A general warning to anyone considering using the services of Media Synergies, or any company related to it’s present manager, Brian Jenkins.

I approached this company to construct a database website for one of my customers in January 2008. A fifty percent deposit was paid and an agreed deadline established for the end of May. By the end of June nothing specific to the task had been produced. Instead all I got was constant excuses, complaints, lies and an absolute avoidance of the real issues.

Excuses continued until sometime in June when I was told that the parent holding company, Blue Freeway Australia, had gone bust. However Mr Jenkins agreed to continue with the project. The problems with Blue Freeway should have had no impact upon the productivity of Media Synergies as all their work files were safely located upon their own international servers. But after several more weeks of untruths and avoidance, Mr Jenkins then proceeded to declare, without any solid reasoning, that he could no longer continue with the project.

At this time he also refused to hand over any source files completed to date, and he also refused to return any of the deposit. And I guess this is the challenging bit for me...! When you agree to work on a project and to meet it’s deadline, yet produce nothing specific other than ‘bits’ copied from other projects, by what criteria do you judge yourself to be worthy of waking away with the deposit?

Surely, even common sense tells you that the client is going to expect something in return for their deposit paid and that if you fail to produce anything you are liable to refund the money paid or an agreed percentage of it, or hand over the source files so that a third party can continue with the project. Yet Mr Jenkins acted in a manner typical of someone who might instead be likened to a criminal. His actions are nothing short of fraud.

At the same time I have had to refund the client the full deposit. So this incredibly frustrating experience has cost me a lot more than I had hoped for.

Be warned, do not enter into any business dealings with Brian Jenkins, not now, not ever. You do so at your own risk.