Project Delays

[9fc168d5]

I’m in a situation where a freelancer is continually delaying a project. It is getting increasingly frustrating and interfering with the plans for the launch of the website.

After already having delays, I spoke with the freelancer on Thursday, and he said that it would take until the end of the following week to complete the website development project, which I was willing to accept. Then the very next day he told me it will now be 2 – 3 weeks to complete the project. This is after the project is already delayed by a few days. To put it in perspective, the whole project was only supposed to take 2 weeks to begin with.

The design document of the website was sent to the Freelancer ahead of time and we discussed it before the project was awarded to him. So, there should not be any surprises on the work that was required as part of the project. Now, the freelancer is telling me that the work is more complicated than he thought, to justify the additional delays.

Equally frustrating is the response I received from the Freelancer when I expressed my disappointment in the delays. His response to me was “This is something we can not change so please accept the fact and proceed”. Essentially telling me that I have no power in the delivery of the project and I just need to accept the delays as he says.

I feel powerless in this situation, and my options seem limited. I either accept the delays from the freelancer, not knowing if he is going to continue to tack on more delays. Or I cancel the project and then have to start from the beginning and find another Freelancer to continue the project, which is time consuming and will also cause delays. Seems like a no win situation.

Any advise on how to handle this situation?

[prestonhunter]

You can not complain.

You can not compare this freelancer's work.

Because you only hired one freelancer.

You should have hired three.

When you hire multiple freelancers, you have the opportunities to compare their work, and continue working only with the best.

Clients hire multiple freelancers in order to save time and money.

[25005175]

I see wisdom here, but isn't this advice only practical for those with more initial capital?

[yofazza]

It depends more on the project size I think. A quick simple task can be done directly between client and developer. But the larger ones requires knowledge of a project manager. I'm a programmer who prefer to work with a project manager, or at least a client who knows what they're doing. Unless it's a simple task.

You can look on the first page of this forum there're at least two complains that could be prevented if the client knows how to select the right freelancer.

[25005175]

Ah, one of those, I was the freelancer. And the arbiter sided with me. Client gave me a control board with firmware to use in a prototype, and the firmware doesn't recognize the temp probe that the client also provided, preventing the main functions of the system from starting. I know some Visual Basic. He's the one who claims to be a software engineer and has a firmware employee on staff. Not my fault that he chose to scavenge the control board from another company's product and never wrote his own.

Oh, and somewhere between 30% and 50% of the delays are directly attributable to him. Others were lost shipments. A few days were my fault.

[yofazza]

No, not yours 😄

[yofazza]

> only practical for those with more initial capital

Spending a few $ at the start to "test" the freelancers is better than to get something unusable after spending thousands of $$, which is not uncommon in this Client forum.

Also, in software, "continuing" someone else's work is not necessarily simple. Even when that work is created or structured correctly, there are still reasons to dump it and start from scratch (hence there are "major versions" in software/website).

And most likely those problematic works are NOT created or structured correctly.

So that thousands of $$ can really be spent for nothing.

[25005175]

To that end, is it possible for OP to hire another freelancer onto this same contract? Or is that only possible for hourly?

[yofazza]

> Any advise on how to handle this situation?

How much money is involved? Escrowed? Hourly project?

Upwork should "shove" information about Project Managers to Clients. This should be more feasible than the one "proposed" for Freelancers (education about preventing scam).

[9fc168d5]

It's not a high value project. Only about $500, spread over 3 milestones with the frist milestone already paid and the payment for the second milestone escrowed.

It would suck to lose the money alrady paid, but my bigger gripe is the sliding timeline and there being no recourse to have the original timeline adhered to. 

[yofazza]

I'm sorry but from what I know by frequenting this forum:

• You won't get the released milestone back.
• You might still be able to get the escrowed amount.

As for the sliding timeline. Based on your story ✌️, I'd rather stop everything and restart. I don't want to do further work with the current freelancer. If I do, most likely I'll get something unusable / very low in quality.

[277dbaa7]

This project need more than three to complete freely without worry. Please get more freelancers to get completed possible 

[prestonhunter]

As a client, I have hired over 180 freelancers.

I never experience project delays.

Because I hire multiple freelancers.

If some freelancers don't do any work, that is fine, because the other freelancers finish the project on time.

The freelancers who work get paid.

The freelancers who don't work cost me nothing.

[ce8f8908]

What do you do if the 3 complete the project? pay all 3 of them?

[bobafett999]

Yup!

[prestonhunter]

re: "What do you do if the 3 complete the project? pay all 3 of them?"

Freelancers get paid for the hours that they log.

If you assigned freelancers identical work, then there is a possibility that you will pay for identical work that you can't use.

But the key thing is: The work was finished by the deadline.

But also: Many projects involve hiring multiple freelancers who can be assigned non-identical work. For example, if I need to hire freelancers to do write ups about popular bakeries in all 50 states, I can assign different freelancers to do different states, one at a time, making new assignments as they finish. This means no redundant work is done.

But as a general concept, it is a wonderful and freeing thing to know that there's nothing wrong with paying freelancers for work that I can't use, if it provides me with a benefit. When I have an important deadline, I don't feel bad at all about assigning multiple freelancers to do identical tasks.

[yofazza]

Cost vs Benefit

On small projects:

• Vet a freelancer carefully to get good result. You'll have the least cost, and still a high chance of good benefit.
• You may hire multiple freelancers to become 100% sure that you'll get a good result. More cost, but 100% good benefit.

On large projects:

• It's harder to vet, also more money involved. It's the least cost to go with one freelancer/agency, but very risky at least in my niche. Putting incompetency aside, even not all programmers can work directly with end-users.
• Use (or become) a project manager to cut the risks. Do tests. In this case the extra cost spent, is very worth it.