Submitted by Marcus on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 06:17
As a small business owner, you may be thinking that it is time to start taking advantage of the global economy. If you have called your credit card, cell phone or hosting company recently you know that they are 'outsourcing to India'. If you feel a bit uneasy about giving your SSN to someone that lives halfway around the world, you are not alone. Often there is no recourse if something goes wrong or a dispute arises. I recently gave this a go for a small software development project. I went to a company called Odesk which specializes in providing IT professionals from around the world. Thinking that I was as smart as the rest of these Fortune 500 companies, I thought, "I am going to outsource to India." I restricted the posting so that only Indian IT professionals could view it, which at the time was very cool. After posting the project, I began to receive lots and lots of proposals to complete the job. I settled on a guy named Sunder Garg, that had good feedback and reasonable rates. He committed to complete the project within 1 week and I agreed to pay him the hourly rate. At this point things began to go south. He posted pictures of his work, but refused to upload it to my website. This went on for about three weeks, during which I maintained e-mail contact with him. All along he assured me that the project was almost complete. Finally. I shut down the project and threatened to provide negative feedback. This must have scared him straight! Once again he assured me that he was making modifications and the project would be complete. Then he disappeared. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut as knew I would never get my project completed, I had just been jacked for almost $2k. The lesson is this: When dealing with an IT professional that you have never met, do not trust them or the feedback, chances are the eedback has been planted and is part of the scam as well. Stay away from sites like ODesk and network with your friends to find a trusted professional within your community that you can sit down and meet with. It may cost you more, but trust me, you will be happier in the end. Sunder Garg is somewhere in India laughing all the way to the bank!