I think in situations like this you need to follow your heart, I'm pretty good at knowing if a deals going to be cool or go sour, you need to know the person and their previous history/referances
;)

these threads simply go no where.Im not allowed to mention names in here,or risk getting suspended again,but doing checks on people DOES NOT GUARANTEE they will do the work.
If it did then the problem would of been solved ages ago.
The one who ripped me off provided loads of refs and previous jobs he had done and even had a website set up selling vbull skins,so i throught i was pretty safe there.
Obviously i was`nt.
Anyway if u think checking references is 100% proof you wont get ripped off then im afraid u living in cuckoo land.
We can also look at this another way - ive had a coder from here who has done loads of hacks and work for me and ive never seen one ref from him or any of his previous work.
He never asked for money upfront or even pushed for it when the job was done.
So as ive said many times before its the odd ones who are ruining it for the rest of them.
And thats what needs to be solved.

Whenever (and I'm sure Dean C) mentioned this is get a landline number from anyone who you are thinking of hiring. Get their address and Nat Insurance number (companies require this why not you). You have all their credentials it's amazing how much information you have at your disposal when things go pear shaped. You then have more leverage to pursue this further.

Personally, I wouldn't hire anyone here. And although I would never admit it I did take one job on here which resulted in me showing a screenshot of the graphics I did and the person cropped them and used them on their board (Not going to mention names). I'm not worried about it, because soon after, I released these images to the public because I thought, well, you are not going to have exclusive rights but it's a lesson learned or in my case a lesson reminded that trust is earned not given freely to anyone.

FYI - (Generally speaking) References don't protect you from being scammed. You could quote scriptures all day long and this alone would not protect you. Go out your way and do background checks on the person. They have 1 post? and they are taking on work? be cautious. They could have easily created another account because their old account is known to the community for scamming activities.

@ Lasto - I know you were scammed and I do partially feel for you. So, go to a more reputable place where the repercussions to scamming are dealt with more severely and the person your given work to knows that there's consequences. Your hard earned money shouldn't be thrown away even though it's only paper it's your time and hard graft which earned you it and that's the way I look at it.

Anyway, I'm sure your sick of people advising you on what to do as much as I'm sick of typing my 2 pence worth so be carefull. :D

PS. Just noticed your suspended. Wait till you get back for having me type this long rambling reply. Your in trouble. ;)

Shelley is right... and if you can not protect you from being scammed, protect yourself from loosing everything in that scam. make sure you go thru a process that secure you, so you can be refund by the authority (Escrow is a good example) -- do this before any deal

I couldn't agree more. If you do not trust the worker, or the worker does not trust the owner, find a trusted 3rd party that will hold the money until the job is completed successfully and can take an informed impartial look at the work done in the unfortunate event that a dispute occurs.

-Raymond

I would think you would be able to get your money back through Paypal. It's a long process but eventually...
These people taking money for services "unrendered" seems like it's becoming more and more common lately.

If there is not a physical good exchanged paypal can't do anything about it.

Or something along those lines...

-Raymond

Yeah paypal is pretty reasonable most of the time when it comes to disputes as far as my experience with them go. In all actuality Paypal seems to trust buyers and offer more buyer protection then vendor/service provider protection.

Ive seen someone get screwed over on a sale he made through ebay where the buyer got the item and then filed a dispute that he never received it. By the time my friend got the signature slip back from the postal office to prove that the shipment was received paypal had already refunded the buyers money and wouldn't look into it any further.

should of told him to sign in rentacoder.com ;) and paid him there if u dont like it u can get money back =)

trust no one should be your motto when dealing with money as its my motto now :)

And hello shelley :)