My Experience with Scott La Plant, Apptastik December 1, 2008

This post is about my awful experience with Scott La Plant of Apptastik, on the ContactApp application. While I prefer this blog to be only about web technology implementation, I fear I must stray from the implementation perspective for one post and focus on a web technology personnel warning. Unfortunately, I feel it is my duty to inform and warn the web technology world about Scott La Plant, Apptast!k, LLC. (other Apptastik projects include CalendarApp, InvoiceApp, LettersApp and GreatCareersHere).

I worked with Scott La Plant on the CSS for ContactApp, a 37signals Highrise knock-off for a little under a week. My role was to create CSS that worked in grade-a browsers on Mac and PC. Which is exactly what I did. While I was actively working on the project, Scott La Plant made himself very available: he was always online, provided quick feedback, and was fairly easy to work with. He gave me positive feedback, and was impressed at the speed I made edits he suggested. However, once he was in receipt of the completed files, Scott La Plant became difficult to reach, put himself on stealth mode on IM, and, when he did communicate he was abusive, irate and irrational.

When he told me that he wanted to go in a different direction I was more than happy to terminate the working relationship with what I considered to be a bi-polar creep.  I maintained my professionalism, let him know how much he owed, and wished him well. Although he is currently using the CSS I wrote and the images I created, he has refused to pay me. He continues to refuse to pay, continues to be controlling, continues to use my work without payment, and has repeatedly threatened legal action against me. Therefore, I must tell the story.

It isn’t to say that all freelancing projects run perfectly, but Scott La Plant having issues with a contractors, especially female ones, seems to be the norm, not an isolated incident. To hopefully ensure that no one else has to endure what Uma, Rosy R., Ruchita, Nayana, and others have had to go thru with this individual, I am telling my story in full. It’s long and boring, so you don’t have to read any further. However, if you are considering working with Scott La Plant, or are thinking of purchasing or subscribing to any of his applications, including InvoiceApp, ContactApp, LettersApp, CalendarApp or GreatCareersHere, read the rest. When full names have been used in quotes, I have obfuscated the names of those involved.

The Introduction

On Labor day I received an email from a woman I know professionally, “I have a guy I know that needs some help with CSS… are you up for that? As in, he needs to hire you to fix whatever it is that he’s building.”

I connected with the client, a Mr. Scott La Plant, later that day. In his email he wrote “I believe we have a mutual friend in XXX , who I affectionately refer to as “X”. While I usually vet potential clients before working with them,  since this was a friend of a friend (or so I thought since he told me he had a pet name for her), I wanted to help out.

Scott La Plant sent me a zip file with 5 html files of pages. The contactApp files turned out to be a knock-off of the 37signals Highrise application. Having never used Highrise, I didn’t realize that this was an attempt at reverse engineering the site. Had I been familiar with Highrise, it would have been obvious that I should not have accepted such a project. I don’t intentionally work on stolen or copied work.

Today I signed up for a highrise account to write this post. With 20/20 hind-sight, the only apparent difference between the ContactApp application is the color scheme, name and logo.

Something seems fishy with this ScottLaPlant

I started having my first reservations about working with Scott La Plant when we discussed pay,. Most small business owners try to negotiate pay rates. Scott La Plant didn’t. When Scott La Plant didn’t react I began wondering if he was a shyster: was he not negotiating since he wasn’t going to pay me? I did a Google search for “Scott La Plant” and found Scott La PlantScott La Plant, Ebay, Hardwarecomputer_user ripoff Dishonest racist seller on ebay sold me a computer many items were missing and lied about shipping costs. Rockford Michigan on Ripoff Report. My thought was that this was a different Scott La Plant, since the one in the article lived in Michigan.

This guy seemed overly nice: a little fishy. I should have gone with my gut reaction. Instead, I coded furiously over the next few days to get the site to him earlier than I had suggested.

Scott La Plant told me he was a programmer and insinuated that he did the work himself. He stated that in this project he had been preserving class names and ID’s, would be fixing some permission, etc. I presented my suggested timeframe based on the assumption that he knew how to code. When people know what that are doing, they can easily change border widths, font colors, etc. I presented a suggested timeframe based on getting the CSS working on the 5 pages from the zip (it was 7 in the end) — I would get the CSS working for the pages submitted to me in about a week, and would tweak anything that needed to be changed when the application was more complete.

The application I was given was not complete: I only received a few pages. I completed those pages, and told Scott La Plant I would complete the CSS for the new pages after they were developed. Makes sense?

Scott La Plant shows his darker side

I sent Scott La Plant the files repeatedly while I was working on the project. He had some edits. I made them. The work was 90% done. Everything seemed fine. I went to bed. I woke up to an email stating “wtf”: the issues included a button being floated left instead of right, and 5 other quick fixes, and I fixed them quickly. I sent him the revised files.

But something seemed off. He put me on stealth mode on his instant messenger for about 12 hours, responding at 9:00 pm that he had been sleeping. During the day, as I was waiting for feedback on whether he had enough CSS complete to continue on creating the back end, I did a google search and found more information. I found  Scott La Plant, Imedia Technology Ripoff, Racist, Liar, Thief Elizabethtown Pennsylvania and a bunch of oDesk job requisitions, including one for CSS help for a week before he contacted me, to which I assume the tweet “hates it when he hires someone to fix something, and it breaks, and then they charge you to fix what you hired them to do in 1st place. huh?” is in reference, and one posted that day for a CSS person to finish up the application I was currently working on. I also found out  that he used to live in Michigan, so the eBay RipOff report above was indeed about him.

During our evening conversation, Scott La Plant stated he wanted the CSS for the entire application to be complete. We discussed that it was not possible, or in his financial best interest, to pixel perfect code before the application at least had all the pages complete. He stated he understood, and put me on stealth mode from that point on. He was supposed to create the back end, and I was going to complete the CSS when the pages were available online. Looking back, I don’t understand how he expected me to pixel perfect pages when I didn’t have a design or code to work from.

Two days later Scott La Plant asked me if I wanted to work on InvoiceApp with him, and we could split earnings. I declined. He then asked me a CSS question, and I explained how to resolve the issue. As the CSS was now in his hands, and we did not have version control set up, he had to make the edits. I couldn’t. Otherwise there would have been code conflicts or overwrites.

He told me he was going to dinner, and we would review some more issues when he returned. He was on stealth mode on instant messenger, so I had to wait for him to initiate conversations. Three hours later I received an irate email, “I’m going another direction at this point because honestly, I’m tired of waiting.”

I didn’t really know what he was waiting for: I had completed all the files he had sent me, with commented out instructions in any area where the CSS might be confusing and in the HTML where any changes to the code needed to be made. Truthfully, I was glad to have an out of this relationship with a seemingly bi-polar client.  During the 6 days I had worked on the project I led Scott La Plant by the hand in explaining what I was doing, how he needed to implement the code, what he should expect, and gave details in the code as to how to implement and HTML changes. Now that he had all the files he had asked me to work on, the files we had worked on together and he had reviewed, he was demanding a new set of files — ones I did not have. I remained professional, wished him luck, and informed him how much he owed.

He responded with:

As for your invoice, I received it… Just because you sent it to me so expeditiously doesn’t mean I’ll pay it immediately. I’ll pay as much attention to that invvoice as you did to my pleas about my need for this project being done quickly. Remember, I hired you to deal with the css so I could focus on other things. If you needed access, it would have been provided but, it was pretty much made clear to me you weren’t interested and I don’t make it a habit of begging. I hire, I set expectations and I either have them met or I don’t…. I don’t waste time dicking about or arguing about this/that or the other thing. And I didn’t get what I was paying for. As for the invoice, I need a detailed, broken down invoice.”

He deleted my Paypal invoice.

I sent him a detailed invoice several days later when I was doing my billing. He quickly responded with “I figured I’d wait to see what other ignorant comments you want to tweet before I again cancel this invoice. I’m referring all further inquiries to my attorney on this matter. His name is YYY and his email address is ted@YYY.com. Direct all future correspondence to him please.” And, he deleted another PayPal invoice.

To be fair, I did make one comment about ScottLaPlant on twitter: “The chances of Scott La Plant paying me for the work I did on Apptastik are about the same as Sarah Palin getting into Mensa.” That was the only comment about him that I tweeted, which you can see it if you follow me on Twitter.

I corresponded with his attorney. His attorney stated “the work requested by Mr. LaPlant was not completed by the agreed upon deadline and, after the deadline past, the work received by Mr. LaPlant was so incomplete as to be unusable.” (Unusable? He’s currently using it! It’s live on the ContactApp website!)

I responded with:

“Scott La Plant agreed to an hourly rate. Although there was no contractually agreed upon completion date, the work was performed and delivered to Mr. La Plant earlier than estimated during correspondence on September 2, 2008. Mr. La Plant provided feedback on work performed throughout the time I was working on the project, confirming that work was actually performed, not “allegedly performed”. In addition, when seeking another independent contractor, Mr. La Plant advertised the project as being “90% complete” and just needing “finishing touches.” Since it appears from your email below, that you only discussed the situation with Mr. La Plant and have not yet had an opportunity to view written correspondence involved, I can supply written correspondence which corroborate all of which I have stated above.

Due the fact that the agreement was based on an hourly rate alone, payment is due. In addition, since the work was provided in a more than timely manner, feedback was given on the work, changes were made based on the feedback, and all this was all before the estimated completion time, had this been a fixed rate instead of hourly project, payment would be due.”

Scott La Plant’s attorney did not ask for corroborating evidence, but did send another email stating that he Mr. LaPlant was clear that the requested work needed to be completed, in full, by a specific deadline, that the specified deadline was a material aspect of the agreement, that “despite multiple communications, the work was not completed by the agreed deadline and the work provided was substantially incomplete”, and that “Mr. LaPlant was forced to hire another independent contractor to perform the work” at a cost of $1,300. His attorney stated that they had no evidence other than [my] statements that would contradict the above.”

So, I provided transcripts of the conversations between Scott La Plant and myself contradicting every statement made by Scott La Plant’s attorney on his behalf.

No specific timeline was set:

Me: “When do you want this by. When do you need it by (sometimes those are 2 different things) and what do you need first.”

Scott: “well, what is a realistic time-frame for you?”

Me: “I hope to have it done by Sunday”

Scott: “No worries”.

I made Scott La Plant aware of my progress on the project on an ongoing basis. I provided Scott La Plant with updated files, with a link to see the progress live on the Internet, and provided Scott La Plant with written updates on a regular basis. Work was completed to the agreed up level as set forth in communication between myself and Scott La Plant by the roughly estimated date of Sunday

I had informed Mr. LaPlant that the back end needed to be coded before completion of the CSS would be possible, so provided transcripts. The correct order of developing web site is to first develop the content, or HTML layer and then develop the presentation, or CSS, layer. Since the content layer was not 100% complete, tweaks would have to be made after completion. Mr. LaPlant and I discussed this. On September 7, 2008, we had an additional conversation about this fact, the work and the timeline:

Me: “it makes more sense to get it 90% there…. code, and then fix up the last 10%”, (with code being a reference to the content layer which Mr. LaPlant was still working on.

Scott: “Yes, it does. honestly, it does :) “

Mr. LaPlant provided positive feedback on progress thru the the morning of September 6, 2008:

Scott: holy crap

Me: what?

Scott: you’re like…. fast

Scott: or I’m terribly inefficient

Scott: probably both

Scott: I’m usually open with all im clients on adium unless I’m just in “do not bother mode” for coding etc.. or a poor mood which I have been in for a few days. think lack of sleep is getting to me

Scott La Plant: pagination looks good. not as harsh. nice choice on colors

Me: ty

Me: the add buttons? the hover?

Scott: yep, looks good, ty

Me: subtle enough?

Scott: very much.. again, nice touch

Scott: on this page: http://url.com/contact.htm did you remove the style you had for the names being centered against the image (top of it)?

Me: on the tasks page there is a very, very subtle double line between the sections, that was intentioanl

Scott: I did notice that

Me: ah, must have overwritten it last night…

Me: when i was doing the other page…. need to fix

Scott: np

Scott: as for the double line on tasks and the subleness of it. again, I’d just stick with it. Looks very good. again, nice touch

Scott: on this page: http://url.com/contact.htm — the line seperating each contact…. what do you think about maybe making the divider line a little softer? what are your thoughts?

Me: if you notice down on the left of tasks there is the delete

Scott: yep, caught it

Me: the instructions are in the css on how to make it work

Scott : very clear instructions too :)

Me: oh, good

The conversation above is from September 6, 2008. Scott LaPlant was pleased with my work on his project, was getting updates, was providing feedback, and was able to view progress being made on the Internet. At no time did he tell me that he was not satisfied with the speed of work. Only once he was in possession of my files to the agreed upon level of completion did he complain.

On September 7, less than a week after initial contact, Mr. La Plant was in possession of the agreed upon files, that were “90% complete”. The agreement was that the server produced code needed to be in a more complete state prior to continuing any CSS work.

In hiring an independent contractor to complete the work, Mr LaPlant stated in his announcement of September 13, 2008, that the work was 90% complete. I attached the advertisement seeking a CSS contractor that ScottLaPlant placed at oDesk. Mr. La Plant advertised the project as being “90% complete” and just needing “finishing touches”

The live version of ContactApp is currently using the images and the CSS produced by me. I informed his attorney that am in possession of the original files sent to me, the CSS and images provided to him by me, and a copy of the CSS — which includes the CSS I marked up — currently in use on his server.

Scott La Plant agreed to an hourly rate. Although there was no contractually agreed upon completion date, the work was performed and delivered to Mr. La Plant earlier than estimated. Mr. La Plant provided feedback on work performed throughout the time I was working on the project, confirming that work was actually performed, not “allegedly performed”. I informed the attorney that due the fact that the agreement was based on an hourly rate, payment was due on this basis. Since the work was provided in a more than timely manner, feedback was given on the work, changes were made based on the feedback, and all this was all before the estimated completion time, had this been a fixed rate instead of hourly project, payment would have been due. In addition, Scott LaPlant is currently using the code and images created by me under the agreement, so payment was due.

I asked Scott La Plant’s attorney to provide the specifics of his statement, “Mr. LaPlant was clear that the requested work needed to be completed, in full, by a specific deadline,” to provide me with material proof that I was made aware of any alleged “specific deadline”, and to provide an explanation as to how it could be concluded that “the specified deadline was a material aspect of the agreement.” I also asked for communications demonstrating that the work was not completed by the agreed deadline and demonstrating that the work provided was “substantially” incomplete, how his perceived timeline was not met and contact information for an independent contractor that was allegedly hired and allegedly paid $1,300 — because looking online it seems that Scott La Plant has a tendency to not pay his contractors: I am not his first victim.

The attorney did not respond. Instead I received a response from Scott La Plant stating that he wont be paying me, that he was hoping to “we’d be able to be reasonable and deal in an amicable fashion” - how is not paying me amicable? How were his emails to me either reasonable or amicable? He instructed his attorney to “not accept further correspondence with [me]“, and told me that I should have my counsel contact him. My take is that since he doesn’t have anything stating his perceived deadline (to this date, I don’t know what his perceived timeline was), since he likely doesn’t have proof of having paid Joseph M, or anyone else $1,300 for CSS work, and he has no proof that the work was substantially incomplete (since he’s using it and it seems to work well, there goes that claim), his attorney likely told him to pay me, which is not what he wanted to hear. So, he told his attorney not to respond and decided to continue being ornery

Since his attorney was told not accept any additional correspondence from me, the amount of money being discussed in definitely small claims, and, at least in CA, you can’t have an attorney present in small claims court, there is no reason for me to hire an attorney. I have transcripts of the communications that occurred between Scott La Plant and myself. I provided proof showing the accuracy of my clais. Scott La Plant provided no proof for his unsubstantiated arguments for, as far as I can tell from re-reading all correspondence and transcripts, he had no proof to substantiate what he told his attorney.

There was an introductory email, and then two emails from his attorney to me, and two emails from myself to the attorney in response to his emails, before Scott La Plant terminated direct conversation between myself and the attorney

I sent Scott La Plant a final payment request, with the statement:

“I would hate to have to publicize the facts our interaction. If I don’t receive payment, I have no other option: I will have an obligation to inform other people of your failure to make payment on your obligations. Please pay in full. Thank you.”

He responded,

Please have your legal counsel contact either myself or my attorney, YYY. Just an fyi, I have attempted on numerous occasions, thru my attorney attempt to resolve this disagreement, to no avail.

Seeing how you want to attempt some sort of blackmail and threaten to disparage me, my intention is to pursue this legally. I would suggest you get an attorney if you’ve not done so already.

Please have your attorney contact mine so we can get on with this. Make no mistake, I have no intention of paying you. I was pretty clear in my instructions and you want payment?

It’s funny how people fuck stuff up, disgregard instructions, deadlines yet, seem to demand payment for things that didn’t get completed. So, post your diatribe and be prepared to spend out the ass - I am!

So, as promised, I have followed thru on my obligation to inform other people of his failure to make payment.

Additional Information

In the first section I mentioned InvoiceApp, ContactApp, LettersApp, and GreatCareersHere:

• InvoiceApp is a copy of BlinkSale

• ContactApp is a copy of Highrise

• LettersApp is a copy of Writeboard

• GreatCareersHere is a copy of Authentic Jobs

I have never seen CalendarApp, so cannot confirm that is a copy of 37 Signals’ Calendar Application.

Perhaps he had permission to use the CSS and reverse engineer these applications. If you plan on purchasing any of these applications, I would recommend doing your homework on whether permission was granted and whether contractors were paid.

Note: This is the Scott La Plant or Scott LaPlant, a.k.a ScottLaPlant, who currently resides near Elizabethtown, PA, formerly from Michigan. Sorry to others with the same name sake.