Ben Damman aka TypeSend
In our opinion, Ben Damman (CEO of Aliens From The Future, Inc.) is not a reliable person. He took $8,041.67 from us to work on a project in September 2020, where he has yet to make any progress. By that, I mean he failed to attend most meetings, made endless excuses, did near-zero code commits, took on new business, and did the same thing to other people on UpWork in the interim.
Ben manually logged ~66 hours, including a twelve-hour day, and reportedly worked a weekend where he never committed any code aside from a bare-bones Elixir framework. He would send reassurances like “I’m going to commit a release soon,” “There’s going to be a big unveiling…” and “I don’t have any problem paying you back. The check is on the way“. Despite his reassurances when he was communicating, he’s never delivered on anything he’s promised, at any time, in any way.
Ben publicly brags about working at the White House…
Ben publicly brags about working at Apple…
Ben publicly brags about being an expert developer.
He just wouldn’t do anything he said he would do, even though he was capable of it…
The cancellations and last-minute changes with meetings became the only time we’d ever have a chance to communicate:
Ben’s “beast mode” approach didn’t work out for me because he never sent those screenshots, links, or instructions.
Here’s an example where Ben used the January invasion with a simultaneous stomach bug to deflect an email asking how he was doing, given he hadn’t created anything or been communicating at that point ninety-one days after the project began:
(After replying within an hour, providing various times we could have a call, there was no further communication…)
Ben told me he wanted a bonus because he was “low on money” (unemployed) during this time. I generously gave him $1k out of my pocket as a bonus for the proposal win he had come up with to help with this personal project. At that point, all he’d done was create a 1.5-page document that might’ve taken him an hour to prepare; he did that only after canceling the meeting to unveil it…
Here’s a review from another client he took money from only eight days after I canceled his contract from Oct 14, 2020 – Jan 19, 2021:
Ben’s original excuse was a death in the family (Uncle) in December. If that caused him to be unable to work on our project, why would he take on another one a week after being fired from this one? He also displayed the same behaviors, taking the money and never getting any work done.
That happened to be 13k between our two organizations.
Imagine looking at a freelancer’s Instagram while they travel, eat out at excellent restaurants, and move to a beautiful new place, all while not communicating with you and living off of your hard-earned money for doing absolutely nothing in return and then watching them do it to another business right after you buy into a waterfall of pitiful excuses!
Ben legitimately hurt our future endeavors with his inaction, holding the project back for months and wasting valuable time getting to the market. Ben was initially hired to troubleshoot an existing environment, which he could not do, and instead convinced us to build an entirely new one using his preferred frameworks.
If it weren’t for this picture of President Obama and references to the White House, Apple, Google, and other trustworthy organizations in his social media, I would not have hired him to help me build out this concept. It’s sad, but I bought into this precarious ‘My jobs are my identity’ delusion, somehow thinking it would guarantee reliability, but it produced nothing.
Ben should repay the money he owes because he did not perform meaningful work when the project was engaged. Ben’s approach was to do harm first (Nocere primo) by separating us from our limited capital, wasting our time, and moving out of town to never be seen or heard from again.
Meanwhile, he’s familiar with issues of the financial kind, so I’m still determining if I’ll ever get my funds back. Much like these creditors below, who had to use courts to force Ben to pay his bills, we’ll probably have to go this route at some point:
(Per WhitePages.com)
$4,306 to Express Personal Services
$9,802 to Asset Acceptance, LLC
$3,600 GB, LLC
$1,640 Capital One Bank
~20k in legal judgments.
Ben’s never attempted to pay back $1 despite being given options to return a significantly reduced amount with open terms. i.e., Ben wouldn’t finalize a very generous agreement to pay even half back with open terms on how much he’s paying at a time and the schedule of payments.
Last I’d heard from him, he cobbled together an email with words that had different formatting demanding I stop “harassing him,” even when I simply asked, “When will you pay us back?” and that all future communication goes through his attorney. The odd part is Ben has said many times that he would pay us back and never officially said he wouldn’t; he just keeps taking the cowardly route, avoiding the conversation altogether…
Thanks for your time, and good luck in your endeavors.