We chose Sino Solutions to design a website for our start-up company based on their work to that date and their list of clients, both of which impressed us.
However, over a year after this long and stressful process began, we are simply at a loss to understand how they have any clients at all, let alone ones like embassies and high-profile Beijing businesses.
We found communication extremely difficult and slow, their staff unknowledgeable, and at least one of their practices illegal.
Let me go into more detail.
Communication:
Sino Solutions is run by a Brit, which we anticipated would make communication smoother. We gave them a very clear vision, including graphics, setting out what we wanted our website to look like, in March 2013. Yet Sino Solutions came back to us with very different ideas, all of which we wasted time dismissing.
Whilst going back through our emails to research this review, we found that throughout the process it took several emails for any change, no matter how simple, to be made. We would clearly list the changes we wanted (all of which were within the remit of the contract), and yet we were ignored multiple times. If a change was made, it would often be made incorrectly or sloppily, with seemingly no regard for aesthetics or the actual basic functionality of the site!
Many of these issues were caused by us communicating something to the manager by phone or email, which would then be incorrectly passed on to the staff actually doing the work. So eventually, we started communicating directly with one of the programmers, which helped to solve some of these issues, but that then caused friction with the manager, who insisted we communicate only with him!
Lack of basic knowledge:
Our CEO had to spend time almost every day explaining in minute detail to Sino Solutions exactly what we wanted, instead of getting our company up and running. A couple of times, we were told something couldn’t be done. Our CEO promptly looked it up on Google and sent them the code in 10 minutes. The manager almost never appeared even slightly embarrassed or apologetic (we would have been!).
Their ‘custom CMS’ has multiple problems. When adding content to our website we were in almost daily contact with Sino trying to do the most basic things. They would solve one problem, only for another to crop up. It was extremely frustrating. Now that we have transferred our site to another host, we are unfortunately stuck with it, and our CEO has had to teach himself code (again doing things we were told could not be done, such as removing Sino’s name from the bottom of the website) to make the changes we want. A possible reason for the problems is that Sino provided us with a pirated CMS, and we have emailed the makers to let them know it was stolen from them.
In addition, Sino didn’t give us full access to our site, meaning we had to rely on them to make changes to things not included in CMS. Multiple times we had to wait days for the simplest of changes.
Lack of transparency:
We recently transferred our website to another host, hence us finally being able to write this review. However, we asked them to make some minor changes within the remit of the contract before we did so. They made the changes, but then a couple of weeks later attempted to charge us for them!
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All of the problems listed above meant that our website was delivered 3 months behind schedule, even accounting for some things we asked for that genuinely could not be done, or took more time (we had not designed a website before, after all, hence our need for Sino). When we mentioned this to them, they blamed us! The terms of the contract entitled us to a partial refund, but instead they demanded further payment for their extra work, much of which would have been unnecessary if they had just listened to our requests earlier in the process.
We don’t deny that we are happy with the beautiful website we ended up with. However, that’s because we designed it that way, and we literally had to fight with Sino every step of the way to get the results and functionality that we wanted.
Sino Solutions is a company with some of the worst business practices we have ever witnessed. Use them at your peril.
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We would be happy to provide further details to anyone interested; just send us a message. We wouldn’t want other people to suffer the same experience we did.
Note that their offices are now located at Yong'an Li, not Dawanglu as stated in the listing.
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