I was a first time buyer on Elance and contracted with Rich Morgan at Heavysystems.com to create a database driven website for my corporation which would be similar to a dating site except that it would be a venue for connecting up seniors with self-employed caregiver contractors. We spoke at length before I chose to accept his bid of $2, 500. He asked for 25% upfront to get started and I was supposed to pay another 50% (for a total of 75%) when he reached the 50% milestone.
The remaining 25% was to be paid when I approved the site for upload to my hosting company. I chose to use Elance’s "Escrow Program" and believed it offered me protection just in case something happened, e.g., after payment, the website doesn’t work, etc.
Rich Morgan sounded very professional and competent. Initially, he was very accesible and even told me I could call him 7 days a week up until 11 p.m. Eastern time. This was extremely important to me as I live on the West Coast and work during the daytime hours and don’t get home until about 5:30 pm Pacific time. We worked on the site, over the phone, in the evenings until 11-11:30 p.m. ET (8-8:30pm my time) and on weekends. He returned my calls within an hour, was patient and made instant changes to the template, etc. Basically, he seemed like the perfect choice and I even offered him a $500 bonus and asked him to be the site’s webmaster upon completion to help grow the site as my business grew.
However, after about 3 weeks, Rich started asking for the second installment, saying that he needs to cover his costs, etc. I was very honest with him and told him that I haven’t seen anything anywhere near 50% site completion and that I was extremely hesitant to send more money as I was worried that he’d stop working on the site and would just disappear and I’d be screwed. He was such a smooth talker that after the conversation, I felt like I was being totally paranoid and just downright distrusful, like it was some kind of character flaw on my part! He convinced me that I wouldn’t understand the code and that it wouldn’t make any sense to me. He then proceeded to send me a link to his server where I could see different files that he had uploaded; but he was right, I didn’t understand what he did and couldn’t tell whether a task was completed yet or not because it wasn’t uploaded to my host yet to see if anything actually worked.
The contract was for completion in 30 days (May 17, 2007), so when June rolled around with completion supposedly "only a a matter of days away" according to him, he insisted that I needed to go ahead and pay in full before the Escrow Service protections ended. So, like an idiot, I did. Not only did I pay him in full, I also "bent over" when he later asked me (after receiving $1, 875) to write up a review for Elance since the window to do that was also closing. In fact, Elance, themselves, sent me an email to the same effect as the time frame was all based on the project being completed by May 17th and it was now early June. I wrote up a phoney, but brilliant review. (Yes, I must be downright stupid!) But what choice did I have but try and kiss his arse now that he had my money?
I felt like I had no choice because if I wrote a truthful review then he might get angry and quit working on the site at the same professional level that he had shown me prior to receiving full payment. Little did I know that he had been "seducing" me all along!
Well, that’s exactly what happened. After getting paid and getting a great review, he quit returning my calls or would wait for 3-4 days to get back to me. He explained that he was in the National Guard and had to go away; or another time he said he had gone to a business convention. It was always some excuse as to why he hadn’t done more work on my site. I was patient up to a point but the situation was getting out of hand and I still had no website! Finally, he started working on my site again but it was at a very slow pace and when I questioned him about it, he just said that he was extremely busy with other clients because he had gotten behind due to his National Guard stint and attending the business conference.
So, in Early August, I told him that I had placed an ad for caregivers and that I needed him to put up the content that I sent him months ago which were 2 separate profile applications and questionnaires for both seniors and potential caregivers. He put up ONE application that was incomplete and definately not what I had sent him back on May 4, 2007. (It’s now Aug 21, 2007) In his hurry to get something up, he failed to put in a zip code field in the address section. I asked him to add the zip code field and to move ONE sentence over so that it was in block format. He seemed to feel bad for such an obvious ommision and said he’d "get right on it". He also asked about more content (TOS, Privacy policy, etc) and I told him that he would get it once he completed the immediate tasks It didn’t make sense to send him any more content when he hasn’t finished putting up the content I had already sent him months ago.
On Saturday, Aug, 18th, I called him and left a message letting him know that it has now been two weeks since I asked him to put in a zip code field and move the sentence over and it still wasn’t done. I told him that I was very unhappy with the progress of his work and asked him to call me as soon as possible as I had 175 potential customers who were all told that an online application would be up any day now. By Monday evening, he hadn’t returned my call or acknowledge through email that he recieved my call. He works out of his home and the number he gave me is his cell phone, so I knew that he got the call but was now ignoring me.
I wrote him a letter telling him that he was in material breach of our contract and demanded a refund since it was clear to me after two weeks of not hearing from him that nothing was being done on the project. He had the audacity to write back and basically said that my full payment to him and the great review I had written is proof that he fulfilled the contract! He then stated that he would be happy to work with me on any remaining issues as long as it’s between 9am-9 pm Eastern time and only on Mon-Fri. It was the first time I heard of such a time frame! He refused to refund my money as it was clear to him that I was a satisfied customer and implied that I am now, merely, a disgruntled customer who fails to respond to his request for more content! He also implied that my request for a zip code field and line movement were website "updates" that were not part of the original agreement!
I called Elance and told them what happened. They said there were no refunds but that I could use their mediation services in order to try and get us working together again. As if! I’m already sore enough and never did get kissed!