7 Red Flags When Hiring an AI Automation Vendor
Georges de La Tour, The Fortune-Teller, c. 1630
Vaughn DiMarco
The biggest red flags: pricing they cannot state per workflow, no written guarantee, demos that never touch your real tools, systems hosted on infrastructure you do not control, no named person doing the work, promises to automate everything at once, and case studies that cannot survive one follow-up question.
The seven flags
1. Unstatable pricing. If a vendor cannot tell you what one workflow costs to build and to run, they are pricing by what you will tolerate. 2. No written guarantee. Diagnostic work should carry a money-back condition in writing; delivery work should carry acceptance criteria. 3. Demo-ware. A demo on the vendor’s sample data proves nothing. Insist on a scoped test against your actual tools before a large commitment.
4. Vendor-hosted lock-in. If the workflows run on infrastructure you cannot access, the price of leaving is rebuilding everything. Prefer vendors who build inside your accounts so you own the result. 5. No named humans. If you cannot name the person who will build your system, you are buying a queue, not a service. 6. Boil-the-ocean scope. Serious vendors sequence: highest-value workflow first, prove it, then expand. Anyone proposing a 12-workflow transformation on day one is selling a retainer, not results. 7. Unfalsifiable case studies. Real proof survives follow-up questions; composites and illustrations are legitimate only when clearly labeled as such.
What good looks like instead
A trustworthy engagement starts small and specific: a fixed-price assessment with a written guarantee, a per-workflow build price, operations pricing you can cancel, systems built inside accounts you own, and a named builder. Ask every vendor the same question, "what happens if this doesn’t work?", and hire the one with a concrete answer.
Common questions
What is the biggest red flag when hiring an AI automation vendor?
Pricing they cannot state per workflow. If a vendor cannot tell you what one workflow costs to build and operate, they cannot tell you what it is worth either, and neither can you.
What should I ask about a vendor’s case studies?
One follow-up question. Ask what the baseline was, who measured it, and what broke. Real case studies survive that. Manufactured ones change shape.
Should the vendor host the system?
Prefer infrastructure you control. If the workflows run on the vendor’s account and the relationship ends, you lose the system and the context inside it at the same time.
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