Got some one bothering me here
 

I got singled out by another member here to do the work on their forum. I'm thinking maybe they sent out PM's in the blind waiting for some one to respond.
I responded by saying if it was a quad copter forum I might be interested. They replied with who would want to have a forum about that. The response they got out of me since flying quads is my hobby, was a couple of links to RC hobby forums both running VB software where I am a member.
Are those yours or do you admin them? Then launched in to this absurdly long laundry list of things they wanted done and wanted me to start tomorrow.
I finally sent one that was straight to the point about not being interested. I wasn't rude but I was firm. I hope that's all it takes.

Ok for the record, I am not a coder. Never professed to be. I'm doing good driving my own place in the ground. I'm not dinking with VB as much as I used to attested by the fact I'm not in here as often as I used to be.

Please don't ask for the name unless you are a mod or admin as posting the name in the open wouldn't be cool.

I think I had your same "customer" as well. Didn't seem to want to take "no" for a answer. I don't hire out, period. Not for any job or for any amount.

I get PMs quite often asking if I do custom work and I always say No. So far I haven't had anybody get upset with that answer.

I got a pm from the guy myself I never replied to it as I have too much work on. Now I am happy I did not

Got a request from this person as well. I suspect this person may be some sort of hacker, like the one that was going around asking plugin developers for their premium mod demo board url and then used the recent vBulletin exploits to steal the premium mods.

I got a similar request but for a Grand Prix Race Car site. I didn't reply because it seemed to be a form letter going out to random forum members. I periodically get asked to make things I have no idea how to make.

Did the replies seem automated to you, being that they didn't seem to be responding to what you said? Did they ask you to hit them up via Skype?

I got the same one you did.

I ignore most of these things because people don't know the difference between a coder and a designer.

Perhaps they'll read this and understand the difference...

CODER: Someone that modifies, or adds to, the functionality of vBulletin (programs functions/add-ons).

DESIGNER: Someone that changes the appearance of vBulletin (designs styles/sites).

If you want to do both to a site, then you will most often need 2 people to do the work. ;)

wait a minute... now that you guys mention RC and other keywords, i'm 99.99999% sure that I know who this is. My advice is to beat feet and put as much distance between yourself and this guy as you can. He's trouble and has already been banned from here for showing his true colors and he's probably sending out mass PM's because he doesn't have licensed access to the paid requests forum anymore.

Trust me, don't get involved with this guy. He's been stalking me for seven years now and it's costing me a fortune in lawyers fees.

Now that I look, my PMs were from a user who has posted in licensed areas as recently as October. Unless he was banned recently, mine might be a different guy than the OP's.

no, he got the axe back in the early summer i think. even so, grand prix's wouldn't be this guy's thing. he ruined his car forums and now he's trying other stuff. probably not the same guy as OP's.

Yep it's about grand prix cars. I got another PM from him responding to my not interested PM. From the way it's worded he's shooting in the blind to many people as he can.

wouldn't HAPPEN to be from canada, would he?

This thread almost makes me want to check my backlog of PMs... Almost.

Since I have almost 2000 PMs right now, I think I will pass and looking back through them. (Although, maybe I will make my New Years' resolution be to go through and delete my old PMs!)

I *believe* I just "fired" this guy... no he was not on my staff I mean as in I quit working for him - What? You didn't know? Ohh yeah you can fire clients... it's not the norm as that means less income but when you realize it's an absolute nut job your dealing with you simply do what you have to do. I can live without the money if it saves my sanity and sometimes they want you to work 8 hours a day for < $50 and that is not possible for all based on various reasons - if you find a trustworthy coder who can work that many hours for that amount of money like I also just told someone else "grab them, hug them tightly and never let them go" because 8 hours for $50 and its coding/design, that is a bargain ;).

Edit: Also by chance did the grand prix guy want to check every single edit on his list one-by-one via skype? PM me that I'm really curious because I finally told him that is hourly support the norm is completing an entire checklist then having the client confirm the changes... going one-by-one makes the checklist turn into and redundant time munching "be-in-the-way".

Ironically, i think we're all talking about different people as it turns out. However, I'm working with the grand prix guy who has the big checklist but it's certainly far more than $50. I"m fine with it as I can work on it in my downtime. I'm just as tedious with my own hand-made html tidy.

Ahh so this is the man that decided to photoshop a private message between myself and him then place on his blog - I feel for you bud he's a class act for sure because anyone willing to photoshop a private message will justify his means to any end :(.

You all be careful out there, I don't just mean those looking to have work done but those doing the work as well ;).

Yes. This creep has my drivers license, SSN and DOB online. People have been applying for credit in my name.

Sorry to hear that @DivisionByZero, you have my sympathy, I have been through that mess.

how did you solve it? and keep in mind, this isn't your average warpo doing this... this one is a VERY sick pup.

I'd imagine the legal approach you're taking now (you mentioned lawyer fees) is the correct course of action... I'm not sure but I would suspect if by him having that posted it should violate your rights in some manner IF it's causing harm to you i.e. others filing for credit and such using your details however I'm not a lawyer so it's best to inquire with one directly.

what really pissed me off, for years, was that vbulletin.org did nothing to stop this creep, and finally banned him ONLY when one of the higher-ups became the target of his rants.

Well that's just it, we can't take sides... I mean considering the amount of stuff he has about you on his blog... some would say "that's enough to warrant banning DBZ" but honestly who is lying here? Who did who wrong? We can listen to both sides but we're not taking action against either until they violate the site rules, we are not law enforcement or lawyers for that matter we are simply admins and mods on vbulletin.org trying to remain 100% unbiased.

I never took action against him either for that photoshopped image, truth be told he violated the site rules and that is why he was banned - I could care less if he posts a photoshopped image of a private message between myself and him because it's a lie and anyone who takes an entire blog at face value that is out to ruin one man seemingly needs to re-evaluate how they judge books by their covers in certain venues.

Edit: Dang we have while on a similar subject as Setishock derailed his thread pretty much, Seti smack us silly if ya need to when you see this ;).

well, it goes along the lines of human behavior either way.

Ohhhhh, that guy. Yeah, he seems a little unhinged. Dangerous even.

setishock's guy sort of sounds like an automated reply.

We are not here to take sides in peoples personal fights against each other. If they did not break site rules then no action would be taken.

If we were to take action based purely on what people say about each other, you would have been kicked off here a very long time ago. ;)

I'm suddenly feeling nostalgic. i'm having flashbacks of the word "Jelsoft" and when vbulletin was something.

I was messaged by I believe the same person. They were constantly saying they wanted the work done asap, but as a lot of us are, we're busy. I haven't heard anything since, so I guess they found someone.

FYI, I see a post was posted and deleted, but no one is allowed to reply in the "Request for Paid Services" forum- try it, you can't reply to any thread. Only the thread starter has permission to reply to their own threads- and they can only leave a small follow-up on who did the work- nothing extremely long or detailed, either way.

That is why threads look abandoned- if you posted a job waiting for a reply, it's never coming.

The sticky threads explain all contact between the customer and coder needs to be done by PM or some other means (email/Skype, etc...) not in the thread.

Perhaps someone can rewrite those stickies. They're as old as dirt.

I deleted my post. Wasn't trying to hide, rather thought that my knowledge of the details of everything is too little to say much.

What I did write and still agree with is that when you run a forum it is different than free speech in public. If I set the rules of a forum then I am establishing an environment. I make the environment and the rules that allow whatever is happening on my forum to happen, good or bad, and not moderating/not intervening is a conscience choice at a certain level. It's not the same as posting the content myself, but it isn't the same as being 100% detached from it either.

Anyway, I understand now about the lack of replies. Thank you for reminding me. :) Not trying to be cheeky at all and definitely understand that moderating can be difficult.

Back on topic... I hope all you coders don't have any more run ins with clients set on dishing out misery. This site is really helpful for learning how to build mods one's self :)

It's not so much that as certain mindsets do not always get along so well, we should not try to determine who was at fault but rather part ways cordially.

I have been following this thread with much interest as I am the one whom has sent out those emails looking for someone to do some work. Even though the email sounded generic enough for some to think it was a robot, hacker or machine, I’m still very much alive, flesh and blood.

Your normal procedure of putting up an advertisement for others to contact me hasn’t yielded enough results, (only a small handful have inquired within’) and their results were very, very poor. Infact which is why I had to take the initiative on my own to reach out to people and make my own contacts.

And I might add which was actually appreciated by many whom responded back with words like; “thanks for thinking of me, thanks for reaching out, thanks for the email, etc., etc” so my email wasn’t frowned upon by many, but very much accepted instead.

The first guy that I started working with was on a charging per hour basis and although the 1st half of Day 1 went well, the rest of the afternoon was stretched out with time for little, quick cosmetic tasks to be done.

The 2nd day was even more exemplified of a time-milking process to accumulate as many hours as possible to produce what was again simple cosmetic changes which should have taken no time at all.

The developers response was, “sometimes we’re going to have days like this” and yes, sure I can understand that, but not for the first 2 days in row of starting a working relationship on what should have been simple cosmetic changes. I stopped working with him after 2 days.

The next guy answering my ad was a scammer which I paid him up front a 40% lump sum for an agreed upon price for a multi-page checklist of tasks that needed to be done. That person got to finishing about 15% of that checklist and decided to disappear on me and not respond anymore. Not a very noble move I should say.

Meanwhile through his timeline he tried to get me to send him even more money saying that PayPal has taken my payment back from him and kicked him off of their service. But it was a lie and he was trying to fool me into sending him a double-payment when we were still at only 15% work of his services rendered.

The 3rd guy which I had high hopes for but he turned into another disaster with a poor work ethic. He said he was fast at changes and I kept hearing him say, “I’m lighting in a bottle” “I’m lighting in a bottle” but it was more like “trying to get ketchup out of a new bottle” nothing would come out! And “I’m on it, I’m on it” just wasn’t true as I would check up on the site changes and never seen anything done. Changes were few and far in between.

His ‘M-O’ was excuse after excuse of family errands instead of doing any work at all, so when I hear this same ‘cry-wolf’ scenario again and again, anyone smart enough just doesn’t believe it after the 2nd time.

Infact he did more harm then good to my site as he left the cosmetics in worse shape than when I gave it to him in the first place. By merging two XML style files together which I didn’t want made a total mess.

But I was smart enough to backup everything every night and luckily had the last clean XML style file before this happened. I already knew this was going to work out after Day 3 of no-work happening so I was already migrating to the next person whom I found.

So there you go, a 1-2-3 strikeout of testing out the little amount of programmers that answered my advert, and some of those were ones from this thread. But your regular advertisement approach just wasn’t going to cut it. There was very little response and I had to take a more proactive aggressive approach at finding someone suitable by sending out some emails.

So setishock…I didn’t “single” you out as you said, I just “filtered” you out, and there was no need for you to be so mad over nothing. I’m just looking for the right guy to work with. I’ve said to any developer that I’ve talked to, “I’m not looking to squeeze free work out of you, I’m not looking to screw anyone over by lack of payment. I’m willing to pay someone for their services no problem. I just need someone whom is good, reliable and dependable to do some work on a daily-basis to help me finish up this site, that is all.”

I don't mean to single you out because I see this a lot- but it is rare to see it in a forum in which I can reply. Frankly when I do see this in a paid request I immediately close out of the request and move on to the next one. I wonder if others don't do the same and contibute to why you got so few offers.

How are you so sure it is simple and quick? Surely if you knew how to do it and it was that quick you'd do it yourself?