What Happens When One’s Webmaster Goes Off the Reservation?

Primary emotion at this moment: Frustration. Wait let me express it by yelling: FRUSTRATION!

I gave up the control reins of my websites a couple years ago, hiring an amiable and brilliant designer and photographer, fluent in html. It wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it. Let me yell the key word: WAS.

As countless messages—both email and phone—are going unanswered and I’m dealing with a recurring problem that I can’t fix on my own, I’ve had to live with being the idiot who pays the bills and actually expects service when I need it.

I fucking HATE when that happens. And lest anyone think I’m just whining about not getting service when I need it at the moment, I’ve been trying to get this store working for two years and for all intents and purposes, I'm being ignored.

Guess what? The nice, understanding client has left the building. Here comes the beyotch.


I’m reminded of the fast-talking insurance brokers who, over the years, have convinced us to go through the underwriting process of another new health care policy. We sign over our family’s wellbeing for a much better price with promises of equal or greater coverage. Then with every passing birthday, we watch our premiums get higher and higher, despite our good health. Then one day, we face a broken arm and surgery, and on top of all the premiums paid, we still face three-grand in expenses. WTF?

It cost me about a third of what our annual insurance premiums amount to in order to get a working store on our website. A virtual retail operation would really come in handy given our bricks and mortar store is open only four months a year. Unfortunately, because of the poor functionality of this Internet store, in two years we’ve collected in revenues only about one-tenth of the cost of developing it.

That’s just WRONG. (Can you hear me yelling?) And for the past week I haven’t been able to add or edit products. Unfortunately, I learned this after I invested in a big promotional effort for my new jewelry line. Do you know how silly I feel for ASSUMING the store would actually work?

Hiring someone else to clean up this mess would be like throwing bad money after good. It would be bad money, because I simply don’t have it in the budget. And given my experience with Insurance companies, I know the honeymoon would be as short as the new President’s.

So what am I supposed to do?