duped in service requests by eXtremeTim

[acerulezz]

Its starting to look rather a hopeless situation so i am posting here for advice. (And maybe for the guy to return my cash in the process)

Now its a long story which i am condensing to as few a words as possible without damaging the essence. I had posted in the service request forum about 5 months back to ask for a script to be developed. link here. 2 people had responded to that and among them was eXtremeTim (Tim Yarbrough). He had quoted me 650$ for the whole deal which i had though was fair for the scale of hack. He asked for 50% advance as he said he wanted to test if i was serious about the project. Since its normally mentioned here that for larger projects coders do ask for some advance, i had paid him 300$ in advance. He was an "advanced coder" here and i had no reason to suspect him. He had initially asked for 10 days. After some 20 days when i didn't hear from him and regular unanswered emails, i filed a report with paypal. He came along the next day to say he was having some personal problems and wanted an extension(his friend had expired and his house broken into and something like that). Anyway he asked for some 7 days more which i gave. Well again he vanished and some 1 month later after many pm's, emails from me he came back to tell that he hadn't coded anything. I was pretty much cool about that. Someone can get busy and i just told him to return my 300$ back so that i can move on.
This was more than 3 months back. From that day on, this guy has given me every excuse that one can possibly think of. From his bank being sealed, to FBI raid, to unreliable clients which had engaged him and didn't pay, to not having anything to pay. Initially i went along with what he told me(well i gave him as much a leeway as anyone can give) and kept on giving more time. He kept on asking for 3 days to 7 days more and "tomorrow i will get money from client to day after". For 2 months he has been doing like this.
Here is a sample conversation.

9/11/2006  11:04:29 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  i tht you were paying me this time 
9/11/2006  11:04:33 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  not working on it 
9/11/2006  11:04:50 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  I am trying to get you paid tonight. 
9/11/2006  11:05:02 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  becuase I want to end this tonight 
9/11/2006  11:05:08 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  very good 
9/11/2006  11:05:15 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  so i wait... 
9/11/2006  11:05:38 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  i knew three hours was never gonna work 
9/11/2006  11:05:43 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  my one client and is around and he is revewing the project and I have some things to fix on it before I can get paid 
9/11/2006  11:05:46 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  lets hope 6 hours would 
9/11/2006  11:06:00 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  and im not sure how long these changes / fixes are going to take 
9/11/2006  11:06:17 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  ehh.. i hope not 3 days 
9/11/2006  11:06:19 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  plus I have another meeting early in the mornign with another reliable client to contract out a uploader script

and if i wait for him here is what he comes up with

9/11/2006  11:10:35 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  lets hope so... anyway so i will wait for 1 hr 
9/11/2006  11:10:43 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  in case you decide to pay just now 
9/11/2006  11:10:56 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  although i have a feeling thats quite unlikely..no? 
9/11/2006  11:11:43 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  right now its not looking to promising becuase of a security whole in the core of the script 
9/11/2006  11:12:16 AM  Ace  Tim Yarbrough  lol.... ok dood we will see tomorrow then 
9/11/2006  11:12:19 AM  Tim Yarbrough  Ace  and lying and telling you it does look really good right now would be pointless and would be the same thing I did for a while there when i was trying to stall for some time

This was the most recent conversation of ours. We have had almost ditto conversations almost every week over for 3 months.

Unfortunately after the above he has decided not to bother about them and has stopped responding to the emails or pm's. Meanwhile he has found time to open one more site based on vbulletin(most probably from my money), release hacks here and post around on his site. But hasn't found the time to return my 300$.

I wanted to give this guy as much time as i possibly can. 5 months is long enough time for anyone to return the money but it hasn't happened. Instead i have even stopped hearing from him. I had asked marco before posting and i would like to clarify that i am not holding vb.org responsible for anything, although i wish we had itrader here.

[Ntfu2]

A sad situtation indeed. Thanks for informing us of not to do business with him. Hopefully people start to search before hiring people and this thread comes up. And be sure to post it on other forums where his hacks are released and the such.

[Shazz]

This has happend to me 3 times on this board...
And Im still waiting..

[Oblivion Knight]

I've known (of) Tim for a while, I can't imagine him being the type of chap to rip someone off..

*shrugs*

I hope everything turns out for you, it's an unfortunate situation.

[SCRIPT3R]

i can't believe you waited soo long before you filed a charge-back w/paypal. do it now, no more excuses. get your money back or kiss it good-bye.

[Davidhi]

yet another thread on bad service requests, sad situation I think thats the final nail in the coffin so to speak as I wont be hiring of this board until something is done.:cross-eyed:

[acerulezz]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

i can't believe you waited soo long before you filed a charge-back w/paypal. do it now, no more excuses. get your money back or kiss it good-bye.

i have actually filed a chargeback with paypal when i posted this. About why i waited this long. Well i already mentioned that i had no reason to suspect him; he being a senior member(coder) here. He told me he had some personal problems due to which he left infernotechnologies also(i had mailed zerotolerance asking him to confirm this and he did) and all and that i would get my refund very soon. Yes maybe i did wait for a bit too long and i regret that.

[MPDev]

There is no excuse for taking money, spending it and not delivering. I hope you get you rmoney back promptly. It's a shame there isn't a system here to identify these kinds of fraudulant transactions and their sources.

[Adrian Schneider]

Every story has 2 sides... Not that it's my business, but I'd like to hear both sides before I pass any judgement. I know I've made some mistakes in the past where I would take on more work than I can handle, or for whatever other legimiate reason I am unable to finish something. A good rule of thumb is not to spend the money until the job is completed - then there is no risk. Just don't be so hasty to jump to the "scam" or "rip-off" conclusion. It isn't always the case.

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience. Hopefully this can be cleared up soon.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Davidhi

yet another thread on bad service requests, sad situation I think thats the final nail in the coffin so to speak as I wont be hiring of this board until something is done.:cross-eyed:

No system is perfect, you are just as likely to get a bad experience going elsewhere.

What you also have to remember is that only bad experiences get posted about, it's not human nature for all the people who have happily had work done from service requests to start a thread saying "xxxxx has not ripped me off" - or words to that effect. I would hazard a guess that hundreds of jobs/requests (if not more) are happily completed every year via requests or contact made here.