Elance Disaster?

[read]

I began working on my muse last June, after I first read the book. I plotted, planned, and found a web designer on Elance for a killer price.

Almost a full year later, the web designer is still not finished. He keeps saying "just give us a few more days" -- many times over many many months.

Why haven't I fired him yet? Well, a few reasons:
1) He has done a significant amount of work and hasn't been paid a dime yet. The site does use a lot of fancy scripts, and it is quite involved. I don't want to have to start all that over with another designer.

2) It's a very low price for the project. (I got what I paid for, right?)

3) A few months ago, we almost backed out altogether, but he threatened to take the idea for the website and do the muse himself. Got very nasty with us very quickly.

In short, I'm wondering if there's any protection we have via Elance? Or if we should just wait to see if he follows through? Has anyone else experienced this?

[webgal]

Wow. I think I'd contact elance and see what can be done. He could've already launched something behind your back. But I suspect he simply did not know how to do it and is learning on your project.

[dking]

Webgal is correct. As a software development professional I happen to know this happens all the time. You did not validate credentials, and now your being bribed. Congrats, you learned a lesson.

Get a copy of everything he has so far, and then take you loss and farm out the rest of the work. Also, write up your muse and mail it to yourself.. start thinking "just in case".

[Sven]

It is a rotten position to be in. But are you willing to be blackmailed?

As dk wrote, you learned a lesson. Maybe walking away will result in the blackmailer proceeding but there is more about a muse than just a website.

And musing is a way of life, it is about the ability to create, not the ability to put up a website. Do not let an obstacle stop you from creating muses!

Good luck!
Sven

[nghs22]

Next time get the person to sign a contract preventing stuff like this from happening....

[jonparker83]

Having the website to your muse won't necessarily mean he's successful without a lot of hard work anyway so I wouldn't worry

Cut your losses and chose another developer...

You could consider offering a lower cost for the development with a small (but attractive) bonus if it is finished by a certain date

You will also get what you pay for too... unless it's a crazy difficult project with all the rapid application development tools around these days, even the biggest website shouldn't take more than a couple of months - definitely not a year!

Cheers

Jon

[lar]

Since you acknowledge that he was very cheap anyway, just pay him his fee and take the work that has been done so far. If that can't happen for whatever reason, start over with someone else who actually uses a contract and charges a reasonable amount.

[theotheraaron]

I wouldn't worry about him competing based on what you've said. Move on.

[Marcie]

Yeah, I will admit, I got taken for a deposit I paid someone who never did any work, and after many many emails with elance (it was an escrow project, which I thought would protect me) they ultimately told me "we suggest you hire a collection agency" - pfft. I like elance, but they need to do a better job of protecting the buyers against this type of crap. Anyway, I agree, cut your losses, make sure you have all your property from them, and find someone else to finish the job. And be sure to give the original provider the crappy feedback they deserve.

[read]

Thanks for all your advice -- and yes. I have learned an important lesson!
So far, he's still working on the project. His price is so inexpensive compared to competition that I decided to wait until the project terms need to be reset. Then, if it isn't finished, we'll end the project. The good news is that we haven't paid him anything yet.

In the meantime, I've started a muse-related blog to establish our use of the idea and to start gathering our potential clients. I'm guessing that he did just agree to do a lot more than he thought he could-- and perhaps may be moonlighting as a web designer, since he's been so slow in making even marginal success.

Thank you again, for all your support--
A sad lesson to learn, but an important one--

[nghs22]

I hired an elancer to do some work for me and what he did looked like a 3rd graders work. He kept emailing me asking for money and what needed to be fix but I just said hey not what I wanted and that was it. It was BS what he did. Nice dude, just totally overstated his abilities.....