This review was updated on December 4th, 2018 by the client. The original star ratings were: Overall - 5, Quality – 5, Schedule – 5 “They were always available and met each deadline.” Cost – 5 “They were cost-effective.” NPS - 5. New content is below.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the co-founder of a second-hand car platform.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Lets Nurture?
Domestic developers are very expensive. When a friend and I launched a startup, we decided to hire a service provider from outside of the country.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
Our business lets users book a mechanic through our site to help them assess second-hand cars they’re considering purchasing in person. Typing in a used automobile’s location shows a list of available mechanics nearby to contact about accepting the job. After the mechanic sends in their application, we check it and send them a contract when appropriate. Upon receipt, they sign and return it.
Our platform requires a lot of distance calculations and accounts. We purchased a payment module to integrate from the Swiss bank PostFinance. The system also required an email system for customers to fill out a contact message form online, similar to ride-sharing services.
We tasked Lets Nurture with designing and developing our entire website including backend features like account management and file uploading. They used MEAN stack for the build. To show the team approximately how we wanted the site to look, we created a mock-up website on Wix and sent them screenshots, templates, and a color scheme. We used InDesign for everything we couldn’t design on Wix.
In response, they started making everything a change request. It felt like they were just trying to get us to pay them more money. At some point, we decided to merely take what they’ve given us and pay the price we originally agreed upon.
What was the team composition?
Sunil (Sr. BDM, Lets Nurture) made us the initial offer on Upwork. We worked with Priyank (Project Manager, Lets Nurture) along with five developers. At times, they brought in additional developers.
How did you come to work with Lets Nurture?
We looked for a vendor on Upwork by posting a description of what we wanted for our website. Lets Nurture sent us an offer. We started communicating over Skype because Upwork didn’t let my business partner and me contact them at the same time. They agreed to our terms and indicated they could complete the development.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent about $7,000-$8,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We worked together from September 2017–July 2018.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.
Lets Nurture sent us the code they programmed, but they didn’t even come close to developing a functional website. The new developers we hired told us their code was basically useless and included security breaches. They’d told us they were developing on MEAN stack, but it turned out they’d been using about five different programming languages.
Right when we thought the project was almost finished, we knew something wasn’t right when they discussed implementing and posting the payment module. At first, they said this task wouldn’t be a problem but decided it was too difficult towards the end. They requested more hours to study, test, and install it. I got the impression they wanted us to pay them to learn how to implement this feature. We asked them to specify how many additional hours they needed. When the price suddenly doubled, we refused.
After we threatened to write bad reviews about them, they offered to finish everything else besides the PostFinance module. In turn, they said we had to give them good ratings online on multiple websites. At that point, we just wanted to get it over with and not have to spend more money to simply get the code back.
How was project management handled?
In the beginning, we had weekly Skype calls. I think they had a hard time understanding my accent. Afterward, we wrote down a recap of the meeting in a Word document.
Lets Nurture was fairly disorganized. It felt very chaotic at times. They usually told us to contact a specific person when we found issues with parts of the website, but someone different would reply to our email. They seemed to struggle to understand our explanations since they often delivered materials incorrectly. Trying to explain things cost us many hours of time.
In what specific areas can they improve?
We made it very clear that we didn’t want to pay significantly more than the price we’d agreed to at the beginning. They had made us an offer we liked, and we don’t have unlimited resources. It didn’t seem like they thought through the entire project carefully or accurately accounted for the time they could invest. Maybe they should have tried to find more information about the problematic module.
Even though we created extensive Word documents detailing our desired look and functionality for the site, they didn’t seem to apply critical thinking to make it tenable for development. Instead, they essentially copied and pasted our descriptions as-is. When we sent back a list of the errors and issues we saw during testing, they’d claim it worked properly on their side.
What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?
Due to the hassle I experienced, I wouldn’t work with Lets Nurture again nor recommend them. For example, we requested designated accounts for mechanics and customers, and they only created the consumer ones. When we asked about the mechanic profiles, they classified our question as a change request and told us we hadn't explicitly stated the need for two different user types in the original contract.
I suggest future clients make sure they know someone who has had a good experience working with a company abroad. I’ll never work with an offshore vendor again unless I get personal feedback about them from a reliable contact. If you plan to use a platform like Upwork, don’t switch over to Skype like we did or you won’t have the same guarantees.
The app has been successfully delivered and is ready for beta testing. The team facilitated a smooth, effective workflow and made themselves available to the client at all times. They've fostered a strong relationship in this complex project.