I will have to admit that the LogoWorks guys are sure doing the right thing.  Now, if they would only implement some of my ideas.  Here is a follow-up to my previous post regarding the LogoWorks refund policy:

Alex,

I’m sorry for the confusion. This is my fault. The LogoWorks refund policy states that if you don’t like the initial concepts we provide that you can get a refund at that point in the process minus a $75 fee. We used to do a full money-back guarantee but there was a substantial amount of abuse (like the time one of the concepts we did showed up in use on the website for the church who bought it and had their money refunded). So we had to introduce some level of non-refundable fee to make sure people were serious. That said, our refund policy doesn’t allow a customer to choose a concept, order several rounds of revisions, get to a final logo and then decide that they don’t like (and presumably ask for a refund). They have to make the request after the initial concepts are delivered.

In your case, I could tell you were frustrated by your blog, I knew you weren’t abusing the system so I offered a full refund (no fee). When you called into our support center, I’m not surprised that they explained that you technically weren’t eligible for a refund because technically you’re not. I apologize for the confusion. I should have put a note in your account so customer support had the right information when you called.

That said, Debbie tracked me down yesterday and asked what to do. I advised her to call you and ask you what you wanted to have happen. I advised her that if you wanted more concepts, to do them for free. If you wanted all your money back for both projects then to process the refund with no fees. Hopefully this resolves the problem.

On the other issues you mention. We do have someone full-time monitoring blogs. We haven’t thought through how this monitoring might need to scale in the future. It will probably require something similar to Google Alerts to keep up.

As for the other problem… As you know we were accused of plagiarism on a handful of logos in our logo gallery. We have responded to this formally and informally in several places already. However to reiterate our position, have do not tolerate any form of logo duplication, we have terminated designers in the past when this has occured, we have several check and balance systems to prevent it, but our sheer volume (over 30,000 customers) makes this issue particularly challenging for us. I would add any designer working in any agency can plagiarize work. It happens. It is an industry problem, not a LogoWorks problem.

Lastly, all of those postings are written by a handful of designers that resent our business model. They feel we are devaluing the graphic design industry because we charge so little for what we do. Our model is disruptive, it is changing the way graphic design is delivered. When online stock trading launched there was a lot of pissed off stock brokers. Same for travel agents with online travel. I’m sure there were a lot of nervous local bookstore owners when Amazon started getting traction. What is not generally understood is that in most cases, the market size actually increases and the rising tide lifts all ships (more people trade stock because it is easier, more people travel because it is more convenient and they can find better deals, and even with books Amazon increased the overall size of the market). Unfortunately, a small number of graphic designers don’t see it this way and are trying to blog us to death. They are malicious. With our business growing at 50% per quarter and the percentage of customers who say they would recommend the service to a friend at 98.6% and rising we’re obviously doing something right.

Best,

Jeff