Theis J.
Refusing to refund deposit milestone
We engaged AIS for a small project (400h estimate) and paid a $1,800 milestone deposit. Before paying, we confirmed in writing that if the work was not up to standard, the milestone would be refunded after day one. They agreed. Our scope was simple and well-documented: Angular v20, Tailwind v4, no SCSS, and styling existing PrimeNG components (not building new ones). Instead, AIS delivered Angular v18, Tailwind v3, included SCSS, and built custom components. They also focused on application logic instead of design, which was explicitly out of scope for the initial test day. These are not matters of “quality over time” but basic versioning and requirement mismatches visible on day one so it was easy for us to see that there was not a match on quality. Luckily we've been explicit on the refund terms. At least we thought. When we requested the refund, AIS refused. They accused us of “tricking” them, claimed one day was not enough to judge, and tried to shift blame to communication (Slack/WhatsApp groups). None of this changes the fact that their own written refund confirmation was clear and unconditional, and that the scope violations were obvious to any developer. In the end, they kept the entire $1,800 for ~4 hours of unusable work. We were willing to pay for the work they did, despite it being unusable, but they chose to keep everything. AIS broke their own promise and failed to deliver on basic requirements. Others should be very cautious before paying upfront milestones to this company, regardless of Trustpilot ratings. We definitely learned our lesson and ended up hiring another agency where a third party handles the escrow. Update Also, notice that they dispute all negative ratings and that all the users giving good ratings only have 1 previous rating. Right now they are refusing to pay back our money because we gave this review.