Hello everyone, I am ECHO - The designer for this project.
I would firstly like to begin by mentioning this point of yours
"With this logic you could take on 100 projects that you know you can't do, send people over to your partner for designs, and then remove your responsibility by "cancelling the deal and refunding" when the customer has paid for the design."
Yes, Nick just "Recommended" me as the UI Designer for this project, like has he done for all the last projects with Pixed, namely accounthub, coinchange, coincard. All of details on which project bought and sold has been mentioned above.
Likewise Nick recommended me for this mentioned project as well, and I did the design and everything according to the mentioned requirements.
This is to bring out the fact, that Nick or anyone is not responsible for the design end of things. He can recommend a designer, for any of his/other projects. That doesn't account him to be responsible.
Now coming to the development part, Nick has already refunded his share of the payment, for the undone work.
I have no affiliation with Nick on any arrangement of any Commission he gets for recommending me, we only ask clients to check each others work as it goes hand in hand and choose for themselves. There are many instances when clients choose other developers or designers and we are fully open for that. There is no partnership in terms of pricing or agreement, as both our agreements are fully different and separate and so is our payment.
As for the design part comes, Nick is not obliged to pay any amount whatsoever, as that is not his domain.
Pixed had an agreement with me, in which it was clearly mentioned that this was the design cost, and in no possible scenario a refund would be provided, unless no work was done. (I can provide the copy of the quote shared to Pixed).
Pixed had hired me for the design, knowing the fact the development would take place as planned, so if that didn't happen for a reason, that makes pixed take the risk of investment on that. We were under contract, thus there should be no fine or
amount levied on us to pay for anything for the design.
The contract was agreed on with both the parties, hence the work proceeded. Now incase failure of development, we are not obliged to pay any design cost back.