I am in a pretty pissed off mood today and the reason is the experience I had recently with a freelancer who I hired at DigitalPoint forums to upload 4000 flash games on an arcade site I am creating.

So what happened? For starters, he took five days to complete the job. However, I was pretty impressed withe quality of excuses he came up with.

Anyway, he finished the job. But something didn’t seem right to me. Oh silly, he had forgotten to load the database. No probs, I can ask for it and do it myself.

So I did. But it didn’t seem right again. The number of entries in the database seemed to be less than the number of games on my site. arithmetic not being one of my strong point, I created a script that to count the number of files that guy uploaded and the number of files listed in database.

It turned out that I was indeed right. There was a huge difference between the two figures. Also, there were so many duplicate entries that I didn’t even dare count.

So I sent him a private message asking him to explain the situation. Not surprisingly, I am waiting to hear back from him after a week. Though to be fair, he did ask me for account details, which I indeed resent to him but that was it.

But since I am not really expecting him to do anything about it, I made a script to match the database to files and the net result was 1408 games (out of 4k promised).

I am not really going to file a refund with PayPal since it was not really a big amount but one thing is for sure — I am never going to use his services again. And I might not even have anything positive to say if anyone asks for reference.

How could he have avoided this situation?

1. Being clear upfront that it is going to take time to complete the task. I don’t mind waiting but I do mind excuses.

2. Not over promising. He promised 4000 games but really delivered 1408. Talk of over promise and under delivery.

3. Being more organized. If he was more organized then I would not have had to ask for the database after he was done installing. BTW it was the database I purchased this package for — getting tons of games is easy but thumbnailing them and writing descriptions is not.

4. Not responding to complaint. I know it is difficult to accept mistakes but it is the best thing to do.

Had he done this way, he might have got whole lot of repeat business from me and other people I would have recommended him to. Tough luck I guess.