People regularly bring me projects "for rescue". The script is almost always the same: half a year ago the company found a contractor who promised everything at once, took a prepayment, showed a couple of beautiful mock-ups and then started disappearing. First for a day, then for a week, then for a month. When the client finally comes to us, he has no source code, no server access and not even a clear idea whose name the domain is registered in. All he has is a messenger chat and the feeling of having been robbed, politely.
I am not writing this to scare You away from the development market. It is a normal market with plenty of honest and strong people in it. But like any market where the buyer does not understand the goods very well, it also has those who take advantage of that. And the difference between them is visible in advance, if You know where to look.
Poor service and fraud are different diseases
It is important to tell two things apart. A fraudster never intends to do the work: his product is your prepayment. A poor service does intend to do the work, sincerely wants to, but cannot, does not have time, or does not understand what it has signed up for. The outcome for You may be the same, lost money and time, but the treatment is different.
Legal and financial mechanisms protect You from a fraudster: a contract, staged payments, access registered in your name. Checking competence and working culture protects You from poor service. And there is a third, most treacherous category: honest people who took on more than they can carry. They do not lie to your face, they lie to themselves, and that is why their promises sound especially convincing.
Signs You can see before the first payment
The development market is a lot like the used car market. The seller always knows more about the car than the buyer, and the buyer judges by the shine of the paint. So look not at the shine but at what the seller is willing to show You on his own, without pressure.
- A price well below the market. If three companies quote You a sum in the same range and the fourth is three times cheaper, it has not found a magic method. It either did not understand the task, or plans to recover the difference later, or plans nothing at all.
- No portfolio You can touch. Screenshots and nice presentations do not count. A normal contractor will show working systems, live addresses, sometimes let You talk to former clients.
- Reluctance to put requirements in writing. "Let's skip the bureaucracy, we'll figure it out as we go" sounds friendly, but it means there will be no point against which the result can be checked.
- A demand for 100% prepayment without a contract. Even with full trust, a large project is paid in stages. This is normal practice, and an honest contractor welcomes it.
- Promises without questions. If someone names a deadline and a price after a five-minute conversation without asking a single awkward question about your processes, he was estimating not your project but his own hope.
Why we fall for it
The paradox is that it is not naive people who fall for it but busy ones. The founder is in a hurry, the launch is on fire, competitors are breathing down his neck, and any contractor who says "yes, we'll make it, yes, it's cheap, yes, we'll do everything" sounds like salvation. A fraudster does not sell development, he sells relief. Exactly what You are missing most at that moment.
More than once I have told clients things they did not like: that their deadline was unrealistic, that the budget would cover half of what they had in mind, that some features were better thrown out. Some left for those who promised more. Sometimes they came back half a year later. An unpleasant truth at the start of a project costs less than a pleasant lie You spend months cleaning up. An honest contractor often loses at the sales stage and wins at the results stage.
A fraudster sells not development but a feeling of relief. Check not how calm You feel after the conversation, but how specific the answers were.
How to protect yourself without becoming paranoid
Protection is built not on suspicion but on how the process is arranged. A good process protects You equally from a crook, from an amateur and even from an honest contractor who has run into trouble.
First: everything critical must belong to You. The domain is registered to You. The server or cloud account is in your name, and the contractor is given access. The code repository lives in your organisation on GitHub or GitLab, and code lands there every day, not "at the end, when everything is ready". If the contractor vanishes, You lose time, not the system.
Second: stages with a verifiable result. Not "stage one is 40% of the work", but "stage one is a working sign-up and personal account that You can open and click through". Payment for a stage comes after You have seen that result. A small first stage is also a cheap compatibility test: within a couple of weeks it becomes clear whether these people keep their word.
Third: written agreements. Not necessarily a hundred-page specification, but at least a list of what is included and what is not, and the criteria by which the work is accepted. This document protects both sides and removes ninety percent of future disputes.
Fourth: an independent view. If the project is large, it makes sense to order a short technical audit from a third party. It is like bringing a builder friend along before buying a flat: in an hour he will spot the cracks that the estate agent carefully covered with a painting.
What to do if You have already been caught
Do not panic and do not wage war in the chat. First collect everything You have: messages, invoices, contracts, access details. Then formally request, in writing, that the contractor hand over the code and access. In parallel, order an audit of what has already been done: sometimes there is more useful work than it seems, and sometimes less than the reports promised. Decide whether to rescue the project or start over based on that audit, not on resentment.
And the main lesson: do not repeat the mistake out of fear. After a bad experience people often rush to the other extreme and pick the most expensive contractor, treating price as a guarantee. Price is not a guarantee. A transparent process in which You can see what is happening at all times is.
What to do tomorrow
If You have a project with a contractor right now, check three things: whose name the domain is registered in, where the code lives and whether You have access to it, and when You last saw a working result rather than a report about one. If even one answer is unpleasant, fix it today, while the relationship is still good.
At Ingello Systems we organise our work so that a client can leave us at any moment and take everything with him. It sounds like a bad business model, but in practice this is exactly what keeps clients with us for years: when nothing holds You hostage, You stay only because the work is good.
