Client Reviews on Finish Line Product Development Services

Feedback:

I came across FinishLine PDS on a freelance site. To my excitement, within hours of posting my job request I had engineer/rep from an American company on the phone (Steve Owens) discussing my project. And that is when things went wrong.Originally planning on Eastern European or Asian outsourcing, I was interested when an American company replied within my budget. I was not aware at the time that FinishLine PDS used very "traditional" forms of billing. Every minute on the phone - billed, every second they need to check a datasheet - billed, everything you discuss on the phone they will start working on despite however many times you explain that data is outside the scope - billed.Short version is I was initially billed for over $1400 for work I did not ask them to work on. I had told them about it to give them an idea of related constraints but repeatedly used the words "I'll do that part", "in a bigger picture there will also be this", "don't worry about that", etc. In the end, I spent more time checking up, correcting, and arguing with them, than they spent engineering.The eventual work submitted was FAIR. It wasn't by any means innovative, and I was annoyed with their inability to sell me on the choices they made. I fought them to retrieve some of the over-billed time, and I've chalked this up to a lesson learned.Since dealing with FinishLine PDS I've found excellent engineers who practice entirely fair and modern billing practices, the kind you would expect in an internet-age. YMMV with FinishLine. If you do select them for a project, try and follow these rules:1. be extremely explicit, tell them only what they absolutely must know. 2. I would HIGHLY suggest a flat rate format and not hourly. In my opinion if I had time to manage a freelancer this closely, I'd likely have time to just do the work myself.3. Do not conduct a single thing over the phone - nothing. Get everything in writing from the initial conversation on.4. Put due diligence into more direct freelance options, I have a strong feeling they outsource a lot of their own engineering to the same people you also have access to.I gave them two stars and not one because they do seem they have hardworking employees/engineers, maybe they're just stuck in an old world where people didn't expect engineering and cost-effective to go together.