Marcie
08-02-2007, 12:54 AM
Hey guys - some of you may have seen my posts in wildsoul's thread, but basically I hired an elancer to write an industry market research report and long story short was having a very hard time getting her to communicate with me the last couple weeks. After contacting elance and having them intervene to get her to update me, I finally got this message today:
Hi Marcie -
So, here is the deal with this report. When I didn't receive the contract from you I assumed wrongly that you were not interested any longer. This is because this has happened to me three times in the past few months; the client accepts the bid and puts down the deposit and as I wait to receive the contract back I receive an email they have found someone else cheaper or whatever and cancel the project. I just assumed this was happening yet again. Then, when I realized you were still interested in the report I quickly hired someone to do the research for me and they told me they found all the data, but when I reviewed what they provided they did not have close to what I needed. So, I hired someone else and basically the same thing happened. Not to put the report together but to find the data. I am not sure what type of effort they put in but I can't believe it was that great. In any case, this is one of these situations where I will have to do it myself. Since I just wrapped up another large project I can devote time to it now myself or we can simply cancel it at this point and I will refund your deposit, etc. This isn't my most professional moment, obviously, but I have also never quite been in this situation before so I haven't been sure how to proceed really. Let me know what you decide. I am all for the "win-win" thing and would like to work on this to provide a decent result for you but would completely understand if you would like to move on so to say. Please feel free to call me to discuss also!
Now, one caveat, she says 'contract' but all I got from her was a Scope of Work which she admitted was just a copy and paste from the outline I provided to her, and I indeed did not reply since it was just a copy of what I had provided...
I am leaning towards letting her finish since a) she clearly will lose $ if I cancel - but more importantly b) I think starting this entire process over with (finding) someone new will be a bigger waste of time.
What do you think, and also posting this hopefully to help others who may be thinking about using elance, I was very impressed with the quick response from the elance people...
Hi Marcie -
So, here is the deal with this report. When I didn't receive the contract from you I assumed wrongly that you were not interested any longer. This is because this has happened to me three times in the past few months; the client accepts the bid and puts down the deposit and as I wait to receive the contract back I receive an email they have found someone else cheaper or whatever and cancel the project. I just assumed this was happening yet again. Then, when I realized you were still interested in the report I quickly hired someone to do the research for me and they told me they found all the data, but when I reviewed what they provided they did not have close to what I needed. So, I hired someone else and basically the same thing happened. Not to put the report together but to find the data. I am not sure what type of effort they put in but I can't believe it was that great. In any case, this is one of these situations where I will have to do it myself. Since I just wrapped up another large project I can devote time to it now myself or we can simply cancel it at this point and I will refund your deposit, etc. This isn't my most professional moment, obviously, but I have also never quite been in this situation before so I haven't been sure how to proceed really. Let me know what you decide. I am all for the "win-win" thing and would like to work on this to provide a decent result for you but would completely understand if you would like to move on so to say. Please feel free to call me to discuss also!
Now, one caveat, she says 'contract' but all I got from her was a Scope of Work which she admitted was just a copy and paste from the outline I provided to her, and I indeed did not reply since it was just a copy of what I had provided...
I am leaning towards letting her finish since a) she clearly will lose $ if I cancel - but more importantly b) I think starting this entire process over with (finding) someone new will be a bigger waste of time.
What do you think, and also posting this hopefully to help others who may be thinking about using elance, I was very impressed with the quick response from the elance people...