Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
Sourcebits promised to deliver the app in September 2015, which turned into October. I started to get aggravated. November came, and they told me that my build was ready. I also had some change requests, but Sourcebits told me they'd been fixed, along with the bugs. In the end, I received a product that wouldn't even work. I opened up the web platform, which only went in circles. I tried using the application on my phone, and it didn't work either. I've also logged around 200 security issues with my application.
At that point, I concluded that they didn't have a moral compass. They wanted an additional $30,000, so I walked away. I contacted an attorney and told them that, if they can deliver a product that is defect-free, secure, and ready for the App Store within seven days, I would pay them their $30,000. They contacted me on the last day of the deadline, unable to deliver the working app. I told them to give me my money back, but they kept giving me the runaround. "We need legal to take a look at this," or "we need a few days." I told them that I'd provide the chronology of the whole project. I had a friend who has contract knowledge talk to them, going through the whole project timeline. Their CEO asked if that was a formal request for getting our money back and told us that he would need it in writing. I have a recording of that conversation with him, telling us they'd reply within 48 hours. I never heard from him. Overall, the project with Sourcebits was one debacle after another. My vision is in bits and pieces and they were the source of a lot of headaches.
I kept emailing him, asking what they were doing. I asked for a response by April 18. They asked for a week's time, but never got back to us. On Thursday, I sent him a note with the project chronology, telling him that I would be including their investors and board members in the carbon copy, telling them how the process had been delayed and how Sourcebits failed to resolve the issue. He told us that their legal team was looking at it, basically the same thing he told us in January.
I proceeded to throw him under the bus with his investors, but I didn't hear back from anyone. I find Sourcebits to be a fraudulent company. I've submitted my experience to Channel 5 [a local CBS-TV affiliate in San Francisco] in order to see if I could get some news coverage on it. There needs to be legislation that stops developers from building products without the right certifications and checkmarks. We need to push for this as consumers.
How did Sourcebits perform from a project management standpoint?
At the moment, I have nothing in terms of a working product. I've walked away from their company. In the beginning, there were sprint dates that they were supposed to meet. Sourcebits never met them. They provided me with release notes that were essentially reprinted with the addition of one extra element. I was charged $25,000 for each of them. In other words, they fixed one item and ignored another 35. This happened four or five times, and I didn't catch on until the end.
My project manager kept telling me that all the bugs had been fixed, everything was fine, and they would deliver the app by a certain date. They literally missed four or five dates. Each iteration came with bugs and spelling errors. I told them that they needed to be fixed, to which I was told that I would be charged by "X" amount for the extra work. I didn't have a working product, so I couldn't understand the overcharging.
This went on for around a year. Sourcebits sourced my product to India. I told them that I wanted it back in the United States, but they never brought it back. I was given a whole new project team with which I started working. They would tell me one thing on the phone and do another, like the fact that I wouldn't be charged for an issue on which they were late, and then come back and bill me. None of the calls were recorded. They used Skype instead of WebEx, which allows recording.
What is your summation of your working relationship with Sourcebits?
They were disappointing, and I am completely dissatisfied. The whole project was a disaster.
Sourcebits looked like a good partner, but they consistently failed to meet expectations. Their work was subpar and undocumented, resulting in wasted time and money. The project lasted a year longer than anticipated with no viable end product. No one seemed to care about the poor experience.