screwed over again by a vbulletin.org member?
 

once again, for the second time in as many tries i have deposited money in a paypal account for a "hacker" on this website that said he would do work. of course, now he doesn't respond to emails. it would be nice if you would set up something on this website for feedback for members or a place where "known" hackers can do work for vbulletin customers. we are vbulletin customers and you are allowing "hackers" to screw around with your customers. any suggestions?

We cannot stop you from depositing money into another person's Paypal account. There is no way we can supervise what you do with your money. You have to be careful with paying someone over the internet without doing checks and things. Remember, you can always reverse the charge via Paypal's chargeback, if it's fraud.

It's best to do business with members who are established, well-known, with a known portfolio, and a site. I would get them to fax you a signed contract as well with phone, address etc. details, and I would speak to them in person FIRST, before paying them money.

It is important to be cautious with your money.

How a lot of "online" transactions work is that they complete the work, give you a demo (screen shots etc) and then you pay, and the code is sent.

If you need a hacker possibly someone more trustworthy can help (like me ;)) but you may wish to protect yourself just as much as the coder wants to protect themselves.

There are two sides unfortunatly, either the buyer gets ripped off or the seller does, so by providing, say a 25% downpayment with the rest on completion works quite well :)

Yea, Gavin is spot on.

Ive been screwed many times before, I do not have a pay-pal acount so when I do paid work I have to request a money order be mailed to me.

For now, im only doing work for people I can trust. That might change once I finnaly get a pay-pal acount tho.

roester, I really hate to hear about this. I asure you that most of us around here are trustworthy people, willing to help at all times. But there is always a bad apple or two hanging around any community. In the future do as Erwin said, check out the backround of the 'hacker' before you pay anything.

I think it's good to post the name so he cannot screw other people again!

I agree with Lesane, let it be known!

*edited* I've changed my post. Apparently the guy I referred to contacted me today. Wheee!

But I agree with AnimeLoo and Lesane, the name should be public so that other vBulletin.org members won't use the same person.

:glasses:

I totally disagree with publishing the names. That would just invite abuse.

It's too easy for one person (and maybe a few of his/her buddies) to blast the reputation of someone for less-than-honourable reasons. Then we'd hear opinions back and forth from both sides.... and (even worse) from uninvolved bystanders here who have no first-hand knowledge about that particular case.

Such business is a private matter between individuals and to allow everyone to air accusations nobody can prove or verify in an open forum is asking for trouble. This is and will always amount to nothing more than one person's word against another.

I certainly would not like to see these personal fights erupt here.

Cheers all,

Talis.

Preventing other people from falling into this trap will give you a better feeling about the situation. :)

*EDIT* Talisman - I do see your point, but I don't think the fight would erupt here. If the person who supposedly did this came to vBulletin.org I don't think they'd fight, because this person has not responded to this persons e-mails or various tries to contact. So, if the person who took the money came here, would either be wanting to give the money back because he/she could not do it or finally respond to the attempts on contact. Not saying things like "Ahahaha I'm not giving your money back" I think that would be shut down quite quickly by a mod or admin. ;)

Hope that made sense...

Sure, Tony..... in that situation, it wouldn't be a problem and the dishonest person would be drummed out.

But that's not how it goes most of the time. There really are two equally-valid-sounding sides to a story. One person complains that the guy he hired didn't do the work...... then that person complains that the guy who hired him wanted 320 hours worth of work for 4 hours worth of pay. Or he didn't know enough about the technical side of the job in the first place to explain what he wanted up front, etc...

Or the reason the deal falls apart is because one person gets mad at the other for who-know-what reason. There's no way we can know who's being fair/unfair or who's being honest vs. who's lying to protect their reputation with everyone here.

Just because a reputable person does great work for a dozen other vb.org-ers doesn't mean they might not get ticked off at the next person who hires them (for a "good reason") and blow them off. Or they know they have a good reputation established, so they can afford to let a few people down if they get too busy or they don't feel like finishing what they started...... or they get started on a job only to discover they don't know how to do it.

So when well-meaning friends speak up to defend their accused friend..... that public support is nice, but it's not valid, verifiable, etc.

(PS ~ roester ...... please understand that, by this comment, I don't mean to suggest that you're the problem in the case you're dealing with. Don't want you or anyone else to think I'm siding with the person who didn't do the work you paid for.)

I'll keep this open and i don't mind discussion as to solutions to problems such as this but i ask you not to publish any names or this thread will have to be closed :)

____

On topic: Whenever i do custom work regarding big projects which include coding, design and implementation i always take a 25% deposit off the client which no-one to this date has had a problem with. It's for security reasons on our end. Now as far as your situation with having people make custom hacks for you or whatever custom coding you are having done. It is always best to pay after seeing a working demo and screenshots then pay and recieve your product. If you paid in advance then you take that risk. Also as Erwin said if you want to back yourself from any legal fraud or such take all of the person's contact details from full name to address to cellphone. Sign a contract etc. Then you are in your legal rights to start prosecution against this person :)

- miSt

i appreciate all your opinions and am glad to get some feedback. i emailed back and forth with this guy about three times with all the information he requested in order to back up my board. we aren't talking about doing a bunch of work. he asked for a deposit, so i made it in his paypal account. then, i don't hear from him for three days which included about four emails asking what was up and if he couldn't do it that it wasn't a big deal and just return the money and i'll find someone else. while some of you may say three days isn't enough -- in my book it is plenty. i'm sure all of you check your email daily, if not by the hour, and this guy being a vb "hacker" i'm sure is the same. now emergencies can happen, but i am betting he still checks his email even if someone died. all he needed to do was say i can't do it right now and here is your dough back. it would just be nice to have a forum on this board that was given to respectable people to do hacks so when people like me come here for help i can do it with confidence. it is just really uncool for people to pull this crap and leave me hanging day after day. if i don't here back from him this week i will certainly post everything about him so y'all can warn the next guy. i hate to do it, but it would be nice to see this kind of stuff prevented. so anyhow, i am looking for someone to do a backup of a board and install a new board on a different ip.

do what i do..pay them once the jobs complete and you have it on ya harddrive! :smoke:

Why?

For the reason that it could ruin the reputation of this person yet it might turn out there is a sensible explination for this person absence. Let me give you an example. In the UK we have a TV show called 'Stars in Your Eyes' which had a lively old man called Matthew Kelly as its host for about 2 decades. He apparently got caught with child pornography and he was slated in the press and got such a bad reputation over here. 3 weeks later he was cleared of all charges placed on him and the police publicly apologised. You'd think that's enough to clear this bad reputation he picked up. Well no he's no longer allowed to host the show and now he's got no work at all. That's how it works....

Hence if you name this person whether guilty or innocent it will leave them with a bad reputation.

Good luck roester :)!

- miSt

hey mod,

don't you think you are going a little overboard with your comparison? by posting the name it simply lets everyone know that this person should not be allowed to do work on this vb. they will likely change their info anyhow and come back under a different name, but are you seriously going to back someone that STILL hasn't answered my emails and took my money? i know you don't know me, but let's first assume i am telling the truth and all i was trying to do was get my board backed up. i understand its my own fault for not going through the motions for such a simply board backup AND THAT IS WHY I THINK THE BOARD SHOULD PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER FOR CUSTOMERS LIKE MYSELF. if i had a legitimate place to go for hacks, backups, upgrades, etc. it wouldn't be an issue at all. i have a solution for you. why don't i pass on the person's info to you first and you see if you get a reply, then when you see for yourself you allow the name and email address to be posted.

@mist:
Sure, there are 2 sides. But don't you think that a vbhacker will reply(on this thread, email etc) if he has his valid reasons? I think it's clearly enough when he don't reply!

I propose a sticky thread in the service request forum that would list "recomended" hackers and what work they are instreted in doing.

I know it would take some time to put togther and keep updated, but I do think it would keep things like this from happing.

Well it sounds like it is sorted out now, so there's probably no need to name names IMO :) If someone does get ripped off though, I'm all for hearing who ;)

i'm not exactly sure what is sorted out. i haven't heard back from the person and they kept the deposit. i would like to see though some sort of forum that has hacker experiences, or something of that sort. like some sort of place for feedback. for those of you that do do honest and good work i can only see this increasing your business. just a suggestion.

I would think that this forum would WANT scammers to be known so, they do not get away with this in the future. If they are protected by not allowing the scammed person to name them and let everyone else on this board know who they are, what exactly is stopping them from doing this to everyone?

I would also think that most people on this board are sensible and if there is a story to be told, the accused scammer could tell his side and let us determine for ourselves who we would believe.

By not knowing who this person is, it basically gives him a free pass to do it to anyone.

Just my .02

I agree those who scam should be known.

To many can take advantage and it is good if people know who may be "questionable"

This goes for buyers and sellers.

This turned out to be an interesting discussion. You know, if you guys really want to post public complaints about people when one person (allegedly) rips off another person here ...... then the only truly fair way to do this would be to set up an open forum where every step of every transaction is made public...... and I mean EVERY STEP.

You'd have to have a section where the new folks can post their requests for help..... along with all details about the job, what they're willing to pay, the time-frame they think is reasonable, and so on. Then, the experts who want to bid on these jobs would also publicly post their terms, pricing, availability, experience, references, and whatever else is required.

Then the selection process and all the details agreed upon by those involved would be clearly documented here for everyone to see. All communication between the two would also have to be posted here..... and the edit and delete function should be disabled, so no one can revise what they said.

THEN...... when some deal goes sour in one of these cases, we can all see who's right and who's wrong. (Though I'm willing to bet we'll still all disagree over who's being more fair or less fair than the other.) But at least this way we would have some objective basis for debating the matter..... since that seems to be so important to so many people.

One drawback I can see is this would add a lot to the workload for our moderating staff..... and I'm not so sure they really want to take on such a role. (Personally, I think they have more important things they could be doing.... and this could degrade into a messy situation where the staff ends up babysitting people who should take care of their own business.) But it could still be done and maybe they'd want expand the site and features to allow it.

Personally, I still don't think we (collectively) need to do this here. I don't believe these things belong here and it really goes against the whole purpose for having this site. In my view, this forum is here to promote an open exchange of technical advice/expertise between fellow users who are willing to share what they know. And the moment you start transacting business between users here, it goes against the purpose of having these forums.

But I don't like seeing hacks being sold to others, here, either. So this is the view I take.

Interesting topic - I will discuss this issue with the rest of staff etc. regarding releasing the person's name.

Recomended services as well as people offering their services on vB.org, that would work good. :)

I definently agree with you, after reading the rest of this thread I think we are missing out on several key parts into why this person did not do this work. No way it could be this straight-forward. Must have been other complications, at least. But not that it should be my business. Like you said, it's a private matter between them but possibly it's a bigger matter if people fall in this supposed trap with this vBhacker.

I ended up doing this job for roester and I am betting the other guy seen the host (shell hosting) and did not know what to do.

So the person simply just ran out on the job.

This should go to show those who wish to do vb work for others should ask all the info. So they know if they are able to do what is needed.

Myself I had never seen shell hosting before but I got it all fixed up with in the day so roester site was up.

All I can say is, be darn sure that you're being 100% fair, roester. Otherwise I think this falls under the category of "defamation of character".

This thread is relevant: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...threadid=55180

Hehe, gotcha :p

Hey, no fair, Nibbler. I got a non-permission screen, but it shows me logged in.

What a fink! ;)

I definatly agree that we should have an area with reputable names here, and what duties they are willing to perform etc.

While many people like to pretend some things don't occur, I have first hand knowledge that several people in the business of hacking and/or designing can disappear for quite lengthy amounts of time, with flimsy or NO excuses whatsoever.. I have many logs and e-mails with such people going through personal problems that take on jobs when they have no business doing so. What a novel I could write. :)

So I think we need some reputable lists of people that are well known for getting the jobs done, in reasonable amounts of time etc.

-Jason

No one can "screw you" with paypal. Just charge back the amount. When they get a few of those Paypal will close their account for good.

Okay, the staff here have decided that we can allow the posting of names of "hackers" or other service providers who you feel have done a suboptimal job. Please restrict yourself to the facts, and facts only. Any name-calling, slander, or spread of false rumors will be removed.

When vB3 arrives here with its reputation system, it is hoped that a feedback system will exist for this very purpose.

Ok, getting my very long list ready to post.... :)

/me nods violently.

Please don't just post random names - an explanation would be necessary, and an opportunity must be given to the other party to answer the accusations so that it is not one-sided or bias. An email to the other party would be the fair thing to do to inform them of the publication of their name or business.

the person that claims they will do work for someone and then doesn't respond back after they get a deposit is "dogbomb" and i see he is still posting on your website.

this person has a customer number and customer password for a board i purchased, so i don't know if that's all that they were after the whole time or not.

In the future if you are going to go with someone from here, as Erwin or another has suggested go with someone who has a well developed portfolio, and references. Also look for someone who is well-established at the site you look for services, not a 'Tyro hacker' with less than 40 posts, but maybe a Master Hacker or etc (this is for vBulletin.org). On other sites look for someone who is a veteran, who is known by others, whom others can backup his reputation.

I agree with Keptic, always 'check-up' on the member who wishes to help you.

*sigh* I just saw this thread too.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...threadid=55329