Toptal Reviews

I hired a developer for an 8 week project. I paid weekly and total was $24,259.

The communication from Curcio J Sobrinho, my developer from Brazil, was very light (over skype) each week. I'd often check in and ask if he had any questions or needed anything. Always it was "nope, doing good." I started to wonder if he was doing anything and/or really understood the project.

At the end of our agreed-upon time, 8 weeks, he asked for "one additional week, no charge", which I gave. A week later this happened again, then again, then again...

8 weeks after the 8 week deadline, not wanting to irritate him by asking "are you even doing anything?", I emailed Toptal and asked what one should do in a situation like this.

Their response was to open an investigation, which ticked off the developer, who sloppily "finished the project" in 24 hours, sent me .apk files, and said "since you involved Toptal, this ends my work and our communication".

Upon testing the .apk files, they don't work. Opening the repository in Android Studio results in numerous errors.

Omar Landaverry at Toptal, over several emails, said basically I was on my own. He stated they "allowed" Curcio to finish the project (the hurried 24 hour delivery) and implied I was lucky Toptal didn't decide to charge me for the additional 8 weeks.

I now have a bunch of modified code to turn over to a new dev at a different agency to see if they want to work with it or start from scratch.

Toptal Director of Engineering Ariel Roitman, and my Account Manager Mitch Penrod were quite pleasant and did a good job kicking things off for me. But all downhill after that.

Proof:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/6qobViJVn6gbcf7VA

I like the programmers but the back office people suck. I have sent them wires and they claim they have not gotten them. I check with my bank who checks with their bank and they always have gotten them. Then they want me to send proof or they will shut down my project.

I can understand this happing once but every payment you make? Then they pressure me to allow them through ACH to draft on my bank account. That to me is scammer and they are untrustworthy because of that game playing policy.

Call it catfishing? Their website offered me the services of someone to help me create financial projections for a business startup at a rate of less than $25/hour. I was working on a tight budget for my startup and thought this would be a great option. In short order I received a response from the company:

"Regarding our rates and the option you selected (Less than $25 per hour). We have this option to better understand the market, but currently we are not offering talent within these rates. As our talent sits within the Top 3% in the world, their rates start around $90 per hour."

What does "better understand the market" really mean here? There are plenty of providers out there offering better service for $90/hr. I went to them because they were offering the same at a fraction of the price. I know that there are no free lunches out there, and now you do too!