[mnm1]

Unless you're paying top dollar for contractors, what you describe is way beyond the job duty of typical contractors brought in by non-technical founders who have no idea what they're doing. Even technical founders with a lot of experience make this same mistake. If you're not paying seriously high money, you might think that this is something you're paying for, but it's not. Someone at an overseas sweatshop isn't going to push back on a request for a prototype. It's not part of their job and it sure as hell is not in their own interest. People get what they pay for and most of the time, people who hire contractors without proper oversight are just burning money and have no idea what they even want to pay for, let alone what they've actually bought. Intelligence cannot be contracted for by stupid people.