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PBHS Review

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Provide a helping hand

Provide a Helping Hand to Your Clients... Even When They Leave

I have a client who worked extensively with PBHS for his website, logo design and more. His experience was good… until the day he canceled. Here’s a bit of information about what I found when working with PBHS.

The website he had was nice. It was a typical “website in a box” design that looked like most every other website and did little to inspire patients to actually call. Which is not a bad thing: if you’re looking for an online business card, they make nice ones. Unfortunately, that’s not what most dentists need. Most dentists need to differentiate from the pack and stand out from the crowd, and having “just another dental website” doesn’t accomplish that… it just makes you blend in, just like your office probably blends in with all the other shops in the strip mall you’re in.

The real problems occurred when he tried to cancel. Now don’t get me wrong, PBHS was professional with me when I spoke with them and had everything ready to go to transfer his site over. What they didn’t tell me was that they would immediately disconnect his email accounts as soon as he called to cancel, so they were completely cut off from email for a day.

Then, about a month later, he called and asked for copies of the logo they created for him. After he was sent just the jpeg and png files, he asked for the native ai files. The resonse was this:

Hi Dr. C*****,

Sorry we don’t give out our source/working files.
Thanks,
Wow, really? So when a client pays you to create something that they should own the copyright to, you won’t give them the native files? Classy. That’s called holding your clients hostage… not a practice I condone on any level.
The good news is, the logo was simple to recreate and my graphics guy did it for me gratis. I’ve now sent the native files to the doctor so he won’t have this problem again.
I wish I could say that this is an isolated instance (and it may be with PBHS, as this is my only interaction with them to date). Unfortunately, many designers, programmers, developers, etc. feel the need to hold their client’s information hostage. It’s a practice I don’t understand. Look, in business you’ll lose some clients, gain some clients, and have some clients forever. It’s just part of doing business. You don’t need to take it personally every time someone wants to go in another direction. My clients was thrilled with the services provided by PBHS and would never have anything bad to say about them. He just wanted to turn his website into a more powerful marketing tool for his practice. It’s called growth… it’s a good thing.
I lose clients. Our dental practice has lost patients. I wish the client luck and offer any future support I can provide. Because even if she won’t be my client anymore, she may refer others to me in the future, and that’s the most valuable thing of all.

3 Comments

  • Rich Lombardo
    April 19, 2011
    12:33 pm

    Hello Jared:

    Thank you for your post. PBHS appreciates your feedback. As manager of the Graphic Design Department at PBHS, I wanted to clarify our policy for you.

    PBHS does release native files of logos designed for clients. As a matter of fact, on further review of Dr. “C”‘s account, three native file types (.eps, .pdf and .jpg)) were emailed to Dr. C on August 19th. They were emailed to his info account as per his request. As you are aware, eps if one of the most versatile file formats for his logo. If he needs an ai file, we are happy to send it to him. I am unsure who had responded to your email but my feeling is that this is from an employee who is not in the design department.

    Regarding termination of Dr. C’s email accounts, I checked with our Accounting Department and Dr. C was past due for over 3 months hence his services were suspended.

    Again, we appreciate your thoughts, but hope you now have a more complete picture of Dr. C’s account and will publish this information accordingly.

    Please feel free to call me directly with any questions at 1-800-840-5383 ext 117 or email me at richie@pbhs.com.

    Best Regards,

    Rich Lombardo

    Reply
    • Jared
      April 22, 2011
      2:15 am

      Rich, thanks for your comments. Of course I will publish them. My goal isn’t to needlessly knock companies… it’s to share my experience, and I’m happy to know that you would provide the .ai files if requested. In our experience, we were told we could not have those files. I don’t know if the employee was a design team member and I won’t name the person publicly for obvious reasons, but when the first response is a “no” it’s difficult to understand that I need to ask more (or different) people. Hopefully this incidence will help make a positive effect on that aspect of communication with some of your staff.

      Thanks for responding and sharing that information. Hopefully it will help others in the future as well.

      Reply
  • Jessica
    February 3, 2012
    6:29 am

    We currently work with PBHS and have had issue after issue. They are difficult to get a hold of, the content manager is not easy to update, the flash on the homepage prevents users from viewing on a mobile devices. When we requested some changes they quoted me 2-3 weeks to finish them and it’s been 4 weeks. We are in the process of finding another designer and host to meet our needs and to be able to assist us when we ask for help.

    Reply

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