Failed project, misleading accuracy claims, months wasted!
I hired Growwstacks for a custom invoice pricing automation project, and my experience was extremely poor. they gave me a deadline of 2 weeks but project went onto 4 months and even then didnt deliver.
This was not a simple project, and I made that clear before we even started. I told them early on that the project looked confusing/difficult and that I was not sure whether we should continue. This was a business-critical system for us, because wrong pricing data can directly affect purchasing, selling prices, and profit margins. After raising those concerns, I had a call with Manish, the owner of Growwstacks, where I was reassured that everything would be fine and that he would take control of the project. That reassurance is one of the main reasons I decided to proceed.
Before starting, I was also very clear that accuracy was the main requirement. I specifically told them that if the system was unsure, it should flag items for manual review instead of giving wrong data. The expectation was not “guess and let the client find the mistakes.” The expectation was that the system would be reliable, and uncertain cases would be safely flagged.
What followed was around 4 months of delays, repeated issues, and a system that never came close to being reliable enough for real business use.
The system repeatedly produced serious errors, including wrong invoice matching, false price-change percentages, wrong product/supplier matching, case prices being compared to unit prices, and different pack sizes being treated as the same product. I found examples where the same price was shown as a major percentage change, previous invoice links were missing, old pricing was wrong, and items like 5kg were being compared to 20kg or 500g to 1.5kg. These are not minor bugs. These issues go directly against the whole purpose of the project.
The project was later pushed as “completed” even though major issues were still unresolved. Payment was chased while I was still clearly saying the project was not complete, and I was even asked for a review while the system was still not accurate enough to use properly.
The worst part was the accuracy reporting. Growwstacks later produced a misleading report implying around 3% deviation / high accuracy. In reality, that report did not reflect the real output they were showing. I had to spend my own time manually proving that the system was far worse than what was being presented. On the issue areas I checked, the output was not even close to acceptable for business use and, in my view, was not even even 50% accurate and they said 3% .
The explanation also seemed to change after the project had already failed. At the beginning, accuracy and manual exception handling were treated as core requirements. Later, when the system was not delivering, the tone shifted towards “custom projects are not guaranteed to come out exactly as written in the proposal” and that some variation was normal. That completely undermines trust. If a proposal (which included everything) and pre-project assurances cannot be relied on, what is the client supposed to rely on?
I also incurred £200-£300 software and forex-related costs during this failed delivery. When I asked for compensation for those losses, the response from Manish on a call was dismissive. The logic given was basically that his team had spent a lot of time and he still had to pay them. From a client’s perspective, that is not a valid excuse when the final delivery does not match what was promised. Time spent by the vendor does not equal successful delivery for the client.
In the end, Growwstacks agreed to refund the project fee (even on refund they charged us 25$) , which says a lot by itself. However, even after agreeing to refund, the process has still been delayed, and they refused to compensate the additional costs caused during the failed project.
This was not one mistake. It was a repeated pattern: I raised concerns before starting, I was reassured, the project dragged on for months, the system produced serious errors, the project was presented as complete while still failing, the accuracy report painted a much better picture than reality, and when I asked for accountability, excuses were made.
Based on my experience, I would not recommend Growwstacks for any business-critical automation project where accuracy, accountability, realistic timelines, and honest reporting matter.