So long story short is our company wanted an app built and we Googled some companies and Chetu made a good sales pitch.
Right off the bat I should have noticed some things. Our sales guy in Florida told us our team was a mix of North American and Indian workers. I asked for a North American point of contact as I have had some communications difficulties working with Indian companies many years ago. He guaranteed me that was no problem. Turns out my case manager was someone who moved to Florida from India recently, and was very hard to understand. 100% of my actual team that was doing the work was in India.
Without writing a book, I would summarize that the work was not horrible but not great. It was a lot of 'oh, I didn't know thats what you meant. We will work on that, but in the meantime here is another invoice'.
After a few months of this I told the sales guy I was concerned that the quality of the work was not great, to which he said 'we never promise that you will be happy with the work. You have to pay for their time whether they do good work or not.'
As I reviewed the contract, he was telling the truth. When I told him I would not pay the last invoice since it was for a set of tasks that had already been included several times on previous reports, he told me they would sue me if I didn't. I told him I would pay the invoices when they got it right, and that if some guy came to my house to fix a pipe and I had already paid him three times for it, by the fourth time he should make sure it works.
I was told thats not how they worked. I held out on principle and sure enough, they did sue me. I went to the Broward County Clerks page and saw they have sued over 130 people in the last 5 years for not paying some invoices. So ask yourself, is there a wide ranging conspiracy to hire them to do work, pay several months of invoices, then suddenly not pay; or is the fact that over 100 companies decided to quit paying them an indication that they don't do great work.
Its in the lawyers hands now, just like happened to all the other companies listed there. After looking on here, Chetu will come on here and argue and threaten to sue for defamation etc....so dont take my word for it. Go look at the long list of lawsuits and decide for yourself.
I hired this company to build an app. They quoted me 3 mos and $40,000. (Now 5mo into it and $20K over budget.) They stated that they DO NOT use 3rd party systems or piggyback off another programs and everything is written from scratch. However, they do use A LOT of 3rd party systems. The company says the are based here but ALL coders are in India. They are VERY difficult to work with. When you give them your availablity they still call you at all hours and have ZERO respect for your time.
They didn't make a single deadline. They made changes without my approval then wanted me to pay for them to change things back. Even when you lay out the project in great detail they don't perform as requested and when you request things to be corrected to the standards that you originally stated they act like its a "change to functionality" and then bill you for additional time.
The project managers are rude and try to treat you like children. They even asked at one point if I would write the team an email praising them for their hard work because 'they work better when praised'. (Needless to say I did not write that email.)
When you bring up the issues to management they act like they listen to what you say and they say they are going to correct the problems but of course nothing is corrected to your standards. They say every call is recorded but when asked for them to listen to those calls to prove what you have said is true they won't and they won't release the calls to you so you can prove what you've been saying all alone.
They have been the WORST company to deal with and do nothing but lie and try to take more and more money from you. When you try to fight them they hold your project hostage.
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, DO NOT USE CHETU. You will regret your decision.
Email sent to Chetu's corporate lawyer prior to lawsuits being filed:
Hi Joey
Let me clearly state for the record the following facts as documented by emails, witnesses, and invoices received and paid. All of which confirms the indisputable account of what transpired here.
1) Chetu was engaged by [redacted] (BBC) in November 2015. Thereafter Chetu was under contract for a total of 8 months before services were terminated in June. Total charges were approximately $35,000 for software development services.
2) A balance of about $4100 was due payable to Chetu at the termination of services. As confirmed by Chetu personnel, in the attached email, when inquiring as to the payment status he stated that once the $4100 payment was received, "Yes we can release your work product at that point."
3) Shortly thereafter a payment was paid by BBC reducing the balance to $2600.
4) In March of 2017, BBC was bought by me personally. I am the 100% owner of that company. One of the terms in the sale was that the $2600 balance owed to Chetu would be paid in full by the prior owner of BBC. To that end we re-engaged with Chetu to pay the balance owed and process the return of the source code and valuable prototype for our hardware that our design firm was paid tens of thousands of dollars to create.
5) When we asked Chetu to send us a final bill, Nikita [controller] with Chetu responded with the attached email and invoice representing full and final payment for all amounts owed.
6) A check was tendered within a few days of receiving that invoice from Chetu. That check was confirmed by Chetu as being received and it was paid by the bank. That resulted in a zero balance according to Chetu's own records.
7) Atal (Chief Executive at Chetu) sent an email to BBC instructing his personnel to commence the return process since payment had been received.
8) During the return process Chetu sent an email referencing items it was going to return to BBC. The list was incomplete and we brought this to Atal's attention. He denied there being more equipment than what was referenced in his staff's email. An altercation commenced as a result and the matter escalated to the point where the return process was halted by Atal until additional sums were paid by BBC for "finance charges", in contradiction of his own billing records.
9) Days later, On May 1st, Rakesh (Chetu Employee) confirmed additional equipment not listed on the prior list he tendered was located at another Chetu office and would be returned as well. He apologized for the confusion his initial email caused. Thus, BBC was correct in its assertion that Chetu had misplaced or other wise not accounted for property BBC left in Chetu's care.
10) To date, not the previous owner of BBC, nor I, received a separate invoice relating to the phantom finance charges, which we estimate to be a few hundred dollars. We state those charges were waived by Chetu in tendering the final invoice and cashing that payment, in full.
11) A review was posted by the inventor of the technology that Chetu is hindering development of. His review has been amended to state,
"If I could give this vendor no stars, I would. Chetu claims to offer "world-class" software development services. However, if their interpretation of world-class means outsourcing the work to India and having customers interface with personnel with thick accents and not fluent in English so that the work relationship is hindered due to lack of communication with the development team, I would say, yes, they are indeed world-class.
But unfortunately the issues don't stop there with Chetu. They were paid nearly $35,000 to develop software, tendered a final bill for a few thousand dollars and the client company confirmed after the final payment posted Chetu would return that company's IP, hardware, and source code for the software that Chetu charged $35,000 for. However, upon receiving payment they claimed yet an additional amount of a few hundred dollars was owed because they forgot to add "finance charges" for a past due amount of $2600 after $33,000 had been paid to that point. The phantom finance charge was brought up simply because the client company pointed out that the inventory of items to be returned was missing key patented prototype hardware. Chetu later found the items that were referenced as being missing, but their lack of business etiquette or lapse of judgment is causing them to still currently hold the client's property and source code, out of sheer spite and lack of customer service. We are now on day 11, lawyers have gotten involved, and our project is at a standstill with competent developers waiting to proceed and bring the project to completion.
Chetu is probably the worst company I've ever had the misfortune to deal with in my 20 years of being an entrepreneur and business proprietor."
The review above are the facts as we know them. The review is covered under freedom of speech and will not be taken down short of a court order. Furthermore, an equally scathing review was posted by another one of Chetu's unhappy clients 3 months ago. That review is attached for your reference. Thus, any claims as to the reviewer affiliated to us casting a shadow on Chetu's outstanding reputation is both incorrect and laughable since there are other comparable reviews of Chetu's lack of customer service and general business malfeasance.
Please note that we had a written understanding with Chetu as to the invoice getting paid and our property being returned along with our source code. Chetu has breached that understanding and is causing us significant injury every day this recently patented technology (Approved by USPTO on April 24, 2017), is delayed in development. Moreover, Chetu has also violated section 10c of their own contract that states that upon paying all invoiced amounts, work product, source codes, and property will be diligently returned.
Attached please find a Fedex mailing label for the prototype of our patented technology that we deem extremely valuable. We suggest you ship the equipment today or we will be forced to file a theft report with your local police department. We have already been in touch with a local attorney who was shocked at your client's behavior and would love to push this matter forward without us ever needing to step foot in Florida to file that claim. He suggests he can handle it all by himself as our attorney. He even commented that he knows the people down at the precinct closest to Chetu's office and that a detective would be visiting/calling Chetu once the matter is initiated through him and filed at the precinct. We look forward to that happening.
In the event your client fails to transform into a credible business that values it past customers as all businesses should, then the matter will proceed to both criminal and civil prosecution. We refuse to sign any settlement agreement with Chetu since there is nothing to settle. We demand our source code, and property immediately. Once you have confirmed the florida shipment is in route, we will send you the international label for the return of our equipment from Noida. We also expect the source code to be emailed by your firm no later than close of business Tuesday.
This company is extremely overpriced for the service you get. The customer service is non-existent and the CEO is extremely rude. The only conversation they will have with you is when will they get their money. Remember that you are paying for time which includes their mistakes which were many. Oh, they have themselves covered in the contract, so be very careful. they list their services as a consultation that they hold NO liability for. I ended up spending $100k on a system that did not work and had so many glitches. They even tried to get me to pay for the errors and sent me the files with the wrong access codes. I could not even get in my own software. I had to hire a professional to hack into it. I got the same amount of work done (higher quality) in a 16th of the time and a 16th of the cost. The worst was how the CEO and his team (by order), handle the situation as if I was in the flea market spending $10. I was so stressed thinking I had lost everything. NEVER AGAIN!
Chetu, Inc. Reviews
So long story short is our company wanted an app built and we Googled some companies and Chetu made a good sales pitch.
Right off the bat I should have noticed some things. Our sales guy in Florida told us our team was a mix of North American and Indian workers. I asked for a North American point of contact as I have had some communications difficulties working with Indian companies many years ago. He guaranteed me that was no problem. Turns out my case manager was someone who moved to Florida from India recently, and was very hard to understand. 100% of my actual team that was doing the work was in India.
Without writing a book, I would summarize that the work was not horrible but not great. It was a lot of 'oh, I didn't know thats what you meant. We will work on that, but in the meantime here is another invoice'.
After a few months of this I told the sales guy I was concerned that the quality of the work was not great, to which he said 'we never promise that you will be happy with the work. You have to pay for their time whether they do good work or not.'
As I reviewed the contract, he was telling the truth. When I told him I would not pay the last invoice since it was for a set of tasks that had already been included several times on previous reports, he told me they would sue me if I didn't. I told him I would pay the invoices when they got it right, and that if some guy came to my house to fix a pipe and I had already paid him three times for it, by the fourth time he should make sure it works.
I was told thats not how they worked. I held out on principle and sure enough, they did sue me. I went to the Broward County Clerks page and saw they have sued over 130 people in the last 5 years for not paying some invoices. So ask yourself, is there a wide ranging conspiracy to hire them to do work, pay several months of invoices, then suddenly not pay; or is the fact that over 100 companies decided to quit paying them an indication that they don't do great work.
Its in the lawyers hands now, just like happened to all the other companies listed there. After looking on here, Chetu will come on here and argue and threaten to sue for defamation etc....so dont take my word for it. Go look at the long list of lawsuits and decide for yourself.
I hired this company to build an app. They quoted me 3 mos and $40,000. (Now 5mo into it and $20K over budget.) They stated that they DO NOT use 3rd party systems or piggyback off another programs and everything is written from scratch. However, they do use A LOT of 3rd party systems. The company says the are based here but ALL coders are in India. They are VERY difficult to work with. When you give them your availablity they still call you at all hours and have ZERO respect for your time.
They didn't make a single deadline. They made changes without my approval then wanted me to pay for them to change things back. Even when you lay out the project in great detail they don't perform as requested and when you request things to be corrected to the standards that you originally stated they act like its a "change to functionality" and then bill you for additional time.
The project managers are rude and try to treat you like children. They even asked at one point if I would write the team an email praising them for their hard work because 'they work better when praised'. (Needless to say I did not write that email.)
When you bring up the issues to management they act like they listen to what you say and they say they are going to correct the problems but of course nothing is corrected to your standards. They say every call is recorded but when asked for them to listen to those calls to prove what you have said is true they won't and they won't release the calls to you so you can prove what you've been saying all alone.
They have been the WORST company to deal with and do nothing but lie and try to take more and more money from you. When you try to fight them they hold your project hostage.
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, DO NOT USE CHETU. You will regret your decision.
Email sent to Chetu's corporate lawyer prior to lawsuits being filed:
Hi Joey
Let me clearly state for the record the following facts as documented by emails, witnesses, and invoices received and paid. All of which confirms the indisputable account of what transpired here.
1) Chetu was engaged by [redacted] (BBC) in November 2015. Thereafter Chetu was under contract for a total of 8 months before services were terminated in June. Total charges were approximately $35,000 for software development services.
2) A balance of about $4100 was due payable to Chetu at the termination of services. As confirmed by Chetu personnel, in the attached email, when inquiring as to the payment status he stated that once the $4100 payment was received, "Yes we can release your work product at that point."
3) Shortly thereafter a payment was paid by BBC reducing the balance to $2600.
4) In March of 2017, BBC was bought by me personally. I am the 100% owner of that company. One of the terms in the sale was that the $2600 balance owed to Chetu would be paid in full by the prior owner of BBC. To that end we re-engaged with Chetu to pay the balance owed and process the return of the source code and valuable prototype for our hardware that our design firm was paid tens of thousands of dollars to create.
5) When we asked Chetu to send us a final bill, Nikita [controller] with Chetu responded with the attached email and invoice representing full and final payment for all amounts owed.
6) A check was tendered within a few days of receiving that invoice from Chetu. That check was confirmed by Chetu as being received and it was paid by the bank. That resulted in a zero balance according to Chetu's own records.
7) Atal (Chief Executive at Chetu) sent an email to BBC instructing his personnel to commence the return process since payment had been received.
8) During the return process Chetu sent an email referencing items it was going to return to BBC. The list was incomplete and we brought this to Atal's attention. He denied there being more equipment than what was referenced in his staff's email. An altercation commenced as a result and the matter escalated to the point where the return process was halted by Atal until additional sums were paid by BBC for "finance charges", in contradiction of his own billing records.
9) Days later, On May 1st, Rakesh (Chetu Employee) confirmed additional equipment not listed on the prior list he tendered was located at another Chetu office and would be returned as well. He apologized for the confusion his initial email caused. Thus, BBC was correct in its assertion that Chetu had misplaced or other wise not accounted for property BBC left in Chetu's care.
10) To date, not the previous owner of BBC, nor I, received a separate invoice relating to the phantom finance charges, which we estimate to be a few hundred dollars. We state those charges were waived by Chetu in tendering the final invoice and cashing that payment, in full.
11) A review was posted by the inventor of the technology that Chetu is hindering development of. His review has been amended to state,
"If I could give this vendor no stars, I would. Chetu claims to offer "world-class" software development services. However, if their interpretation of world-class means outsourcing the work to India and having customers interface with personnel with thick accents and not fluent in English so that the work relationship is hindered due to lack of communication with the development team, I would say, yes, they are indeed world-class.
But unfortunately the issues don't stop there with Chetu. They were paid nearly $35,000 to develop software, tendered a final bill for a few thousand dollars and the client company confirmed after the final payment posted Chetu would return that company's IP, hardware, and source code for the software that Chetu charged $35,000 for. However, upon receiving payment they claimed yet an additional amount of a few hundred dollars was owed because they forgot to add "finance charges" for a past due amount of $2600 after $33,000 had been paid to that point. The phantom finance charge was brought up simply because the client company pointed out that the inventory of items to be returned was missing key patented prototype hardware. Chetu later found the items that were referenced as being missing, but their lack of business etiquette or lapse of judgment is causing them to still currently hold the client's property and source code, out of sheer spite and lack of customer service. We are now on day 11, lawyers have gotten involved, and our project is at a standstill with competent developers waiting to proceed and bring the project to completion.
Chetu is probably the worst company I've ever had the misfortune to deal with in my 20 years of being an entrepreneur and business proprietor."
The review above are the facts as we know them. The review is covered under freedom of speech and will not be taken down short of a court order. Furthermore, an equally scathing review was posted by another one of Chetu's unhappy clients 3 months ago. That review is attached for your reference. Thus, any claims as to the reviewer affiliated to us casting a shadow on Chetu's outstanding reputation is both incorrect and laughable since there are other comparable reviews of Chetu's lack of customer service and general business malfeasance.
Please note that we had a written understanding with Chetu as to the invoice getting paid and our property being returned along with our source code. Chetu has breached that understanding and is causing us significant injury every day this recently patented technology (Approved by USPTO on April 24, 2017), is delayed in development. Moreover, Chetu has also violated section 10c of their own contract that states that upon paying all invoiced amounts, work product, source codes, and property will be diligently returned.
Attached please find a Fedex mailing label for the prototype of our patented technology that we deem extremely valuable. We suggest you ship the equipment today or we will be forced to file a theft report with your local police department. We have already been in touch with a local attorney who was shocked at your client's behavior and would love to push this matter forward without us ever needing to step foot in Florida to file that claim. He suggests he can handle it all by himself as our attorney. He even commented that he knows the people down at the precinct closest to Chetu's office and that a detective would be visiting/calling Chetu once the matter is initiated through him and filed at the precinct. We look forward to that happening.
In the event your client fails to transform into a credible business that values it past customers as all businesses should, then the matter will proceed to both criminal and civil prosecution. We refuse to sign any settlement agreement with Chetu since there is nothing to settle. We demand our source code, and property immediately. Once you have confirmed the florida shipment is in route, we will send you the international label for the return of our equipment from Noida. We also expect the source code to be emailed by your firm no later than close of business Tuesday.
This company is extremely overpriced for the service you get. The customer service is non-existent and the CEO is extremely rude. The only conversation they will have with you is when will they get their money. Remember that you are paying for time which includes their mistakes which were many. Oh, they have themselves covered in the contract, so be very careful. they list their services as a consultation that they hold NO liability for. I ended up spending $100k on a system that did not work and had so many glitches. They even tried to get me to pay for the errors and sent me the files with the wrong access codes. I could not even get in my own software. I had to hire a professional to hack into it. I got the same amount of work done (higher quality) in a 16th of the time and a 16th of the cost. The worst was how the CEO and his team (by order), handle the situation as if I was in the flea market spending $10. I was so stressed thinking I had lost everything. NEVER AGAIN!