Chicago's Worst Shopify Experts
When we finally found a local Shopify “expert” we thought it was going to make the design/development process more efficient. It seemed other agencies were just outsourcing the work offshore, which we can do ourselves via upwork or any of the freelance sites. We met with Socialmediately's Creative Director in person and explained our expectations. She assured us that her team was US based, though they worked remotely, and we had nothing to fear in terms of communication or turnaround time.
The project started in January. Eight months later, the shop is complete, albeit incorrectly. In fairness, we requested a few more tasks than initially requested and communication was not always prompt. However, the main issue is the overall lack of quality control and low level of performance. Turnaround time on each task was easily 3+ days for even the simplest changes. The work was repeatedly done incorrectly. For example, buttons would be askew and not lined up, errors were constantly missed in spelling, design, and, layout. In a few instances, we would offer an example of functionality on another website, only for the work to come back incorrect. If you show someone a red car, and say “paint it like this” it shouldn’t come back orange!
After a few months of this back and forth to get things done right, we realized something was wrong. As it turns out, there is no team and SocialMediately's Creative Director is not an expert at all, but a glorified project manager outsourcing all of the actual work to a Pakistani. This explained the communication issues, but the work quality was still very poor. Subsequently, we asked for several functions that the Creative Director said could not be done. We would call Shopify support ourselves only to be told that these things were absolutely possible. I would be embarrassed to hold myself out as an expert when my own client corrects me on Shopify functionality.
In the end, SocialMediately terminated our agreement due to being “over budget” without completing the site in its entirety. When we disputed this we were locked out of the shop completely. With no other remedy, we had to pay in full just to get access to fix the shop ourselves.
In my opinion, SocialMediately is not an expert at all and let this serve as a warning to anyone relying on the Shopify Experts and their reviews. The reviews can only be left by those customers invited to do so by the so-called expert they hire.
At this point we’re exploring our legal options to see what remedy is available and how we may prevent other entrepreneurs from the same negative experience.
