Insights
Insights
- by SamizdatCode, LLC.
- Posted: 15 Aug 2020
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SamizdatCode, LLC.
Budapest, HUWhen you think CrewNew and Kaspar - think disaster!
I spent time to create detailed specifications and project scope so that the developer was fully informed. Prior to engaging the project I also requested to speak to developers and explain them in detail. I asked for questions and answered all which was given. My initial project was fixed priced for $3000 of which Kaspar bid over $7000. I denied this offer but wrote him why. He still proceeded to agree on new terms of $3500. Complained about the high price of PPH fees as part of the reasoning for the inflated price scheme. I proposed to split the 5 milestones of the project into single PPH listings to break up the payment schedule. I have informed every freelancer that I am interested in a responsible freelancer who communicates. It is even in the documents of the project as a requirement.
After accepting the project, Kaspar begin to complain about the communication requirements, arguing that discussion of the project, making sure they had a firm understanding of what was expected and asking for accountability of deliverables - he said was unnecessary and wasteful of their time.
Beware everyone! Kaspar is not a freelance coder, he is a salesman part of CrewNew agency and will sell you on a contract that he didn't even read or understand. Any attempt by you to discuss it he will refuse and say it's costing him time.
Moments after accepting the revised $800 offer of Kaspar, I got a notice from several other developers on this site. They claimed they were approached by this Kaspar to do the project for less money which means Kaspar was taking the jobs on PPH, giving them to other programmers on PPH but for less money. With the goal and aim to than switch any fixed project to hourly at high rates (European prices not the expected affordable freelance price). These developers showed screen captures of the conversations and they told me "Kaspar will never complete your project" and they were right because I have milestone 1 of 5 completed and already 1 week late and will certainly be 4 weeks late once I find a new developer.
This was a fixed price project and yet Kaspar continued to push "hourly billing" throughout, daily in fact, and insisted on a private contract. His contract, was copied from the Internet and not changed by a legal professional and had many errors. Spite his promises that it would take 1 week for the milestone, it took 3 weeks! First he lost 1 week just arguing over the contract which still has problems and errors; second he argue that any discuss was not necessary and third each step along the way his team would argue they didn't realize the scope of work and wanted to start billing hourly.
The scope of work never changed and was well documented before their acceptance of the project - which they were given 3 copies of.
Kaspar handed this project over to sub-developer Slavco and never took responsibility to even inform this guy about the full details of the project. Slavco did do his best to communicate with me but he felt willfully unware of the scope of work and also wanted to institute hourly billing. This was fixed price project with all deliverables and terms provided up-front and in detail including hand drawn UI schemes and 10 pages of documentation including db code examples. Still, the CrewNew team attempted to pretend they didn't understand. They didn't read and they accepted the project only to backpedal later and give fault to me that they didn't read. Not my responsibility.
> I asked for a freelancer and got an agency.
> I asked to work directly with the coder and got PM guy who refused to communicate.
> I asked for the developer to produce the project by specifications and was given hours of arguments trying to push me away from the technology I wanted.
> I was given a database that didn't even meet simple specifications that was fully detailed what fields were required.
> I had to ask more than 20x for updates, source codes, or details, all of which was stated in the agreement would be 2x weekly. Spite this, most situations they refused.
> Typical wait time for a reply to a message was 1-3 days.
> For a 1 week project milestone that should have been 25 hours, they used up 55 hours of my time, and spent more than 20 arguing why they didn't need to follow customary practices of the computer science & engineering community. They complain daily about being over budget, needing more hours to be billed, spite being a fixed price project.
> They will push and force you to use GitLab and CrewNew board system even if you have another or are not comfortable with such approach. Lots of time is spent filing out the boards and message ques so they can have silo development.
> Once they agree on contract or project they will inform you that they work only 2 hours per day and naturally, all your schedules will be delayed 4x.
> They do not agree to accept communication outside the 2 hour window per day unless extreme emergency.
> I was pushed to use DigitalOcean service spite having my own server and platform. They are very pushy to use their stuff also so the project code and assets site on their sites/networks for them to control and blackmail you with. Also they changed development stack 3x.
> Slavco is a nice guy but this Kaspar fellow is rude and unprofessional
> When they demanded a meeting before continuing the project, I wrote them to set a day and time but not between 4-8pm Monday-Friday as I have meetings. They consistently pushed for meetings only during that time and sited it as a reason not to continue. We lost another week already with this view. They are the freelancer and yet they want me to be flexible for them.
> Typically must ask a question 3-4 times over 3 days before you will get an answer that is 50-60% of what you asked.
> Kaspar feels he is doing you a favor not the other way around.
> He has ongoing projects or projects with no/bad history
> Try to make me use their email: jeffrey@crewnew.com to hide all traffic from PPH.
When the milestone was completed I released the funds of $800. For this I got 2 page website, 10 UI pages in a mobile app with no functionality and no database, fake contract, attempts to push me to use offline payment and I lost weeks of my time.
I took screen captures, made videos, all conversations, work, acts, agreements, etc. and I did my best to communicate, beg, plead, and ask them to be resolve things normally.
Also beware as this guy is from one country but lives in another and presents the agency as from England. It not! Think, fly-by-night scam.
Kaspar is just an agent with poor communication skills. There company never writes professional messages or emails and they take no responsibility for their actions.
I am the senior programmer of 22 years of experience with a doctor of computer science, credentials including work at Microsoft and with dozen startup companies and success. I have worked as a freelancer myself over the years with top 1% rating on other sites with hundreds of thousands in earnings. Never in my history as a programmer could I expect to treat clients the way Kaspar does. I would be out of business and banned from sites.
I like PPH, I will stay all work on PPH and I have demanded CrewNew people that I refuse their agreement and will not work offline or do payment on the other systems as they demanded. I can only tell people reading this, run, save your money, your deadlines and the stress and choose a responsible developer with better history.
I have given your team unbelievable amount of time to be normal and reconcile. You have cost me 10x what was ever budgeted in my time, aggravation and money. You produced for $800 what any junior programmer can do for half.
Your in material breach of your own contract which anyway, is not legally binding. I personally would enjoy the chance to argue in court your conduct and this agreement. I was mislead and treated poorly as the client. Your services a freelancer are terrible and I would strongly recommend you find another profession. You should have paid me for the help I provided even in showing you how to properly contact a client. I should invoice your firm for $5000. Your CewNew thing is a good idea but run by Kaspar, never happen. Slavco, I know you did your best in bad circumstances so you should consider were you work. You have no future with this guy.Kaspar L. P.
Jeffrey is a customer who wants to get maximum top quality with the lowest possible cost available. He writes tens of pages unprofessional documents about requirements and one document states one thing another document another things so he basically tricks you to agree lower budget and once the project starts it comes out that it takes but more than 3x more time to complete everything. Example: design isn't agreed to be included in the estimation and in chat it's also mentioned that no design - just material design elements will be used but then he finds in his documents a place where it says in one place "once design agreed" place. He is super pushy and writes at least 20x more lines of text about his personal life and absolutely non-project related things than any other customer I have seen during my 25+ years of experience in development. He is blaming absolutely on everything and not willing to pay. He tells for example tons of lies that the same thing could be done by junior Ukranian developers (where he is from) way faster and cheaper but by some reason he doesn't hire them but still comes back to you and if he finally understands that he can not make you work more than 3x cheaper than your normal cost is (which is still cheap as a freelancer) then he takes time to harm you as much as possible. Tries to insult you, tries to keep you under pressure. We were joking inside the team that it's like in the prision working with Jeff: you are full-time commited so you're locked and can't earn profit + you have a super bully cell partner terrorising you from the morning till the evening. If I'd like to write emotional negative stuff here then the message would be minimum five A4 pages like a casula welcome messages amount every morning from the beginning of this nightmare. I really hope he won't find any freelancers in the future to trick into his terrible works!
- by Ben K.
- Posted: 19 May 2020
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No result found
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- Posted: 15 Apr 2020
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No result found
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- Posted: 3 Mar 2020
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- by Richard C.
- Posted: 6 Aug 2019
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- by Ed B.
- Posted: 24 Jul 2019
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No result found
Front end web development
- by Chloe M.
- Posted: 15 Jul 2019
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Chloe M.
London, GBUnfortunately the work was not completed as per the brief, spec and designs provided. The first time around it had a grey nav bar instead of white icons were not as the designs, shaddows were incorrect, paragraph spacing was wrong, headings were not the correct size and the page was not mobile responsive. When feedback was provided to request corrections a new proposal for additional time was sent which we declined. Eventually he did make the some of the changes we asked for and made some basic mobile corrections but we ended up having to spend a good number of hours ourselves fixing various elements ourselves. Overall it was a little disappointing.
Kaspar L. P.
Chloe hired Indian devs in a first place who delivered buggy code that was not following WP standards and had fixes that were causing other issues. When the job was accepted it was meant to be way less hours of work. Chloe seemed to understand that issue but her greed didn't let her to pay for the extra hours of work that appeared due to poor coding.
Advice on how to correctly embed a github .js file on Webflow.
- by Graham J.
- Posted: 9 Jul 2019
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No result found