Thinking of Outsourcing? Beware of Elance and SynapseIndia!
Journalists interested in the following extensively documented case of perjury, abuse, conflict of interest and possibly illegal orporate collusion please contact [email protected].
Through Elance, Empirical Wellness, Inc. hired SynapseIndia to build a website/app that would assist healthcare providers and researchers to work with patients through cellphone services. Almost a year after the project due date, and after receiving the majority of payments, SynapseIndia demanded the final payment even though they had produced only an incomplete and defective website. Empirical Wellness was forced to file a Dispute with Elance which escalated to arbitration.
Throughout the 4 months of arbitration, Empirical Wellness proved that the SynapseIndia lied throughout the development, and that the COO of SynapseIndia (Kapil Gupta) repeatedly lied to the arbitrators--under oath. SynapseIndia is Elance’s most profitable provider, and Elance refers all their arbitration business to Net-arb.com. Net-arb imposed no penalty for SynapseIndia’s perjury. Empirical Wellness was awarded only a small refund along with the incomplete and deeply flawed code for their website. Elance paid the financial award for SynapseIndia, and instead of providing the code as ordered, SynapseIndia sabotaged the website and provided only useless sabotaged code. Despite promises from Michelle in Elance's "Dispute Assistance" there were no consequences from Elance for the contractor's refusal to comply with the "binding" arbitration.
The undersigned personally lost about $30k and two years of work. BTW, most of the reviews of SynapseIndia on Elance are positive. So is mine. This is because when the due date for the project arrives (and the project is still far from complete), the client is pressured to provide a positive review. Not wanting to alienate a contractor who already has our money for an unfinished job, clients like myself post positive reviews. Then, when the work goes bad, Elance absolutely forbids any modification of the review.
Robert P. Miller, PhD -- President, EmpiricalWellness, Inc.