Complaint Review: Genus Web - New York New York

Hi Neal

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I'd very much like to get in contact with you as I had a very similar experience and would like to hear more about how you and your former developers ended everything and where you went from there.

Either respond with your contact info or get ripoff report to connect us. Good luck with everything. Hope to speak to you soon.

Hi,

I'm so sorry to hear about the situation you've been put in.

I actually have a very similar story and would really like to connect with you to hear more about your experience (as painful as it is may be to relive).

Can you respond with contact info ASAP so I can reach out and share my story with you?

Thank you and good luck moving forward!

I don’t even know where to begin since almost 2 years have passed on a project that was supposed to take 4 months but I will start by saying BUYER BEWARE when dealing with Gregory Kopyltsov and Joseph Terzi of Genus Web.  The first red flag should have been that they are operating out of Joseph’s clothing accessories business Basha Accessories.  I should have realized that any successful developers would have an office devoted to development but at the time we began dealing with Greg & Joseph I didn’t know much about software development. 

Not that I know a lot now but unfortunately after 2 years of being stuck waiting I have learned a lot more than I probably should have.  Prior to contacting Greg, I spoke with several other development companies and was quoted prices ranging from 20k to upwards of 100k.  After meeting with Greg & Joseph to discuss our needs they quoted us $12,500 which should have been the 2^nd red flag but again not knowing much about the business I thought we already received quotes close to that at the $20,000 price point so maybe we just lucked out and found a good deal. 

I asked Greg to send us proof that he has worked with GPS related apps before as our app would be a car service app which uses GPS.  He sent me a YouTube video link showing me a GPS “App” that he developed.  The app showed 1 basic functionality that we would need for our app– when you move the pin around the map the address would change to where ever that pin was dropped.  Not knowing much we thought they could complete the job so we retained them under the agreement that the app and accompanying back end software would be completed within 3 months and then there would be testing. 

We never got a definitive time frame for testing but were told it could be as little as a month or as much as 3 months – never was it mentioned that testing could and would take almost 2 years.  We were fine with the maximum time frame of 3 months as it met our deadline of launching this business before the summer ended which was important to us as it is the slow time in our industry. 

For the first 8 weeks we received screenshots showing weekly updates for each milestone in our agreement.  Everything looked good.  During that timeframe Greg sent us an email asking for a partnership upon completion of the app.  We weren’t looking for a partner at the time but we entertained their 35% request and finally we came to terms of a 15% partnership where Genus would be our tech partner providing all service related to the app and we would market the company in an attempt to turn this into something profitable for everyone involved. 

When the 3 months was up we finally received the apps to start testing and wow were there issues.  We knew there would be issues and bugs and it would not be 100% but we definitely did not think that would last another 15 months.  And apparently neither did Gregory or Joseph as they expressed to us numerous times throughout our almost 2 year relationship that they bit off more than they could chew with this project and didn’t expect the amount of work that was required.  Since I’m bringing that up I should mention now that we gave Gregory access to systems (provided user name and password), screenshots, videos, basically everything that would be needed when giving us a quote to determine what we need and what would need to be done to satisfy those needs. 

We also mentioned that timing was important as the company we were trying to model ourselves after was just entering the NY market and we wanted to be the 2^nd company providing this type of service before there were other companies doing the same thing.  When we received the apps I put together a list of bugs and sent them to Greg asking when could he have those items fixed?  He advised within a month so we went and purchased 50 phones from TMobile to give to our drivers once the app was completed.  We believed the time frame he quoted to us as he had been on time with his weekly milestones thus far.  Unfortunately for us, we’ve spent double the amount spent with Greg and Joseph paying our TMobile bills monthly for almost 2 years. 

What happened from here on out was week after week we would receive updates with some items fixed but nothing was ever completed.  And a common theme was they would fix some items and in turn they would break other items and things which were already addressed would have to be dealt with again.  This led to a complete lack of professionalism – more so with Joseph than Greg.  Joseph would get upset that things have to be worked on again and would start with the name calling and threats and would ALWAYS tell us how lucky we were to pay the amount that we paid for this software.  How would I consider myself lucky spending $12,500 on software (plus another 35k on phones and other bills) which is complete junk? 

As you can imagine, we wanted to protect ourselves when entering into this “partnership” so we discussed all of the terms before having an agreement drafted.  One thing I brought up to Greg & Joey was a termination clause if they weren’t doing their job.  The whole point of bringing a tech partner on board is to not have to worry about tech related items.  That angered Joseph who once again started with the complete lack of professionalism with the name calling and completely ridiculous comments.  Even though we were completely uncomfortable with them at that point we were still planning on moving forward with this partnership.  As part of the partnership, Joseph made sure he arranged free transportation for himself on a monthly basis. 

We obviously did not want to hand out free rides and lose money in the beginning but Joseph was looking out for himself.  The reason I bring this is up is because everything with regards to this partnership was talked about in advance – including Joey’s free rides.  The thing that broke the partnership talks was when Greg sent me an email advising that they would need a budget to complete certain items we discussed needing done upon completion of the app.  What budget?  That was never in our initial discussions.  We agreed on a 15% partnership and that was it but now we’re being told to budget money aside for some of the items we needed done. 

So we decided that this partnership was not in our best interest since they decided to change the terms and that was that.  From that point on it was a complete disaster.  Trying to get an update from either of them was impossible.  There were weeks and months of no contact whatsoever.  And it became clear to us that since the partnership talks ceased, that left them upset and no work was being done on our project.  Finally out of nowhere several months later we began getting some updates.  What I believe happened was they were servicing some other clients and when they had open time they would do some work on our project.  It was a good thing that we had a balance due to them or they wouldn’t have done anything. 

There’s a lot more to the story but the bottom line is they are not experienced developers.  We learned after the fact that we were their 1^st paying client.  Had I known that then I NEVER would have dealt with them.  They are unprofessional.  They do not stick to their word.  They do not stick to deadlines.  Basically they do not care about the situation they are putting their clients in by not delivering when they are supposed to.  To sum this all up – at the end of this disastrous mess we finally paid for the code even though there were bugs and it was not a finished app.  We paid thinking we can bring the code to another developer to work on and finally get away from these two inexperienced developers. 

Unfortunately again, what happened was that 3 different development companies who we paid to review the code all came back saying the same thing – the code is not documented at all and no developer can make changes without screwing things up.  Basically you need to learn the code along the way – fix something which will in turn break something else so that you can learn how each part of the code functions and works with other parts and document it so that it can eventually be fixed.  That could have taken 100’s or 1000’s of hours – no development company wanted to quote us anything based on the code supplied to us by Greg and Joseph.  So basically the software that we received for $12,500 that we were so lucky to get for that extremely low price is JUNK and not being used.  I even had one of the new developers contact Greg to question him on some of the code and Greg replied that he felt sorry for him having to work on the code because it was never documented and never meant to be worked on by outside developers. 

So if you decide to use Gregory or Joseph of Genus Web then you should verify that your code will be documented so that any developer can work on your code otherwise you’re going to be stuck with these two and you will eventually learn that is not in your best interest.  There’s a lot more to this story but like I said it’s been 2 years since we originally contracted them to do this work and while I have every email ever sent or received, I’d rather not relive 2 years of torture dealing with them by having to review those emails.  The point of the story is BUYER BEWARE when it comes to dealing with Gregory Kopyltsov, Joseph Terzi and their company Genus Web.