[jetheredge]

As the owner of a digital product agency, this is really hard to read. It is such a shame that an agency would do this to you. I know you felt like they "did their best", but by setting you up with unrealistic expectations out of the gate they essentially guaranteed that everyone was going to walk away unhappy. Besides, when you go to an agency communication/transparency/team of experts is what you are paying for! You're paying for accountability! There really are good agencies out there that care about their customers and bend over backwards to deliver what they promise, but they are hard to find. For the size project you were looking at though, I do agree that a freelancer could have been a better option, but you'll run into some of the same challenges. Finding good freelancers can be just as hard as finding a good agency.

[HillRat]

The agency shouldn't have taken the work to begin with -- the part where the lead admitted that he killed project governance entirely was a bit of a painful moment. Agencies are optimized to work at a specific scale, and it's risky for them to scale up or down for a specific project; in this case, their client fell through the cracks because they were using him as fillable hours and didn't ride herd on their designers. Considering they were working outside of the SoW, those were disputable invoices, but that's cold comfort when you don't have the free cash flow to take this to legal.

[pantulis]

The difference in size between companies imply different operation trajectories. If you are their smallest customer, you are bound to be deprioritized and treated as second-class. If you are their biggest customer, you may well destroy them with procurement and governance processes.

[mtlynch]

Thanks for reading!

Yeah, I don't think the agency is blameless here, but I also don't think they're malicious or dishonest. I think they just overestimated their ability to scale down their workflows to a project smaller than their typical gig.

[laurent123456]

Well they know they've done an awful job, you know it too, but they happily kept the $45K. If they were as honest as you say, they would have refunded some of it.

[zmix]

That's exactly what does not leave my mind! It would have been a question of honour for them to stomach it and deliver close to the original estimate.

Everything else leaves me with a sore feeling, that it, while eventually not a scam, at least a careless, profiteering way to handle this, on the back of the customer. I hate this agency :-)