In January I contracted a person on Elance to make a customer shopping cart for a business I started with a friend. He got done with this "custom" shopping cart suprisingly fast.

Today I was looking for a free cart solution for my web hosting site. Since I was considering Echo-Inc I decided to take a look at their cart. I was suprised to see it was the EXACT same cart as I paid this programmer several thousand dollars to program for me.

I am very disappointed in this. This is not what we agreed to or paid for. What do you guys think? I was happy with the cart but it is something that I could set up myself.

I am just looking for other people's opinions. Andrew

If he represented it as custom/original work, then that's exactly what it should be. If the work was defined as a "please set up a cart for me, and I don't care how you do it" type of thing, then I guess you got what you payed for.

Seems to me you were taken. If he used a free package, he should have told you. He has no right pawning off a free package as his own. It's his duty to specify exactly what was done and how. After all, you payed for the work.

if Elance is anything like the old nowonder system then you should be able to contact them and get your money back.

:(
I would definitely contact elance about it NOW!
Especially since this was done in January.

if nothing else then just to stop this guy from 'taking' somebody else.

I was under the impression that he was developing a customer cart for us. I could have downloaded this free cart and configured it myself. I was very happy with the cart, it was obvious it was not made specifically for me but I figured it was a basic cart he programmed and added to when needed.

I e-mailed him the link to the echocart and mysteriously he has stopped responding to my e-mails all of a sudden. Fortuneatley I was able to put a hold on the balance that I had just paid last week on a credit card. Unfortuneately this could cost us a lot of money in lost sales as we were set to launch the site soon and have big plans to market it very aggressively to the tune of $15,000 for advertising in the first month.

Why exactly would you lose money since you're very happy with your free shopping cart?
Will you remove it because you paid for it?

-Chris.

Because I don't believe it is open source. Plus it is not entirely ready yet.

I think this dude stole your money.
You should press charges against him, man. ;)

Let's assume a rate of $100/hour. You don't think that he spent 10 hours installing and customizing the shopping cart for your storefront?

Developing a storefront with an open source shopping cart is often a very time consuming process, and does require a lot of knowledge.

Just my $0.02.

bitserve: I could have downloaded this cart and configured it myself. Plust it was well over $1000.

If you we clear in what you wanted and if he made a misrepresentation of a product, you can get your money back.

The problem with Elance, is not really Elance,
is one or 4 of the following things:

1. Pay amaizing low prices and expect to get top products.
2. Hire people that have no ratings. (Assume everyone knows)
3. Hire people that are rated as designers as programmers-
4. Fail to require written contracts so you can require what you need.

If you were clear on what you needed, you can request your money back, if the provider made a misrepresention of somebody else product, (The time it took to develop should have been an earlier warning, I develop custom shopping carts and the least it takes me is one month half time so I can manage other proyects, and I have most routines ready )
Get in contact with elance and the company that owns the orginal cart after you have solved this, they might not like that you have one of their products, if this is the case.



Hope it helps.

B.


__________________

I was clear in what I needed and made a contract.

Then go for it.

Originally posted by .::DefCon::.
I think this dude stole your money.
You should press charges against him, man. ;)

more like fraud...

i guess lesson is learned though....always look for a free script before paying for one ;)

Exactly what I'm doing all the time. By using free software (which btw is often better than pay-soft) you can invest more money in the quality of your own service (in my case webhosting) and you can keep your prices at a minimum. :)

Originally posted by Andyc
bitserve: I could have downloaded this cart and configured it myself. Plust it was well over $1000.

If you can customize your own shopping cart software, then why did you hire someone else to do it for you?

bitserve: Please read the first post. I did not hire someone to install and customize a free shopping cart. I hired someone to develop a shopping cart specific to our needs. Which this one looked nice but was not exactly what we wanted. Stop playing devil's advocate and read my post. Thanks

Originally posted by Andyc
bitserve: Please read the first post. I did not hire someone to install and customize a free shopping cart. I hired someone to develop a shopping cart specific to our needs. Which this one looked nice but was not exactly what we wanted. Stop playing devil's advocate and read my post. Thanks

You said "make a customer shopping cart". You also mentioned a "custom shopping cart". In your last post you said "develop a shopping cart specific to our needs". If you paid me to do that for you, I would have developed you a storefront using an open source solution like interchange, or Miva Merchant, or even echocart.

If you seriously wanted someone to develop a storefront program with a shopping cart for you from scratch for $1000, then you had some pretty high hopes. You never said if your "developer" had promised to write everything from scratch. If he did, then it sounds like you were trying to rip him off if you expected it to take more than a few days. If you didn't expect it to take more than a few days, you shouldn't have expected much of a shopping cart, but you would have something to complain about.

I suspect that you and your "developer" just had a misunderstanding. And now you're suffering from a break down in communication.

You need to go back and read my posts, as I've never said anything to contradict what you have said or failed to say.

Anyway, that's what I think of this situation.

Good luck.

PS: My name is not bitserve.