Maybe "well thought out con" is a little strong here. I see it as more likely the consulting firm has learned this behavior over time and it has rewarded them well. I imagine that if they're normally dealing with large contracts, those companies footing the bill are probably easier to string along like this. Just do enough and promise enough that they keep you on and only budge when they get more serious about potentially terminating the contract.

I don’t buy this was some mistake in good faith. I think the author is a little naive which made him a good mark.

They started work on and subsequently billed for something that was explicitly out of scope.

My guess is that the founder of the agency knew early on that he could push this client around to extract $.

Also they finished the work in a brisk sprint-like pace towards the end, knocking out the pages in record time. I think that was more indicative of the actual effort required to finish the work, not all the hours they billed. There is a perverse incentive when the client has a retainer to bill hours and make up excuses to line their pockets. They finessed the author and preyed on his naivety

I agree, and it takes force to break them out of this behavior. I know of a guy, who forced the contractors to break down the wall they just built because they didn't let him inspect the place behind the wall before enclosing it, as promised in the contract. He knew that if he lets this slide, they'll keep doing it.

An analogy here would be forcing the agency designers to completely delete any speculative redesign work, without any backups, to force them to focus on the logo, and send a strong signal that I don't care about the redesign, and won't be paying that work.

Most of my career has been spent at agencies.

I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.

> I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.

I wouldn't call it mismanagement. Many agencies thrive despite regularly delivering these types of experiences. It's a conscious choice they can easily rationalize because of the money.

This agency turned a one off $7k job into $46k by smooth talking and scope creeping an actual developer. I'm sure they're absolutely killing it doing the same to non-technical folks.

I'm sure some do have that attitude but I don't believe, for most, that they're choosing to operate that way.

TinyPilot is clearly successful and growing. Any smart agency would nurture that relationship, deliver a great product, and secure an ongoing relationship.

By contrast, there's a huge amount of reputational risk in allowing things to spiral. They've walked away with more today but imagine for a moment the damage that would have been done were they named in this article. It doesn't take much for a brand to turn toxic and things to implode.

But hey, they were not named :) And that lines up with my experience in agencies - there is always an “Isaac” who’s job is to cool the customer down.

Yes, I’m very confused why he did not make the agency.

My guess - contractual obligations or some other liability?

What benefit would the author get from naming the agency involved?

There’s a big legal risk involved in doing so and no upside that I can see.

I was disappointed the author didn’t have the guts to name them.

I would hope he could get some satisfaction in knowing that he might be able to stop them from taking advantage of clients in the future.

Easy for an outsider to say, though I’d imagine it’s a perfectly reasonable precaution to be cautious in the first post they make. Also he’d then not need to worry about what he exactly says in the post or mince his words/self-censor.

Yeah my read is they were having some internal issues and were overloaded. On top of that they hadn't done many projects like this.

Management threw it out to the floor and the floor ran with it like every other job. Feedback went to management but the people doing the work didn't really understand that this client was not like their other projects.

I've been on the other side of this where one bigger client changed the game and we didn't adapt as we were used to things at a different scale. We didn't clean up the mess we inherited fast enough. We didn't put enough resources on the projects and we failed to live up to expectations. We were used to smaller tasks with more limited scope.

Perhaps, but there is an incentive to continue that mismanagement, rather than fixing it.

The agency is incentivized to draw out the work to maximize billable hours

Such things can happen very easily even when everybody has good intentions especially if nobody keeps the entire team focused.