I would certainly suggest not paying before any work is done...

This goes both ways... I know I'm not alone when I say I've handed over work to someone only to never see payment for it. These days I'm more picky about who I'll do work for, but for large projects I still ask for half the payment after I show the user a working demo on my own test site.

I consider a large project to be anything I quote for over $50.

Somewhat off topics, but it sounds like you've got decent prices. Any chance you've got any room in your schedual to take on some more paid work.

Ditto.

you could always post in the service thread who pmed to carry out the service request and wether it went smooth of not. That way other people could avoid problems by doing some research.

Personally I wont touch anything that isn't half up front.

Guys, just post in the service request forum. If I have time I'll respond to them. You can PM me directly if you want of course. Obviously I don't like to discuss such things on the public forums, so lets try to keep this thread on topic. :)

i like the idea that a few people mentioned about a rating system...i think it would be a good idea...

You could always use RentACoder.com, that’s what I use :)

Thanks,
Mat

Thank you.

I would hate to see this site lose it's focus. And no thanks on the user ratings bit.

Sad to say that as a coder, I have been scammed by a few people. For some odd reason, PayPal allowed this one user to perform a chargeback despite the fact that the work was already done/paid for. Sadly, PayPal wouldn't listen to what I had to say and I only had 3 options. Provide tracking info for a package, issue a refund or give evidence of a refund. So, what I did was burned the hack on a blank CD-R and took it down to the UPS store.

Remember that this river can run both ways, oh so sadly.