How to deal with scammer?
 

He tool the project 12 days ago, and wanted me to pay 1/3 upfront which i did. I paid 80usd/240.

Now that he give the some nulled/rip off/incompleted script. I asked for my money back and he refuses to, and walked away.

What should i do?

I paid via Paypal.

1- report it in your Paid Service request
2- give the details IF possible
3- never pay upfront again

... this was debated way too much lately... nothing can really be done, you had to read the stickies and follow their rules. scammers are everywhere *(i may even be one of them, you never know!)

you can not be refund by paypal as it was not "tangible"...

1. Never pay up front again.
2. Give him a little visit to his house. ;)

Not sure what can be done to stop people paying money up front, perhaps a tatoo on their foreheads in reverse so when they look in the mirror, it says, DON'T PAY!!

Why do people do it??? Perhaps its like an illness, if so, gimme all your money :D

Like my crazy friend Nexy says, this has been covered so many times and i feel that people want to change the record a bit, to be blunt its no ones fault except your own.

Take this as an example, say I was in a Restuarant, and a guy came up to me and said, "Hey, I have a 50" Plasma TV for sale for $250, Gimme the money and i'll go and fetch it"

How many of you here would give the cash without Question?? The truth is you wouldn't, But thats exactly what your doing.

Shop around, get to know the person and most importantly Hang onto your money until you've got something worth spending it on.

If a coder or designer is confident in their work then i'm sure they'll wait for their money, I can't see any reason as to why they'll feel to take cash up front, its not as if they have to buy anything. If you remember the following...


S. Safety - are you 100% certain that your happy to trust this person with your personal information and logins.

T. Time - Like all work, There comes a time when its completed. Find out how long and when you can expect your work to be done. You don't want it dragging on for months.

O. Organise - Before you engage full steam ahead, check that you have details about the coder, A landline number and address, Referances, and recomendations. A little bit of organising here will prevent hic ups later.

P. Payment. - When your happy with the work and the jobs been completed, then Pay, Don't delay as the coder has worked for you on Trust, Its a two way thing, so when you get your payment request and its what you agreed then please Pay promptly.

Nexy did say one thing last week which made sense, ;) If a coder or designer is doing some private work for you, get them to upload it to a test site or forum so you can actually see what they've done and have your say if its not right and working how you'd expect it, then you'll have the chance to get the edits made. I think alot of the problems are at this sort of stage, where the clients not happy about one thing and that makes the coder fed up, that he practically gives up.

Any coder and designer if they are being honest with you would be more than happy to display what they have done for you on a test site or forum, and when your happy the exchange of monies can continue.

Why would anyone pay for something that has not even been started beats me, But hey its your money :D

Whilst its great being able to hire coders and designers on here you need to be a bit responsible if you pay upfront, its not really fair expecting anyone to do something on your behalf, or even expect VB.org to sort out problems like this.

Its a Mad world out there so Be Safe and remember S.T.O.P !! ;)

crazy ?!

lol Crazy in the nice sense :D ;)

If this was in response to a request you made here in the Paid Request forum, then read this and post some feedback - Providing Member Feedback

Please also Read here https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/announcement.php?f=30&a=31 if your thinking of hiring someone to do work for you :D

That is not correct!

I just went through this nearly same situation, and because I requested a refund, and I gave them all of the details, I got my money back in full... Don't ever think that they won't, and never give up... Trust me... They will give your money back, even if it's just the fact that you want it back... been through that too...

Feel free to contact me if you need help with it...

Only problem is that paypal will give you what the person has left in their account, so say you paid $100 and the guy has spent it, you'll get nothing.

Just to confirm if a scammer has hit the jackpot by scamming you out of $$$$, don't for one minute think he'll leave it in his paypal account, He'll spend it as soon as possible. Why risk Paypal freezing his account???

Please don't think that Paypal will repay you in full, if the guy has no money in his account ;)

The best way is the safe way, Pay on result, not before :up:

Find out where he lives and kick em in the balls. Afterwhich, kick their parents in the nether regions for raising a low life stealing moron. :up:

Parents always at fault Shelley, people just do stupid, selfish, shameful things sometimes...

Sounds like you got a confession brewing there Magnumutz :D

Burn his house . well no this ONLY when u take few pills and drinks .

Just remember dont pay anything before job done .

If anyone request 1/3 pay just go to another option . This Net world so big always OPTIONS everywhere .

Lg

I guess those calling for armed intervention are doing so in jest, but still i would like to request to stop making suggestions to hurt other people, burn houses or insult family etc..

What the hell... i meant to say that parent's AREN'T always at fault!!
My bad, i was tired.

Me too, working 18 hours a day is making me a little tired also. I meant, I'm at fault. Blame me for other peoples scamming activities. :up:

I next to never charge anyone for anything (but do except & get donations) & I do a ton of work for people, from, full upgrade, new installs, mod installs & simple editing for people that are having difficulties setting their vbulletin site up the way they would like. I try my best to "show" them how to edit their site, install mods, upgrade, instead of doing it for them & never charge. I want them to learn what I have learned & not depend on anyone, but themselves.

Are you sure you want me to blame you for all the scams i've fell in?
Cuz you'd have to pay quite a few bucks :D

Ok, maybe was your dealings skills... give me his info I need job done ;)

Hell yeah, blame me. Anything went wrong for you today? or the past 7 days? if so, blame me again for that. Girlfriend dump you? cheat on you? yup. you know where the blame lies there.

Anything that ever went wrong for you, you just do the right thing, and pass the blame over to me and I'll take full responsibility.

How much do I owe you? Sorry for the the bad english, I'm english. :erm:

You're so funny Shelley :D

We dont know both sides of the story - he could of delivered the goods and somehow u installed it wrong.Best to try and sort it out amongst yourselfs and see if you can come to some agreement. Remember one thing : Your on your own should anything go wrong.

This is not a solution to the problem with scammers any more than prepayment is a solution for the honest workers. It comes down to doing work with people that you trust and have a good reputation. Now that there have been so many problems with scammers on this site vB owners are less willing to prepay even small amounts to honest workers for their work. What is to stop someone from always wanting "one more thing" before they consider a job complete and making their payment? The honest workers need a place on the site to be featured so they can be separated from the noise. How about a Featured Workers section under the paid work requests forum?

-Raymond

Like popowich said, encouraging people to not pay anything upfront, would be a disaster, at least for me, i don't take jobs from people that i don't know and won't pay anything upfront, at least 50%.

My older clients, that i've got trust in, i don't ask this, they can pay me after everything is done, but new guys don't inspire too much trust for me.

i dont mind paying upfront but sometimes this is where the problem is.
You cant hire someone to do a job unless u pay upfront so whats the solution here ?

Anything $50 and under you should be able to get up front.

For larger projects I think 1/2 up front and 1/2 when 50% or 100% done with the project is fair.

If the worker does not have any references they'll just have to deal with not getting paid until they have completed the project and built up a list of happy clients.

It's on the worker in this case to check the owners reputation and references for past work that they have paid for.

If the is still not enough trust I'd think at least one of the parties involved has not done their homework.

Perhaps a 3rd party escrow service would be the answer in this case?

-Raymond

Words of wisdom, well done Raymond ;)

Iv paid upfront for modifications and they have gone fine :P

The solution, you ask?
Ask for references and actually check them.
Look around the forum, see what kind of user you are dealing with.

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 :)