| rev:text
| - I really wanted to like this company, but the smooth-talking CEO Nick Kaplan made it impossible for me. I urge everyone to exhaust all due diligence options before agreeing to anything. Nick lied to swindle me out of $2,550 and waisted a month of my time, which put me way behind schedule and over-budget.
Here's my experience with them (I'm going to be thorough):
The first step to working with Adlava is to go through their 'Discovery Session', which came with a bill of $5,100 that would go toward the total quote (we paid half down). If you decide to part ways after the Phase, then you forfeit the amount (understandable, since we spent between 6-8 hours with over the course of 3 days with each meeting having 3 - 6 Adlava team members present).
Before I agreed to the Discovery I had a long chat with Nick about our wishes. I provided them an example site and was very clear that we wanted to replicate every aspect of it (3D animations, layout, color aesthetic). I was adamant that replicating the animations with our product was crucial, and even offered to provide the 3D model that our CGI Studio built out.
Nick told me he needed some time to review the example site with his team to ensure that what we wanted was within the skill-set of his team. He reached back out and assured me that they could do exactly what we wanted within a budget range of $12,000 - $17,000.
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PRE-DISCOVERY
I shared our Branding Guide, which included detailed instructions about our Brand Voice, Mission Statement, Vision Statement, 3 Ideal Customer Types, Our Brand Narrative, Value Offering, etc.
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DISCOVERY MEETING #1:
People present: Nick, Karel (Creative Director), Justin (Marketing Director), Kevin (Lead Engineer).
We reviewed the example site once more and then dove into the first round of Discovery -- defining our brand attributes to come up with a 'brand statement'. Seemed a little redundant and unnecessary considering the Branding Guide I shared. But I played along because they needed to learn more about us.
---
DISCOVERY MEETING #2:
People present: Karel, Justin, Kevin
[No Nick]
We finished up the Brand Attribute exercise and moved into the second exercise -- profiling two ideal customers. Again, this seemed a little redundant, but I realized this was all to help them learn.
In this meeting we redirected into a tangential discussion about the example site once more. We reviewed the 3D animations and I again expressed how important it was that we achieve this look. Kevin told me he needed to wrap his head around it a bit more to figure out how to make it happen, which should have been a red flag to me then. The reason it wasn't is because I trusted Nick's word that his team could do this.
---
DISCOVERY MEETING #3
People present: Karel, Justin, Kevin, Kiyo (Digital Media Analyst), Colton (Writer), and Garret (Paid Media Specialist)
[No Nick]
In this meeting we finished up the customer profile exercise and then dove into a discussion about marketing the site we were about to create.
After that we once more reviewed the example site. At this point we pulled up the 'Inspect Element' feature of Google Chrome so that we could look at the innards of the site (source code, images, Javascript, etc). We left the discussion with Kevin (Lead Engineer) saying he needed to spend more time diving into these innards to learn how to accomplish the 3D animations we wanted. Again ... red flag. But we were already through the Discovery so I decided to wait to see what they came back with as their final quote
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1 WEEK LATER and ONWARD
I received a communication from Karel that informed me they couldn't accomplish the style of 3D animation I was after. Instead they suggested a cheap-looking 2D animation style achieved with basic shapes. WTF.
I gave them the benefit of the doubt once more and some areas to research that may put us back on track.
That didn't work so I called Karel to discuss. Karel informed me that they had never done anything like this, but that he was confident they could learn ... so long as we paid a lot more money on top of the budget Nick assured me we could stay within.
I voiced my concerns with being mislead by Nick from the beginning and Karel said he would pass along my concerns.
Next phone call was with Nick. I told him we were dead-set on mimicking the example site and would need to find another company to work with. I said I felt mislead and Nick said he said he'd be willing to drop collection of the remaining $2,550 of the $5,100 Discovery.
Since his false assurances were the only reason I agreed to the Discovery, I pressed for a full refund. Nick stonewalled me, blamed everything on a 'miscommunication', told me I never mentioned 3D animations at any of the meetings, and said he needed to cover his overhead ... so no refund.
Talk about lying to cover your ass.
Nick's team are some great people. Sucks they have to follow his lead.
Anticipating more lies when Nick responds to this.
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