[larrys]

I feel bad for you and actually considered simply advancing you $300. But then I saw this:

"From start to finish [name redacted] wasted my time for nearly 6 months, teased me with a demo, then went AWOL, then came back from holiday without advising me and then still didn't provide any communication. I chased him for two months and been very patient but the lack of comms on his part was very frustrating. I would never deal with him again, as I cant trust his judgement and would not be confident for him to complete any work on time.”

[link redacted]

Noting that the other reviews by the same person don't fit that pattern:

https://www.elance.com/e/public/Co5ig7n7zvxc7ns%257EoswA82UF...

Most of the other work for which you have positive reviews are for smaller dollar amounts.

Reason for the negative feedback?

[_1tch]

That project was hell.

It started as a simply Android and IOS apps. So I completed a version which outlined the basic idea that was agreed on along with an API that supported the apps. So once he was happy he paid the first milestone. Then I did go away on holiday for two weeks, I tried to send him an email but I saved it to my drafts by accident - my fault; and his right to be angry at that. We worked it out and agreed to continue. At this point I was waiting on him to provide the designs for the final part of the app. A week later still nothing, so we agreed to go on and have me just put a basic design to it, which I was unhappy about, as it was not what we agreed on, but I continued. Once I was done I went to run the app before sending it to him and it would not show any data...

He had another freelancer working on the site who had completely over written my API. He had no backups. So to make up for my loss of communication before I agreed to redo it for free, a week after agreeing to redo he cancelled the job and left that...

They are all small amounts other than the Karaoke Project, which went so well I have now been building new features for over a year on which is why it is still in continuation.

[etjossem]

Might I suggest discussing version control with your clients in the future? "Collaboration" might be an over-charitable word for the relationship between you and the other freelancer, but even an agreement to commit in two branches to the same git repository (e.g. one hosted privately on https://github.com/ or https://bitbucket.org/) would have gone a long way towards preventing this outcome. In this case, git would have kept a permanent backup of every new feature/fix in your development process, as well as each of the other freelancer's changes. You'd have been able to merge the two at every milestone (or every day!) with minimal pain.

If you're new to version control, GitHub has a nice git tutorial at http://try.github.io/.

[_1tch]

Don't worry I suggested it multiple times -_-

[bdcravens]

Give it away. Setup an org bitbucket account. Give other devs access - it's up to them whether or not to use it.

1) You have an out if others wreck the ship 2) At the very least you've backed up your stuff (good even if you're the only dev)