BRAND LABS - BAIT AND SWITCH. Do NOT pay for a Development Proposal from Brand Labs. There are plenty of 3rd party people out there that can do it for a lot cheaper than Brand Labs. AFTER I paid $5500.00 to Brand Labs, Inc, they gave me a quote that was 3X the budget we had talked about. Even after asking them to dump a large part of it! So here is a summary: 1) I spoke with them clearly of my budget of $30,000 to rebuild a site. 2) I paid $5500 for a proposal, again stipulating the above budget. 3) They came back with a proposal in the $80,000 range 4) Major panic ensued but I notice that a huge chunk of the cost is due to a specific request I had. 5) I request that they take that expensive part out (I will do it myself through a cheaper 3rd party). 6) They came back to say it would still be $80,000!! Whaaaaaa? :::See the details below::: July 22, 2013 I was talking with Brand Labs on a project to redesign my website. I explained what my objectives were as well as a budget expectation. I didn't want to pay Brand Labs more than 30k for a website redesign, and made that clear and they seemed responsive. Just an FYI they will ALWAYS seem responsive at this point. I get it now. :-( Now it is possible that I was a bit naive to believe that a website redesign could be done for 30k or less, but I was led to believe that it was certainly possible in my case by the Brand Labs sales rep via her manager (again...duh!), so I was just happy I found someone in the U.S. that was willing to give it a shot. The patriot in me clouded my judgement. Aug 16, 2013 After talking with the Brand Labs sales rep on several occasions giving them other website examples of what I wanted my site to look like, as well as outlining the general idea I had in mind they told me the next step was to do a formal Scope. This process was meant to have programmers go through my site and determine what exactly needed to be done to accomplish the redesign. I agreed, but before I signed I outlined in an email what I I had in mind as far as cost. I wanted to stipulate in the email that the $5500 I was paying now would be put toward the project and that I could take the scope with me to any other company to use if it was not done to my satisfaction. So I explained to Brand Labs in an email, if the project comes in at $35,000, I could put the $5250 toward it and I would need to come up with ~$29,000. I was completely ready to pay a little higher if needed knowing the project may be more involved than I first thought. Aug 26, 2013 I received a quote that was $80,000! Again Whaaat!! So I quickly read through the proposal and noticed 330hrs ($41,250) was due to a specific request. So if I remove that request the proposal should quickly drop the price to a reasonable (albeit still high) amount...right? WRONG! No change. Brand Labs still wanted to charge me $80,000 and I was at this point out my $5500. Classic bait and switch. Brand Labs might be good at websites, but don't pay Brand Labs for a scope...get it from a third party, you'll pay $500-$1000 for one that is probably just as good. read more