My Heart is Broken and so is my Bank Account

[bca84ff7]

This has taken me almost two years, since Mar 2019, to even face this and was hoping for opinions as to what to do...if anything at all.  I have avoided facing this entire subject as I paid over $21,000 dollars for a contract, my entire life savings, not much I know, but it was all I had and more.  I had big dreams shattered, and frankly I have been avoiding this as it was such a painful process.  At the end of the day I was and still am a little niave about the world of programming and all this freelancing stuff, so please bear with me.

First, I accepted what appears to be an hourly contract on upwork starting Jan 2017 , but I have a signed statement of work (SOW) with the developer with a set dollar amount a deliverables.  What started as a $6,000 job, the developer kept adding thousands at a time, over multiple project manager update calls. Everytime we would talk and discuss the project I would have to reexplain concepts over and over.  I was told I didnt explain details in the original project which I did.  Everytime a new SOW was updated and signed. 

For example, and again I am not programing/tech savy here, but I explained I needed my customers to have the ablitity to pay entry fees through Paypal and at the end of the service be able to be awarded money back to them if the achieved the objective.  I didn't care how that happend, but in the end they explained the customers would need to have a wallet and that funstionality added another $3k to the SOW.  I know now, but I was the guy that said, "wallet...like a bilfold that goes into my back pocket?"  I know, I know...I get it now, but this happened so many times that it just kept adding up and I tried telling that when we hit the $11,000 mark I was walking away and was going to report them.

They then got THE BOSS on the phone with me.  This guy was a genius and got every word and explanation.  He knew exactly what I was trying to do and assured me his team could do it. Deep sigh...10K later I went through 3 project managers with the last being so disconnected and unfamiliar with my project I lost hope.  Our last conversation was me saying that there were so many undeliverables from the SOW and asking them to walk me through the system cause it was so chaotic that I couldn't figure out the flow.  They go on that call with me, clearly not prepared, asking me to walk them through the system only to get 5 minutes into it before they asked me to make a list of my issues and how it was going to cost more to fix them.  This was over a two year process to that day.

I HAVE A PIT IN MY STOMACH AS I AM TYPING THIS!

There is so much more to this story.  We had tons of calls, tons of correspondence through the Upwork chat. In the end, yes the contract was set to hourly.  I do however have a SOW with a dollar amount attached to it.  They billed me that exact amount mounting up to the SOW dollar amount. They never delivered.  I never ended the contract on Upwork and did not get the deliverable.

Please let me know what you think I should or shouldn't do.

[prestonhunter]

Jason:

I am sorry to hear that you has had such a disappointing experience.

I agree with you that you made a lot of mistakes.

You said that $21,000 is "not much."

But I think that IS a lot of money.

You asked for advice about what you should do.

Well, you already did one very smart thing, which is to post a question here in the Community Forum. It is FREE to do so! And people here will offer excellent advice. Unfortunately, after having used Upwork for two years with poor results, this is your ONLY post. I wish you had come to us earlier.

Second: Understand that Upwork does not provide free project management. You are clearly not a project manager. A project of this size definitely needed a project manager. Unfortunately, it looks like you did NOT hire an independent project manager.

For something like this, either you need to act as the project manager yourself (something you did not do) or you need an independent project manager.

The other big mistake you made was that you apparently hired only a single freelancer (or a single agency, or a single group acting through one freelancer profile).

Clearly this approach worked out disastrously for you.

If you only hire a single freelancer, how are you supposed to compare his work to that of other freelancers and thus continue working with only the freelancers who provide you with the best value and results?

You should have hired multiple freelancers to work on the project, and then you would have been able to continue working with the ones who provided demonstrable usable results at a relatively low cost. The ones who did not deliver, or who were more expensive for what they provided, you would have quickly stopped working with them.

Had you hired multiple freelancers and then picked only the best for your project, you would have the project finished by now and you would have paid far less than you did.

[bca84ff7]

Preston,

Sorry I wasn't clear. I actually hired a company through Upwork, and they did provided a project manager.  They replace the PM three times.  The first time was when I was going to walk away the first time, and I was never told why the second one was replace.  The second got us close...80% complete, but the third didn't have a clue and was so disingenuous it ended the way I explained earlier.

I still think about this project and my dreams of what it could be everyday single day. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "Sorry I wasn't clear. I actually hired a company through Upwork, and they did provided a project manager."

Jason: You WERE clear.

I understood what you did.

You hired a company which provided its own project manager. (Or to be precise: it provided three different project managers.)

That was a huge mistake.

This doesn't mean you are intentionally did something bad.

You should not be too hard on yourself for this. Other clients have made the same mistake. Smart people have made this same mistake.

But this was a big mistake.

I said that you needed to either:

a) act as a project manager

[or]

b) hire an INDEPENDENT project manager

The independent project manager would be a person who works for YOU. She would not be associated with the freelance company you hired.

Had you hired an independent project manager, she would have told you to hire multiple separate freelancers or agencies, and she would have ended the contract with this one quickly... probably within the first week... because she would have realized that this particular company was not doing a good job for you.

You DID NOT HIRE A PROJECT MANAGER. You hired a freelance development agency who itself had a project manager working for THEM. That project manager's job was to help them earn money. That project manager's job was not to help YOU complete the project while minimizing cost and maximizing project quality.

The project managers which that agency provided were never going to look out for your interests as their primary goal and tell you to fire that agency.

re: "The second got us close...80% complete..."

If the project is now 80% complete... isn't that different from having nothing? I realize that the project has taken longer and cost more than you originally planned... but can't we use the work that has been done up to this point? And bring in some new people to help us finish it?