Signed a 2 year contract with a dev shop that ghosted me after 6 months

We paid $18k upfront for a custom CRM build back in March. First 2 sprints went smooth, then the point person stopped returning Slack messages. By June, the whole team went quiet. We found out later they took on a bigger client and dumped smaller accounts. Now we're stuck with a half built system and they won't refund anything. Our lawyer says the contract has an arbitration clause that makes it not worth chasing. Has anyone successfully gotten out of a dev contract like this, or are we just eating the cost?

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janac592mo ago

$18k is actually pretty cheap for a custom CRM, so let me flip this around for a second. You got two solid sprints of work before they vanished, which means you probably have a working foundation, even if it's not finished. Instead of burning time and money on a legal fight the arbitration clause already killed, you could take what you have, hire a freelancer to finish the tough parts, and be live in 60 days. The dev shop taking a bigger client is their right, they made a business call, and if you had done the same research, you'd have seen red flags in their client list or their contract terms before signing. Honestly, eating the $18k as a lesson learned is way cheaper than the six months of stress you'll get chasing a refund that's never coming.

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