wouldn't hear from him for weeks.
He gave me a proposal showing some nice looking websites. But, these were nothing like what I actually received from him. I asked him multiple times to try to fix certain problems. The implementation of his design was horrible. He couldn't do things that a beginning programmer could do (like drop down lists). I am in the process of filing a paypal complaint and I also want to tell everyone on the internet to stay away from Chris Winn and Eshilon design.
I run a DJ company and response times to my customers is a huge factor in getting their business. Also, most of my events are around $1000 for the night. He set up a "contact us" form that was supposed to e-mail me the information from this form. But, it didn't e-mail me, and I didn't realize that I wasn't receiving e-mails for a couple weeks. There were multiple people who tried to contact me about my services that I wasn't able to respond to until a week later. Therefore, I lost all of their business. Which could possibly cost me over $4000 in the short run...maybe more in the long run.
The worst thing about it is that I also gave his name to my Dad because the proposal looked pretty good for a decent price. But, my Dad has had the same problems with him that I have.
If you haven't setup anything with Chris Winn yet...DON'T DO IT. Get someone else.
March 31. 2008 23:14
Leigh Goldie
Hi everyone. I am not excited to join your group, but here I am. I have also been ripped off by Chris Winn and Eshilon Design. I hired Chris after connecting with him on www.fundingpost.com. At the time, his company was called Chris Winn Consulting. We had an initial conversation and he sounded like he knew what direction I wanted to take my website in. We were also discussing offering him equity in exchange for the work.
During this time, I was trying to figure out how to bring in revenue as the first site I was focusing on would take a long time to build. I told Chris about a second idea I had come up with: www.personalizedtraveljournal.com" rel="nofollow">www.personalizedtraveljournal.com and he said he would be willing to work on it first. Thank goodness I had him work on this small project first.
After having an initial conversation via phone, I was not allowed to contact him by phone again. He said everything should be done over the internet so that he could have proof of what he did. Interesting in retrospect. I specified numerous times that I wanted to speak by phone so that I had a clear understanding of his intentions. We have yet to do that.
Like many others, he handed my job over to Robert due to health issues and his grandfather being sick and I haven't heard from him since. December 2007 was when we started working on the site and today, March 31, 2008, it is still not completed. If you check out www.personalizedtraveljournal.com" rel="nofollow">www.personalizedtraveljournal.com you will find that the title of the site is even misspelled. I could have done this on my own.
Tomorrow, I will be submitting a letter from my attorney illustrating my frustration in a legal manner. If anyone can provide suggestions or has already started legal proceedings, please contact me. This is absolutely ridiculous!
April 11. 2008 04:17
Wayne
We had identified Chris Winn from the Drupal website and he become short listed along with another six firms from over 20 developers. He was very responsive during that selection process on the Phone, Skype and Email. He appeared to have the experience that we where seeking and was able to meet our demanding deadlines.
As campaign strategist the website came under my supervision and was to play a key role in the election. This was the campaign website for a very critical state election run in 2007 for a famous Australian politician.
September 2006 Chris Winn Consulting (CWC) to develop the website and do:
Activist relationship management, web design, graphic design, copywriting and editing, vetting, content development, long-term strategic direction, strategic advice, technical support, donations management and database management.
After our first payment then we started to see issues with timely delivery and quality of work. As the election campaign progressed with greater demands required for performance he became harder to contact and the work greatly deteriorated. It started to become very clear that he did not have the skills, experience, knowledge and ability that was required to deliver the project required. It is now also very clear that we had hook up with a con man.
We where also given the ‘he is very sick routine’ and also later told that Chris Winn had nothing to do with ‘Eshilon Design’. For all the funds paid during the project we now no longer have a website at all. He has taken the website down and can not be contacted. While we had continually asked for monthly back ups during the development process this did not happen as with many development phases.
I believe that it was very clear that Chris Winn had set out to defraud us from the outset. It is also clear that Chris Winn should be convinced of a criminal offence reading the trail of similar experiences.
Below was some of the credentials that Chris Winn provided us with:
Background
CWC is a unique leader in the field of open source technology development as we have a
very rich political background.
While consulting for U.S. Sen. John Edwards’ presidential campaign (2003-2004), we
applied the first national political use of Slashcode, an intricate open source content
management system (well-known for its use at www.slashdot.org, one of the Internet’s most-
trafficked Web sites). Within three months, we grew Sen. Edwards’ blog visitor-base from just
300 to over 10,000. CWC proudly built the technology from the ground up and managed on
a day-to-day basis the Internet communications of the entire national campaign. We were
honored to be part of a very hard-working and talented team.
In 2004, CWC managed a last-minute emergency political effort to target five U.S. Senate
campaigns. Within 72 hours, we developed, built, and deployed five unique Websites,
complete with research material, TV spots, e-mail marketing campaigns, and tell-a-friend
functionality.
Throughout 2004 and 2005, CWC has helped direct the campaigns of local and regional
candidates, designed and deployed Web sites for both small and large organizations, and
maintained close working relationships with Washington, D.C.-based political action
committees and non-profit/charitable groups. Many clients keep CWC on full retainer to
manage their Internet strategy.
We are grateful for our clients’ business and work hard to support their successful ventures.
Our company’s core values are collaboration, honesty, and diligence. (Now that last line has got to make you laugh out loud).
Wayne
April 20. 2008 14:57
Leigh Goldie
Please note the website I connected with Chris on is www.designquote.net. I listed the site incorrectly in my first entry. Right now, he is listed on the site as number 2 in the top 20 design firms on that site, as he has acquired 26 jobs from the site.
Also, there is now a post on Ripoff Report as well from another unhappy customer of his. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at ellbee22@aol.com.