Reviews Of Freelancers

Sunil Aggarwal
Amritsar, India
vecras@gmail.com
http://www.odesk.com/users/~~ffaa3911c1feff0f
Yahoo handle – vecras

So at first I thought Sunil was a nice guy, but based on how he acted in the end, I can see he’s very vindictive.

He was hired via oDesk & I liked most of his designs on his portfolio.

Sunil had originally responded to a Banner Designer ad we had running.

Somehow amongst everything that was going on at the time, we got him to re-design a site for us first. He had no banner designs to show us, so he said he would do up a banner as a test before we gave him several different banners to do.

He did an okay job with the site design, but we did have to make some changes to the stock photography he used, because no matter what he came up with, it just didn’t look right to me.

I also had to tell him to define things more in certain areas on the site. This told me he was an okay worker, but certainly not the best. I wasn’t complaining, just a little disappointed.

Since all was going well, I gave him 4 stars out of 5.

I never give 5 stars unless a person is top notch & in some areas I did give Sunil 5 stars.

Instead of Sunil being happy with that, Sunil got upset that I didn’t rate him excellent in every single category. I told him that if we had to help you with the design, then we did some of the work for you. There’s no way I’m going to rate someone excellent when they are not.

Him complaining left a bad taste in my mouth. Is that all he cared about?

Then he started working on a popup form design & just about the time that he gave me the first draft, I was rushing to get ready for a vacation. I didn’t really like it, so I sent it to my assistant to look at & deal with.

A lesson everyone should learn from my mistake is…

NEVER accept the design of something you don’t like.

Getting the designer to tweak something you don’t like in hopes of you liking it, is almost always a waste of time, but I forgot this rule & thought with a bit of effort he would do better, but Sunil attempted to tweak it 2 more times & when I finally got back to my office & was in “work” mode, I said I didn’t like it. It looked roughly 98% the same as when I originally received it.

While I was away on vacation, I had my assistant take a stab at re-designing it & the result was amazing. His design was ten times better than Sunil’s.

I told Sunil I didn’t feel I should pay for his design because Andy had done a much better job. Sunil got very angry & started accusing me of a whole bunch of things. One thing I did notice which told me he wasn’t a professional, was that not ONCE did he ask to see Andy’s design to compare it to his. To me one should learn from their mistakes & Sunil clearly didn’t care about quality, he just cares about feedback, the money & not admitting that he doesn’t design all that well.

Also I had gotten Sunil to do a banner for me & he had asked me the day I was rushing to the airport what format I wanted it in.

I forgot to respond back to that & instead of him asking Andy, Sunil took upon himself to do the most expensive format, flash.

Later on we discussed it & I said I wasn’t going to pay his flash rate & he said fine, but even at the animated rate I didn’t really like the banner. It was very boring & plain.

I told him I’d pay for it because I felt really bad at this point since I hadn’t liked the popup design either.

After Sunil got angry at me, I realized he was right (I’m a very fair person), I shouldn’t have gotten him to tweak the popup design, I should have just told him “no” from the getgo. It wasn’t his mistake that I was not thinking clearly because I was about to go away.

So I agreed to pay him for something we were never going to use.

2-3 weeks later Sunil gives us a feedback on odesk of 1 star across the board.

To me that is vindictiveness. Yes there was a problem, but Sunil got his money in the end even though his designs were not up to our standards, yet instead of just letting things go & chalking it up to an experience, he decided to make it seem like we were the problem & he wasn’t. That to me is just plain nastiness.

I didn’t get time to give him a feedback before the feedback closed, so no one heard our side of the story & Sunil trashed us without anyone now seeing what he’s like.

Just thought other companies out there should hear what happened from my point of view.

Michelle

As a business owner online, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many different ethnic backgrounds and at this point after running my business online since 2002, I have to say that trying to work with East Indians is very very difficult.

Not that there aren’t other ethnic people out there that are difficult too, but I have given East Indians chance after chance after chance to prove themselves to me as hard, intelligent workers and they have failed every time, especially when it comes to communication skills.

Not to mention that from a personal point of view, I cringe every time I call a company as a customer (consumer) and have to deal with East Indians in a call center in India. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that by the time I hang up that phone, I will have spent more time speaking to them than I would have speaking to English speaking workers, or they will make mistake after mistake after mistake.

But that’s besides the point, I’m only writing this post based on my experience as the boss, someone who hires people to work for my company online.

There are times when I have taken a break and have said never again will I even consider screening East Indians if they respond to my hiring ad, but then I feel like I’m being racist, so after a few months or a year has passed, I give it another try and EVERY single time I am left kicking myself for giving them another chance.

This is now for SURE the last time I will EVER take an application from an East Indian and here is why.

I recently had an East Indian respond to our hiring ad looking for a website coder. I had his code screened, and I was told it was good, so that was fine. Now onto the screening of the person, as you should NEVER hire someone to work for your company just because they have good skills, you want to be able to work with this person long term, and skills alone just don’t cut it. So I started to screen him further and also screen him for our programmer (web developer’s) position we also have open because that is a very important position we want to fill and he had the supposed Cake PHP experience.

He was asked to send me a sample script, something he was surprised he was being asked for since he claimed no other company had ever asked him to give them a sample script. This shocked me, that this guy had managed to get positions with companies that didn’t even bother to screen his code. How can an owner of a company be professional if they don’t even care about the quality of the code. Geeze.

After two people told me his PHP code wasn’t that good, I decided to only hire him for the website coder’s position for xhtml/CSS.

He was given his first task, but since I’m almost an expert now on dealing with independent contractors online, I suddenly remember that I should ask him how long it would take him to take the graphical template we had, splice it, and code it onto our site in our CMS. Understand this is work on only ONE page.

I asked my assistant how long it would take him to do the work, and he’s not a day-to-day website coder, so I knew what ever answer he gave me, this experienced website coder should be able to do it in 25-50% less of the time.

My assistant Andy told me it would take him 2 hours.

I then went and asked this xhtml/CSS website coder I had hired, how long it would take him and do you know what his answer was???

12 HOURS LOL

That’s when I remembered something I had read online a year or two ago, plus I vaguely remember experiencing this in the past myself.

East Indians usually charge less than North Americans, but what they do to rip off the companies, is they take much longer to do the work so in the end you are paying double, triple or sometimes even quadruple the amount you would have paid had you hired someone who does his work fast and for a higher price.

I was furious that I had wasted sooo much time giving this guy so many chances because I had. He had made a few very simple mistakes and then had begged me to give him additional chances.

I probably wasted around 5 hours of my precious time (my assistant wasted hours on him too) giving this guy a chance, and in the end he thought I was stupid enough, and that I was going to let him rip me off.

So owners of companies out there, or HR people of companies out there, be very much aware that this is a common rip off scheme that East Indians use to take advantage of unsuspecting companies who don’t know how long it would take to code a simple template.

In all fairness to East Indians, I’m sure there are other ethnic backgrounds out there and even Caucasians who do the same thing, it just seems to be very very common when it comes to East Indian workers.

I hope this has helped you run your business online.

Michelle

“You get what you pay for”

Since this seems to be one of the most common excuses I see amongst independent contractors, employees or businesses that sell their services online to companies, I thought I would write about this cop out.

I say excuses, because 75% of the time whenever an independent contractor gives me poor service or skill or behaves in an unprofessional, childish, immature manner, they try to use this as their excuse for their behavior.

First off, in my opinoin you do NOT get what you pay for.

The only time I’ve seen this to be relevant, is when I’m purchasing a tangible product such as a TV, car, DVD player, camera, etc.

When it comes to hiring staff online (a service), I find this term is ONLY used by the low level unprofessional workers who swarm the Internet selling their services.

I’ve been in business since 1989, & I’ve been running my online business since 2002.

At first when I started my business online I believed this “you get what you pay for” nonsense until I started to encounter independent contractors, employees, workers, etc. who charged a lot of money & were still unprofessional, couldn’t communicate well at all, wouldn’t meet deadlines, disappeared, had attitude, didn’t care about the company, they only cared about themselves, etc.

I’ve hired high priced people & lower priced people & I’ve come to the logical conclusion that it’s NOT the price a person charges that matters, it’s THE PERSON’S INTEGRITY that matters.

If the human being themselves has a good work ethic, they care about quality, they care about communication, they don’t lie about their skillset, their skill level is above average, they care about the company & not just making a buck for quick cash or to get a so called positive review, then THEY themselves are worth the money.

Any person or business anywhere in the world can charge whatever price they choose. Retailers have a harder time because they have to cover fixed costs & compete with other tangible products, but someone who offers a service can choose what they charge. They don’t have to charge a high price if they don’t wish to, or they can overcharge & then “claim” they are great when really they aren’t.

I do realize that a lot of people think that if something is high priced it’s worth more & I too used to think that & still do when it comes to tangible items, but I’ve learned since then that when it comes to a service, it’s utter nonsense that just because someone charges more they are worth more & that you get what you pay for.

So to all businesses out there, be very careful of these independent contractors, employees or staffers who try to convince you that they are really worth every dime they are charging & use the “you get what you pay for” sales pitch. It’s just their ego trying to justify why they are charging so much. If they are really that good, they don’t need to use sales pitches or excuses to convince you. They are confident in themselves.

I have found that even the independent contractors you can’t budget out to pay who may be charging the “going rate” will still use this disrespectful phrase in an effort to try & make you feel guilty because you can’t budget out their rate.

The smart professional independent contractors understand that maybe the company just can’t afford their rate, it’s not an insult to them, nor is the company doing this to be nasty, their revenue is just their revenue. They are always polite & bow out gracefully & they NEVER ever take a lower rate & then compromise the quality of their work. Their name & their reputation is too important to them.

I’ve also come across those types of independent contractors who lower their rate & then when the company complains about the level of work or lack of professionalism, they justify their poor work with “well I’m not charging you my regular rate”, as if that’s a reason to offer a lower rate & then give shoddy service. Very unprofessional & once again, an immature attitude where they justify their dysfunctional actions & blame the company.

I have found it’s only the immature ones that probably get very little work because of their nasty attitude that have to come up with some excuse as to why they aren’t making money, so they blame everyone else for their actions.

In fact, some of the best staffers I’ve ever hired & still have with me are the ones who charged less. They far outshone the ones who charged a lot because A+ workers aren’t in it for the money, they are in it to enjoy their work & build up the company they work for. So long as they can support themselves, they know the company will increase their salary or hourly rate if they prove themselves to the company & that the company will increase their compensation once the company is bringing in more revenue. That’s their job, to help the company grow, not bring the company down.

It’s unfortunate that so many workers are the latter.

And for all of you independent contractors out there who go around lying to companies, we have your number. Integrity doesn’t have a price tag on it, you either have integrity or you don’t.

Michelle