Elance is an all around terrible service. I have tried to work with numerous programmers who had very high ratings and glowing reviews who were completely incompetent. The majority of which failed to complete any of the project. If you try to complain about the lack of completion Elance will send you to their "third party" arbitrator called Net-Arb. This is a total scam. It was clear from the get-go that they had no intention of fairly assessing my case.
Their decision is rigged to always land on the side of the worker as this way Elance does not have to refund the money to the buyer. Their written explanation was a joke. It didnt even address the fact that over 70% of my requirements had not been met. They then have the ability to remove any comments that I had written about the programmer and try to make me pay for their $400 arbitration fee.net-Arb does not have a physical address and pretends to be neutral. Shame on this company. Do not ever use Elance!
For reference here is a copy of their "decision" below. It completely fails to mention anything about the fact that over 70% of the requirements were not met. A full list of these shortcomings was given on multiple occasions and this fact was not disputed by the programmer:
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The plan was to have one team build the front end (Will and i2i) and one team build the back end (Accursoft). Accursoft finished its job but the front end team failed. So in order to test Accursoft's work, the client insists the contractor create a dummy front end to demonstrate his work.
We find this added burden is beyond the original scope of the project and thus cannot be the basis upon which to reject the contractor's work - unless it shows his software doesn't work!
The client's complaints that the code has no comments is "highly procedural, not at all object oriented" may be legitimate but are not original requirements nor are they essential. It can be argued too that the back end is itself an "object". At some level code has to be procedural in order to get anything done.
The client's failure to have the front end ready to connect to the back end as planned is not the contractor's fault or responsibility. We find the contractor bent over backward trying to assist the front end developers and staying with the project for far longer than he was required to, without even asking for final payment.
The client's excuse that his front end people had server configuration problems that took a month to rectify did not prevent his team from studying the code during that time. Regardless, the client's problems do not act as a warranty extension.
Even though the front end was not ready on time for integration, the contractor kept assisting the front end developers and stayed with the project for far longer than he was required to, without even asking for final payment. And he remained available until the client filed a dispute (supported by competing freelancers with a lot to gain). The bottom line is the contractor did his job and then some. Furthermore, we believe the contractor would have continued to support his work for as long as it took had the dispute not been raised.
We grant the contractor's request for final payment, reimbursement of the arbitration fee, and removal of Elance feedback. We wish the best for both parties going forward.
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