Post on Medial

Sharing the worst experience of my 3-year entrepreneurial journey. We hired an agency to design & develop the website for The Agency Auditor, but things went south quickly. Here’s a timeline of events and the hard lessons we learned. On July 16th, we signed an NDA and received the first invoice. We cleared the payment the same day. The next day, we had our first meeting to discuss website requirements and eventually finalized the wireframe. Initially, delays from our end slowed things down (we accepted this), but as of August 18th, we had only *finalized the homepage design*, not the development. The agency sent us the 2nd invoice, meant for completing the homepage, but the design alone was incomplete. On August 26th, they promised to deliver the *completed* homepage. However, by September 5th, we received a broken, unfinished version. They didn’t even use our brand font. No QA, nothing. We had clearly communicated on August 30th that the site *must* go live by September 10th. But they focused on policy pages, while the homepage – the most important part – was still incomplete. It was affecting us mentally and professionally. Finally, on September 8th, we told them to stop working on the site and hand over the Figma files. We forfeited the money already paid, except the final 50%, which we held back since the homepage wasn't even finished. Lesson learned. 🧠 When we checked WordPress, only 5 policy pages and the incomplete homepage were there. Out of the 25+ total pages, they hadn’t worked on the development part at all. We were left with no real progress. In a dilemma, we debated launching on September 10th or delaying. But we pushed forward, launching *The Agency Auditor* with just the homepage, which Manasi fixed as best she could. Huge shoutout to her! 💪 Now, we need to find someone else to complete the website since the design and content are ready. Just the development is pending. If this happened to us, it can happen to anyone. But this nightmare turned into a powerful case study for our business – The Agency Auditor. We audit marketing, sales, & CX agencies to protect founders from overpromising & underdelivering agencies. 🚨 Either way, founders WIN: If your agency is performing well, great! If not, it's time for a change. We're here to ensure you're getting results, not excuses. While we’re focusing on making our website 100% live and moving on from the trauma, we’ll eventually share the name of the agency & person responsible. So you can be cautious while dealing with them. Stay tuned for updates, and feel free to ask any questions or jump on a call with me if you’ve experienced something similar.