Ripoff Report Needs Your Help!
X  |  CLOSE
Report: #1008745

Complaint Review: Gaia Gaid Inc. - New Jersey New Jersey

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: Aneesh Zutshi — Lisbon Other Portugal
  • Author Not Confirmed What's this?
  • Why?
  • Gaia Gaid Inc. 683 Summit Avenue, New Jersey New Jersey, New Jersey United States of America

Gaia Gaid Inc. Deceptive claims, Tall promises, Poor Service, and Cheating New Jersey, New Jersey

*REBUTTAL Owner of company: Childish Ph. D Student from University of Lisbon Lashing out since he did not have his way

Show customers why they should trust your business over your competitors...

Is this
Report about YOU
listed on other sites?
Those sites steal
Ripoff Report's
content.
We can get those
removed for you!
Find out more here.
How to fix
Ripoff Report
If your business is
willing to make a
commitment to
customer satisfaction
Click here now..

I am a Ph.D. Student at the New University of Lisbon in Portugal studying social networking and Business Models. As part of our research, we wanted to develop a social networking site, and openly invited bidders in freelancer.com to bid, clearly giving a detailed project specification. 

The company GaiaGrid supposedly based in New Jersey, bid for our project at 2300 Euros. Since they were one of the lowest bidders, had a good presentation of portfolio, we fell into their trap despite them not having a single review on freelancer.com. It was the biggest blunder we did and this report is to warn all potential customers to beware of GaiaGrid. 

Their CEO initially claimed to have more than 5 years of experience. Their website states that they have a permanent design office in Hamburg, Germany and a development office in Bangalore, India. They claimed to finish teh whoel project in less than 2 months, and the designing in just 2 weeks. Despite being a complex project, I asked them again and again and their CEO confidently confirmed it. As per their proposal we sent them an advance of 575 Euros meant for designing phase. They also wanted to develop the platform over Social Engine, so we sent extra 240 Euros for buying license fee. 

After the confirmation, the ordeal started. I later realised that they have no office in Germany nor in Bangalore. Even the address on their site points to prominent office buildings without any floor details. Their lone CCO, is a talented young student working from home, but busy with exams and other projects. He devoted 2 days to my project.... and then stopped. For 2 weeks I saw no progress. On informing their CEO, I was told off that this is how design works, otherwise I can stop the project and take my designs (but no refunds)

After another week of no progress, it was handed over to another designer in Bangalore, who was working part time. She had informed me that this is being done as a part time job for her, and hence not to expect too quick development. I was concerned about the very slow progress, but at least she was delivering a good design. We had just begun the third page, when the CEO interrupted by saying that I am using up too much of time, and that this project was costing him too many hours. 

In those 2 months that was all that was produced, 3 pages of design.... no html, just 30% of the total design work. There was no effort in trying to understand the project, no wireframes.... everything was left to be sorted between me and the freelancer designers. Instead of being apologetic, they started blaming me, and even said they will increase costs.

After that I was convinced that this company does not have the capabilities to deliver. There was total lack of communication, no planning, haphazard approach. Later the designer told me that she hasnt been paid in 3 months, and hence does not feel good about uploading the designs for the 4th page despite having finished it. I was also told that this is just a fledgling company just trying to set up an office at Noida. 

By then I had realised that this company does not have the capabilities to deliver, and told them to cancel our contract and refund at least the social engine license fee since they did not buy any license. Instead they sent me a bill of 7000 US Dollars, threatening me with legal action, if I write about my experiences with their scam company.

In short we paid 815 Euros for 3 pages of JPG design. I feel it is my duty to warn others from not falling into their trap.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 02/04/2013 03:59 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/gaia-gaid-inc/new-jersey-new-jersey-nj-07306/gaia-gaid-inc-deceptive-claims-tall-promises-poor-service-and-cheating-new-jersey-ne-1008745. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

Search for additional reports

If you would like to see more Rip-off Reports on this company/individual, search here:

Report & Rebuttal
Respond to this report!
What's this?
Also a victim?
What's this?
Repair Your Reputation!
What's this?

Updates & Rebuttals

REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
0Author
0Consumer
1Employee/Owner

#1 REBUTTAL Owner of company

Childish Ph. D Student from University of Lisbon Lashing out since he did not have his way

AUTHOR: GaiaGrid Inc - (United States of America)

POSTED: Monday, February 04, 2013

I will go through the claims of Mr. Aneesh Zutshi line by line and hopefully after you are done reading this text you would understand in reality of what has happen.  With this text, we also would provide, if allowed, tangible evidence debunking Mr. Zutshis claims.  

Mr. Zutshi claims to be a Phd student pursuing social networking and Business Models, while he clearly does not understand the measures businesses take to save on expense and keep their service cost down.  He claims that we do not have an office in Bangalore and Hamburg while his extensive research did not indicate to him that we have an extensive contract with Regus which is one of the worlds largest flexible seater based office space service company.  We contract out to Regus so that we are able to be flexible and have a setup where ever our long term clients are most comfortable with.  This practice is not done by just us however also by prominent companies such as Salesforce, Google, Intuit etc.  We however have a very large base in Noida which is used for our long term clients ONLY where data security is of the utmost importance.  

Regarding our freelancer reviews, we are not a group of freelancers, that was simply a test we had done to generate more leads.  We have realized that individuals that contract out through freelancer have unrealistic expectations of cost and timeframe thus we have stopped working on sites such as that.  

Regarding the CCO Nero (Chief Creative Officer) and him abandoning the project.  Mr. Zutshi managed to insult Nero and his efforts while he started working on the project.  Mr. Zutshi repeated the same with the CEO and several other leadership within the organization.  Mr. Zutshi also has a belief that he, as a customer may abuse and disrespect anyone within the organization he has contracted out to without facing repercussions.  The age of business has changed, the customer must give just as much respect to the company as he expects back.  You cannot insult the leadership of an organization and expect them to put your work above anyone else's.  

After Mr. Zutshi blunder with the CCO we had no choice but to assign a report designer who is NOT a freelancer however was contracted within the company on a retainer basis to work on the project.  A total of 120 hours was spent on the design and more than 20 iterations to the design were made.  Our contract with any company only allows up to 3 revisions which is the standard in most companies.  We have over 59 design files with iterations to prove this point.  If anyone is interested in looking at these please feel free to communicate with us.  Mr. Zutshi was warned several times regarding our 3 revision policy and was told to not give feedback in bits and pieces however to provide them in bulk however Mr. Zutshi failed to understand this simple concept.  At this point to gain Mr. Zutshis attention we had no choice but to increase the cost of the project to reflect the amount of iterations that has been made.  Obviously Mr. Zutshi being a student could not digest the cost increase and lashed out again.  Instead of communicating with us he started threatening the leadership to cancel the project regardless of the amount of work that has been done.  We have proof to indicate this incident as well.  

Mr. Zutshi also falsely claimed that the HTML of the site was not constructed however that is far from the truth.  The HTML was constructed and he was notified of this however looking at his attitude and concerned about his financial ability to pay for the design we instructed him to process the design payment since the design process was complete.  Yes, the design took far longer than 2 weeks to complete however considering the number of iterations that Mr. Zutshi had us do and his insolence towards the leadership costed us more time than initially anticipated.  

Mr. Zutshi claims that the designer was not paid by us for over three months however to this day he failed to provide us any any evidence of this incident.  In the meantime I have personally confronted the designer assigned to this project and no such issue exist.  Unlike Mr. Zutshi we have proof of payment made to the designer.  Nonetheless it is none of the clients concern how much and when we pay our designers in the first place.  

In short, Mr. Zutshi is a failed student who is lashing out because he did not get his way.  He is providing nothing more than a he said she said scenario while we have records and evidence proving our case.  In the meantime we are preparing a case study of the situation we faced with Mr. Zutshi and would be publishing this case study to the University of Lisbon as well as the general public warning them of individuals similar to Mr. Zutshi.

Respond to this report!
What's this?
Featured Reports

Advertisers above have met our
strict standards for business conduct.

X
What do hackers,
questionable attorneys and
fake court orders have in common?
...Dishonest Reputation Management Investigates Reputation Repair
Free speech rights compromised

WATCH News
Segment Now