Thought id give a different perspective as a vBulletin services provider, we have a good track record and during our initial years we relied a lot on "Paid Services Request" to get our name out and try to get new clients. Eventually now we have our niche and we dont just rely on vB.org for our clients but majority still finds us through vB.org. Most of them, about 90% have had their luck of "unfortunate" experiences through vB.org and thats not at all surprising since its anonymous and not moderated.

Im not really sure if vB.org would overhaul their system when it comes to these 3rd party services, i mean i havent seen vB.org change in last 4 years which has a debate of its own, but vB.org definitely should NOT wash its hands off saying, members should do their research and not blame it on vB.org staff, i dont fully agree with that, you guys are giving a platform where people can be scammed and duped, of course lot of them get their work done but eventually people say i was scammed through vB.org.

Either the forum should be totally removed or at least there should be some moderation or governance. I mean even if each thread was followed up by saying XX did a great job, not everyone who posts a job is going to sift through each post and see whose the ideal one or whom to avoid. Even if there is no itrader type of system to score each person, there should at least be some indication of people to completely avoid, some strike system to keep the repeat offenders easier to spot.

Now as members posting job or looking for services, you have to understand since this is an free-for-all forum without any watch guards, if you hire someone new and fresh, i dont think its fair to blame vB.org, its a risk you take in an online business relation, hiring a freelancer is always risky if you havent worked with that person, you would definitely have to do that extra bit research, if you are going to invest upto 500$, you can spend some time checking possible application out. Just few pointers trying to find services provider.

- Are they active around the forum
- Have they submitted Styles/Mods/Articles or contributed in vB.org
- Do they have a website for services they offer.
- Check how active it is and how long has it being functional.
- Check their portfolio and see what kind of work they have done.
- Just search their 'name' in forum , what kind of chatter is there on forum about them, is it positive or negative.
- Never pay full upfront for any project.
- Open proper channels of communication before and during projects,
- Social network can be helpful too, you see what sort of online contribution activities are associated with the person/company you want to hire, i mean Facebook, twitter, gplus etc.
- Try to have a online call or some sort of more personal interaction, sometimes it helps.
- Test their knowledge about the product, dont just hire them because they know PHP or Photoshop, they can make it work. Ideal service providers would be fluent about product and its history.
- Do they give feedback or own suggestions to improve your idea of project or do they just blindly accept whatever you say and assure it can be done.

Just few things which help filter out or at least narrow the list of possible service providers.

Eventually, you have to accept the fact that you are taking a risk of hiring someone new and any liability from that risk also belongs completely to you, vB.org gives platform for new people to start vB services and lot of people find good services/freelancers for their community work. Not ideal or perfect but i think it does help a lot than harm.

People with good feedback in digital point have scammed for $xxxx! So, it is easy for people to gain good feedback & start scamming. That's why i ask most of my clients to pay me when their job is completed. In some cases once their job gets completed, they don't respond me either & i get scammed.

No system can stop people from scamming. You are taking a risk when you pay upfront. If you don't trust the person don't make any upfront payment.

Here is my suggestion for vb.org:

I know it is not your duty to involve in 3rd party disputes, at-least you can close the scammer account if you receive strong evidence from the buyer.

There is NEVER going to be "Evidence" - Evidence must be collected using proper procedures so it can't be tampered with. Anyone can write out a message and claim it is from a PM or email or IM log- it means NOTHING. That's the problem- we don't ever get "evidence" all we get is one side's accusations and have no power to investigate. Truthfully I have no desire to investigate either, I'd rather be working on my own forum or making mods then wasting time investigating a deal where someone shouldn't have paid up front in the first place.

So what should the average guy do when a Skin guy says he won't start the Skin without money up front?

A guy you have seen what great work he can do, been in contact with him for a few months, he says the right things, then finally he scams the money and you end up with no Skin.

There are at least 2 people who have said this, and even the guy from the Skin which was finally made saying never use this guy, it must show something to you, that this guy scams money from honest people from the Org.

I think you were a bit harsh in your above post BOP, but that's just my opinion.

IIRC, RSNF vouched and recommended the designer [Who seems to be a great guy and really talented] when he won the BOTM comp, I could be completely wrong though.

I normally give the client all the balls, since I really have nothing to lose but gain a lot more knowledge about vBulletin. Heck if I ever get screwed I'd just release the work for free and let the community develop it.

And most importantly don't expect custom addons to be compatible 100%, especially if you're seeking something extremely custom.

I hope in some cases, you go can go through the pm exchanged over here. New people should be appointed for that post, it hardly takes few hours to investigate them. The best option would be to remove the request for paid section if you are not ready to spend time & this is not the first time such things are happening here.

You're right I did praise this guy in my board of the month thread........Because technically I did not get scammed by him as I paid after the work was done. Am I griping about my site here? No not at all it is what it is. What I have a problem with is The designer completely changed the way he did business by now making the forum owner pay up front. So here I praised him people asked me how he was I said he did a good job sometimes can be hard to get a hold of but otherwise my site was proof he does have some skills. What I did not expect was to get private messages by some people saying he took the money and ran and left them with either an unfinished product or no product at all? I recommended the clown to some of these people so ultimately now I look like a fool. Clearly you can see my site eventually got completed.........But clearly you can also see others never did? And for the record I called Mark "The designer he answered and I asked him what was going on.............Answer was dealing with personal issues" That's crap in my opinion!

I disagree. The notice clearly says you're using the forum at your own risk. I don't see the point of taking it away from the people who use it successfully just because the site can't be responsible for scammers.

Either don't do the deal or don't give them more money then you would risk gambling because that is what you are doing, gambling.

No one is forcing you to use a particular designer or even a custom designer at all.

There are other sites that handle these things. I know of guru.com, but I'm sure there are others who have a service where they hold the money in escrow and even provide dispute resolution. You could always ask someone here that you're thinking of hiring to agree to be paid through a site like that.