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Well this is something we’ve never had to do before, but we have also never been scammed out of $10, 000 from a a company outside of the United States. At this point we feel like this is the only recourse we have. So this is our story of how we contracted out Elancer, Xicom Technologies, and how they managed to swindle $10, 000 right out from under us, and Elance did nothing. How did it happen? We’re going to explain, so it does not happen to you too!

About a year ago, our company set out to find a developer on Elance who could develop a web site solution for us to bring to market. We did a lot of searching and came across Xicom Technologies from New Delhi, India. They were one of the most expensive developers on Elance, but that was ok. We understand that you get what you pay for. We checked their profile, their portfolio, feedback, earnings, etc. Everything checked out. Xicom had great feedback, and had brought in over $3 million on Elance and had big time experience in PHP and MySQL development….we figured this must be the perfect company to work on our project.

The relationship went ok for a month or so, aside from the regular communication problems with the company. It was not uncommon to spend 3 hours talking to their developers over AIM about details, and then have them tell us to “Please email the details to us”. That was very frustrating. Overall though, this did not feel like a scam and we were willing to be patient with what was supposed to be a great, Elance approved company.

Unfortunately, this story does not end well though. Xicom obviously knew much more about Elance than we did, and ended up scamming us easily, with Elance watching the entire time. I’m going to post all the details in additional posts, but long story short, they worked for a year, and then when they got too busy and could no longer handle our project, they sabotaged the code they had written, leaving us with absolutely nothing. Elance’s policies protected them because they also took advantage of a loophole in Elance’s feedback system allowing them to do this to our company, without us even having the option to leave public feedback!!!

The ironic thing is, we utilized Elance for this job because we thought there was a level of protection, but we still managed to get scammed and Elance wouldn’t even step up and help. Sound interesting? Well it is…. VERY interesting.

How could something like this happen? Simple really…Xicom is a BIG TIME player on Elance and pretty much calls their own shots. Since starting this project we have watched their feedback fall considerably, and then pop right back up after having the real feedback removed by the Elance staff. Our feedback was also removed, due to a loophole in the Elance agreement that Xicom has become very familiar with.

When you’re posting a job on Elance, there are things called “Milestones” that supposedly determine what is done, and when during your project. Being a new Elance user, we had no idea what this meant, so each month when Xicom submitted a new set of “terms” to us, we didn’t pay attention to the fact that the “End Date” for the “milestone” was always the same — The START date of the project. This may not sound like a big deal, but now that we know better, it is HUGE. On Elance, you have only 30 days after the final milestone to leave feedback. So even though we worked on this project for over a year, the ability for us to leave feedback was cut off just 30 days into the project because of Xicom’s ability to circumvent the Elance feedback system, by rigging the dates on the projects milestones.

We argued the point with Elance, and were eventually allowed to leave feedback. We figured they realized how big this issue was but we were totally mistaken. Just 3 days after we left the feedback, it was removed by Elance in “accordance with their terms”. What terms? The terms that say feedback can only be left 30 days after the final milestone…. even though our project ran for a year, and the last activity was just days before, the final milestone data was months old because of Xicom’s ability manipulate these dates to benefit and protect THEM.

Consumers need to beware of what can happen to them if they use Xicom on Elance. Currently our only recourse in the US Courts is with Elance themselves. Xicom, being outside of the country is essentially “untouchable”.

We’ve got lots of screenshots, chat logs, emails, and PMB saves that we will be posting in the coming days. We really hope something comes of this before we have to go further but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.

Have you had a similar experience with Xicom Technologies on Elance? Please leave a note below for all to see.