Direct Web Design
Reviews and Complaints

I engaged with Roman 10/10/2019 had to pay $450 upfront.
I was further functions would cost a further $1000 and something.
Roman emailed me a link to review his progress to which I advised I was unable to open. He advised me to turn off my firewalls and a friend told me not to do that as that's how you get hacked.
I was unhappy with the photoshop of my products and that it was now several months and still no website.
I decided to cancel services and requested a refund.
Roman advised he will honour that request but refunds are not completed until end of month.
Several of my follow up emails went inserted so on
4/2/2020 I called his mobile to which he screamed wrong number [censored] of and hung up the phone.
A colleague then emailed him requesting his service to which he agreed.
Several days went past and he followed up advising he hadn't heard from her. She advised she tried calling his mobile in relation to further questions but it must be wrong and could he confirm.
He confirmed his mobile- which matched the one I called several days prior .
Ive lodged s claim at VCAT today

Roman Shashkoff of Dynamic Website designs built two very basic and ordinary websites for my business that performed very poorly in Google rankings.

On 14 February, 2020 I took up his offer to provide my website with SEO services and paid his invoice # 9894. He claimed that I would no longer need to buy key words from Google Adwords so I stopped this. I paid him $537 for 3 months of SEO services for 5 of the most relevant keywords people would search for my product under. There was a list he provided me of what his SEO services included such as blogs, backlinks, website updates, keyword research, competitor analysis, lead analysis and monthly reporting results. Not one of these services were provided and he took my money and did absolutely nothing.

I contacted him on his mobile telephone after 3 months in June 2020. Someone claiming to be Steve answered his mobile and said Roman was in meeting and would call me back. It was Roman pretending to be someone else. I emailed him to advise that I had received no results from his services and that he had not provided me with any of the services he claims. I requested a full refund of the fees I paid to him. He advised me that he does not refund payments for SEO services which is a condition of when you sign up. I advised him he had breached consumer trading laws by not providing a service so I was entitled to a refund.

He has also been using another businesses ABN (Australian Business Number) which is a fraudulent and illegal.

I will be taking further legal action against him.

The guy that runs DirectWebDesign.com.au and YouGoDesigns.com. au is a scammer. His name is Roman Shashkoff of 24 Howey Rd Pakenham. Never use his services. He will take your money and run! Be very aware!

We wish to warn everyone about this.

Again, his name is Roman Shashkoff of 24 Howey Rd Pakenham. Never use his services. He will take your money and run!

A clear and concise brief was provided to engage this company to finalise our website, along with example of other website designs as a template. The company continually did small parts of the job and demanded a rushed signoff to confirm each stage was working. At so called completion the design was nothing like what we asked for, the functionality is faulty and the customers cannot work the site. We have tried dozens of times and spent hundreds of hours trying to get the developer to fix the poor workmanship, but they claim they have done the job and any requests to fix the poor workmanship is merely a change request and want more money. When asked to check the site functionality themselves they ignore the request and simply say we signed off on each stage. The fact remains that the finished product is not fully functional and is of very low standard. They take no responsibility for the fact that they have not finished the site properly. It is not only filled with poorly designed functionality it also is full of bad grammar and sections that don't work at all. This developer has not only cost us money in lost time, lost sales and the cost of development but damage to our reputation with our clients. We would strongly recommend to avoid using them at all costs. Despite many many requests to review and fix the poor design and evidence provided of same, they refuse and call us liars. We would have no need to complain if they had in fact done the job they promised to do.

Direct Web Design aka You Go Designs all belonging to Roman Shashkoff of 24 Howey Road Packenham, Melbourne (03 9702 1547 / 0431 379 693), were engaged to design a website (fairly simple one - informative only, not transactional) for a new business. Constant delays and excuses followed their inept and incomplete efforts (and I use that loosely) ending by simply just being ignored.

Finally delivered a partial, non-functioning, unusable website and then refused to update, complete or rectify, or take any responsibility, requiring me to start again with a competent and professional company and delaying our launch. Roman refused to take any responsibility (when I finally got him to communicate) or to refund for an incomplete and worthless service. In fact he wanted more money.

Roman uses the ABN for You Go Designs on his Direct Web Design invoices - maybe that saves on Tax reporting.

He works from home and doesn't have any business infrastructure as stated, like "offices throughout Australia". But his website is good, I'll say that. I'm guessing he outsourced that one. But not to India...

As also noted by the many other complainants, we also had our services outsourced to a guy called Pritam at Fourtune Design in India. We found this out later. You can speak to Pritam direct rather than put up with the rubbish excuses you'll see from Roman to the many complaints on this site.

Email : fourtunedesign@gmail.com
Skype : tanusri_fourtunedesign
Call : +919163582414 / +919836398969

I see that Roman uses the same old excuses for all of these complaints by blaming the complainant and saying people are anonymous, or that these are competitor staged complaints etc. Not true. Go to Consumer Affairs Victoria and search him. This guy relies upon the fact that clients are either located away from Melbourne and the costs are not high enough to justify civil action, so he just takes your money, sends it to Pritam and maybe he will or won't get it right and then if its wrong, blames you and moves on to the next sucker.

If you must use this "business", don't pay until you're happy. Hope you're not in a rush.

And I'm not anonymous. And I never had "Customer Service" make every effort to help me. There is no Customer Service department or staff. It's all just Roman and service is not a word he knows.

Shane Hogan - [protected]

This guy Roman Shashkov has threathen me with false allegations on the web about my company if i dont pay him for work he didn't do
Also he has removed my website and holding it ransom to pay him
This guy was empolyed to do 20 add words
400 dollars per month
He said if he it was not on first page after 3 months he would do it for free until it does

Bull crap it never came any where near first page and was never going to

I contacted my credit card holder and told them about his scam
They refunded my account

My advice stay well clear

In January of this year I commissioned Direct Web Design to develop an eCommerce site for my Martial Arts Gym.
The original quote was impressive and quite detailed as to what I was getting.
Unfortunately that's where it finished, upon commencement of the project it became obvious that this was not an Australian business doing the work, but a company in India. The communication was absolutely appalling and the business owner by the name of Roman could not be contacted most of the time.
In the interest of keeping this as short as possible, the original quote stated that the website would be completed within 14 days of design sign off, after six months of trying to communicate what I wanted, I was left with a site that is completely dysfunctional and not at all what i wanted despite emails that I lost count of back and forth without any completion of what was asked for, when it was completed it was totally incorrect. THIS BUSINESS IS A COMPLETE FRAUD -- Do not even think about using them.

I have asked for a refund of the money I paid them which was $950 which they have not refunded and now will not take any calls or return any emails.

Needless to say I have wasted hundreds of hours trying to get this site to work and now I am faced with having to pay for legal action against these fraudsters.

If there is any one who is going through the same thing I would love to hear from you.

WARNING to others considering there services DO NOT DO IT.

On Tuesday 6 June 2017, I, Lauren Smart, employee of Stacks Family Law, received a quote from Direct Web Design in response to my request regarding website design for our family law practice. Part of the package as advertised included setting up email accounts.

Our practice uses the Microsoft Outlook program for managing email correspondence. As such, engaging a web-designer whom had the capacity to use the necessary Microsoft Exchange hosting service was a condition precedent to any agreement.

On Wednesday 7 June 2017, I received a link to an online deposit invoice totaling $300.00 including GST, representing a 50% deposit on the website design.

Attached is a copy of Direct Web Design's Terms and Conditions.

On Thursday 8 June 2017, prior to making any deposit, I inquired with Mr Roman Shashkov of Direct Web Design whether the email hosting was through Microsoft Exchange. Mr Shashkov responded via email, stating "You can set the email up in any email program you like, such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office…".

Attached is a copy of the email correspondence chain between myself and Mr Shashkov dated 8 June 2017.

On 22 June 2017 our office made payment of the $300.00 deposit via cheque.

On 29 June 2017, our office made payment of $70.00 including GST for the 2-year registration of a domain name.

On 30 June 2017, Mr Shashkov confirmed with myself that the domain name and web hosting had been set up, and that I could log in to create email addresses. I responded, and once again requested confirmation that these email accounts would work with Microsoft Outlook. Mr Shashkov responded "Yes thy (sic) will work Microsoft Outlook".

Attached is a copy of the email correspondence chain between Ms Smart and Mr Shashkov dated 30 June 2017.

On 4 July 2017, I became aware that a number of emails were remaining in my outbox and not being delivered to the intended recipients. I contacted Silicon Beach, our IT support, to assist. Silicon Beach advised via telephone that the email accounts provided by Direct Web Design were not Microsoft Exchange accounts and thus were not compatible with our existing office structures. Our office subsequently engaged Silicon Beach to organise email hosting services.

On 19 September 2017, Lesley Young of our office sent a letter via email to Mr Shashkov, explaining that we had been misled as to the capacity of Direct Web Design to support Microsoft Exchange, being essential to our agreement. Ms Young requested that our agreement be immediately cancelled on this basis, and that the deposit and domain hosting payments already made to the sum of $370.00 be refunded. Ms Young provided her bank account details for this purpose.

Attached is a copy of Ms Young's letter to Mr Shashkov dated 19 September 2017.

Our office received no response from Mr Shashkov.

On 20 October 2017, Ms Young again sent a letter via email to Mr Shashkov, attaching our letter of 19 September and advising payment of the sum of $370.00 had not been received, and that should reimbursement not be received by Monday 23 October 2017, this matter would be taken up with the Department of Fair Trading without further notice.

Attached is a copy of Ms Young's letter to Ms Shashkov dated 20 October 2017.

To date our office has received no response from Mr Shashkov and no reimbursement of the funds.

My request for clarification as to Direct Web Design's ability to provide the Microsoft exchange service on 7 June, prior to payment, and 30 June, when the hosting service was first activated, indicates the essential nature of this aspect of the service to our firm. As evidenced, Mr Shashkov on both occasions made misleading statements as to Direct Web Design's capabilities, and accordingly induced payment of the deposit and hosting sums.

Moreover, the firm had a four-day period in which emails were, until my discovery, not being delivered, thereby compromising our relationship with and obligations towards our clients.

To this date, we have never received any response or reimbursement of our funds.

This complaint is to warn other consumers not to proceed with Direct Web Design for creating websites or using them for email hosting.

Roman took months and months to design my website. It was clear someone from overseas was hired to complete the task and if we wanted to deal with someone who was not fluent in english we would have opted for a much cheaper service overseas. The content we submitted was never displayed how we had sent it the pictures were stretched and everything had spelling or grammar errors Roman stated 'we don't really care about spelling errors as long as the site is running because you can go in and fix that later' this led to us having to waste time constantly scanning the site for errors and it was painful going back and forth with him. It was clear he lacked common sense. On top of that they would fix one error and suddenly the next page that was previously error free would have a huge error. Now our website is FINALLY completed after months and months of going back and forth and Roman taking AGES to complete the most simple of tasks but we now have issues with our pricing suddenly changing to 'sale' prices that we never requested or agreed to. So our customers have been purchasing from our site overnight and we are constantly waking up to having sold products at ridiculously low prices due to this mistake which Roman has tried to say was our own. However we literally have not changed a thing on the website. Roman is also constantly MIA when you need assistance. Avoid this web developer like the plague he is absolutely TERRIBLE. We are now sourcing someone else to step in and fix up all the mistakes wasting even more money.

Hi everyone I got scammed $300 by this guy called ROMAN today! I'm going to cut an past an email which I received after I asked for a refund, I asked for a refund because it's been weeks and it's no we're nere finished and his trying to make me pay the other 50% of the money for an unfinished product. here goes

Hi Lisa,

I do everything via email, not phone calls.

The original website questionnaire on the last page in the Terms & Condition's mentions that once a design has been approved
and you tell us to proceed ahead and build the layout you then receive 2 rounds of changes.

As mentioned on the phone you can log into the website and make the changes yourself as the website has an admin portal
so you can easily log in and update content and images.

Please be aware deposit payments are non-refundable

I tried being civil with you and building your website but you just can't seem to get it through your head that
you can make the changes yourself and you keep sending changes

Just be aware that if you do not pay the website final invoice within 24 hours we will be posting up 10 negative reviews about your business every week
which will destroy your business and reputation, we have done this before to other people who have not paid us or either decided to post up a negative review
and we had damaged their online reputation so bad they had to shut their business down and file for bankruptcy.

It is easy for us just to spend $12 and register a brand new website domain name and build a new website but how easy is it for you to
repair your name's reputation.

You do not know who you have messed with and if you think I am joking see what happens in 24 hours if the final invoice is not paid.

Roman

Hi, I read a few complaints in your site and it feels like a deja-vie, and that is exactly what happened with me.
The guy running Direct Web Design was hardly available. Whatever, I supplied for my website were either ignored or distorted.
Communication with him is only via emails where he often did not answer on time or in his answered mentioned how busy he is, meaning he has no time to me.
I never come across of such poor communication and such lack of responsibility.
At the end I decided to terminate our agreement. He responded by pointing out that $450 deposit is not refundable.
I am thinking of communicating with other complaining customers who lost the deposits same like me.
We shall start a group complaint likely to be lodged with VCAT.
Could you help us with that or advise on the appropriate course of actions please?
Thank you, Natasha Lukin

This guy Roman appears lovely at first, until her gets all his money and then it was very hard to get hold of him. I have had to employ someone else to help finish off my website. This person has discovered that Roman had links going to incorrect pages, my paypal account was set up with someone elses email address who I have never met, my newsletter subscribers were set up to go to an email address that didnt belong to me. I was promised ongoing support with my website after it was built however was basically told by Roman that he is too busy to help. I have spent over $400 having my website fixed by someone else who is fixing all of Romans stuff ups. My new IT person told me the website is sent to India to be built and basically that this company is a scam. He now wont give me my hosting log in details, making it hard for me to trasnfer to another company. Do yourself a favour and do not eomply this puppet!

I wrote a response in relation to the webpage being designed by Roman under the name of Mr Pee, It seems that somewhere in my complaint the word "stolen" has been inserted and if read ion conext is grammatically incorrect and not written by myself. I write again to clarify templates are used on this site, I did not suggest in my initial complaint that they were stolen. What I am outlining is that the advertising suggests that no templates are used, however templates are in fact used through Word Press.
I have not heard from the complaints department regarding this issue and I would be silly to post my webpage at this time while Direct Web Design still have access to the site.

In October 2017 I was told in writing by this company they could design a certain website for me, I gave extensive instructions and they did some design but then towards the end started (December 2017) saying they were having some troubles and then I gave them other ways to handle it and then communication got slower and slower from them and then now I still haven't heard from them for resolution and it is almost February 2018.
They have taken almost $2, 000 and still asked me for more money for certain plugins and refuse to answer any emails.
Scammers! They promise the world and cannot deliver at all.

The company is based in India but has advertised to have offices all over Australia. However, when you try to call the customer service line there is just an automated message. Even if you leave a message you will never be called back! It seems that there is only one lonely Indian in the company - named Roman. Everything was offered from the start, but the web site build took over 1 month and was not completed. When I asked to have handed over to me what was already completed (and what I paid for) because Roman could not resolve some issues, I was told that I'll get nothing until I pay the entire invoice. Communication was appalling - even after trying to call the company and asking them to call me, there were only email comms in BAD English.
I have paid $580 for a website and have absolutely nothing!

I had my webpage designed by Roman who at first seemed ok until you pay your money and then the service rapidly declines from that point forward. I wasn't satisfied with the product and requested the money back guarantee he offers, however was told once you received the webpage you are not entitled to your money back. The issue here is that until you pay the money you cannot see how your page will look or work and therefore the concept of a money back guarantee is a scam. I finally spoke to Roman (the owner) on the phone and when the questions became too hard and he couldn't answer them he said he was 'at lunch' and couldn't talk anymore.

The page itself is a template stolen, even though his webpage advertises no templates are used. The templates are very difficult to use and if that is what you are after you may swell take up the multitude of free sites rather than pay this company.

Totally disappointed, dissatisfied and would not recommend this company to anyone. Be very careful when going through them if you chose to. But in all honesty its not worth the hassle. I should have paid more and get a decent service that this scam artist.

This is the first time I have had to take time out and put through a complaint about a service, I am so appauled and digusted by how this company has treaded me and the unacceptable service they provided. Web developers name is Roman. I had hired him to design my e commerce site, this was the first time I had to hire a service like this and didnt know much about anything to do with sites.

He was very slow with making the site and was not very thorough with his explanations about the process and the requirements. Anyway as we proceeded to site completion which I was understood was the basic layout he turned around and said the site is ready. I had questioned him and said this looks nothingn like what i had envisioned/wanted and doesn’t even fulfil my requirements which I handed over to him in our initial consultation. He then advised me that he had lost all my emails and wanted me to resend him the information. I had a few conversations over the phone with him during this course and he had the audacity to hang up on me and claimed that the line cut out and didnt calling me back which is ridiculous customer service.

I requested a refund at this point for which he advised I had to wait 45 days to be complete but he decided to give it another try and make what I wanted. The site was very average once completed. I was sort of content but needed to launch and thought we can always make it better and build up on it. 2 days before my launch I was doing testing on the site and came accross a issue with the payment portal where I couldn't see a option to pay directly by credit card- there was paypal and direct bank transfer. I called him up in a hurry and discussed this with him, he then claimed that this is a extra service called Eway which I have to set up. I opened a eway account immediately and gave him the credentials although there were issues with the payment portal still and it wouldn't work. To top it off I had a discount coupon for 15% which wasn't working. This is now 1 day before launch and Roman was not at all being helpful to sort out my problem and kept saying everything is fine, which it wasn't clearly. I tried talking to him over the phone and he hung up saying it's his weekend. Mind you he claimed he's available 7 days a week. In the phone conversation i found out that he wasn't even the one building my site someone in India was. I had to get in touch with my brother in law who recommended another web developer to help. Although he apparently advised me that the plugins were not updated and that the layout was old which could cause certain things not to work. He made a brand new site which is absolutely amazing although obviously I had to pay him, he only charged me $400 as he understood my situation. I had paid Roman $800. His service is ridiculous he is very rude and makes horribe sites. I can't believe he is able to operate a business in Australia with such attitude. I understand other's may have had smooth dealings with him, although I had issues and that's where he failed to help. I would high recommend anyone not to use his service.