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ChrisChris

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Hey everyone

About 5 months ago I put up a job on a freelancer site. I got quite a few bids and I selected one for quite a bit of money and a time limit of just over 2 weeks.

The programmer spent about a week designing the site (he designed, I told him what to change and that happened a few times).

Anyway a week later the programming wasnt done and his time limit had expired. I didnt complain or anything I just thought oh well itll be a few more days. Anyway a few more days turned into a few more weeks then into a few more months.

Along the way he refused to do some parts of the site that were agreed but I thought oh well doesnt matter its only small I just want this thing done. On a few occassions during the early parts of the project he even quit but I just told him not to quit because I just wanted this thing done.

After 4 months I couldnt take it any more.. I was losing money on hosting that I already purchased, money I could be making from my site and my domain. I sent him a sort of email contract saying if he wasnt done in 3 days he had to release the money and that if he didnt reply to the email in 24 hours same thing would happen.

About 35 hours later he replied saying we have completed the project cancel the escrow payment. So I went and had a look at the site where he had the updates and they were gone. He wasnt actually finished the site and he expected me to release the money to him.

After about a week of unsuccessful negotiaitons with him I filed a complaint with the escrow site. Well it turns out the escrow site has a policy in their TOS whereby they cant interfere when theres a dispute and that they can only cancel the escrow payments when someone has stopped communicating with the other party.

The programmer had stop communicating with me so I told them that. They said send him and email with a CC to them asking him to release the money and if he doesnt they will release the funds to me. Well that what I did and he obviously saw the CC and for that reason replied to the email saying he was finished (when he really wasnt)

I didnt think that was fair and probably a week later I said hes stopped communicating with me again (I managed a very short MSN conversation which led no where with him between then). They said do they same thing with an email and a CC. Same result

Another week or so later I still cant communicate with him so I sent them another email telling them. They replied saying they communicated with him and he said he was finished and that he sent them a link to the whole site or part of it (It was part of it since hes not finished) and that we would have to sort it out between ourselves.

Now I dunno what else to do :(

Any advice would be appreciated,
Chris
 
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ChrisChris said:
Well the freelancer I hired had pretty good feedback, although I now suspect some of its fake (same grammar/ spelling mistakes etc).

Was it both of those sites that have the negotiator & mediatior or just rentacoder.com; I never knew scriptlance.com had one and I've never heard of rentacoder.com

And for these basic rules, I've never heard of these (I did most of the communicating on messenger). Guess I should've done more research about freelancer sites instead of just on him before I started

Scriptlance has a feedback system, similar to eBay's. But remember even eBay's feedback can be fake. You'll have to know what you're looking at.
 
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jlnetwork said:
I would post his name public at the forum where the work started.

He'd come for his defence, prove him he's wrong.

Unfortunately theres no forum where I hired him from. Also, if I go around bad mouthing him too much (although he deserves it) he might go around doing the same for my website (which considering it is a rewards site shouldn't be too hard)
 
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I've had similar experiences with bad programmers. But I found that going through Rentacoder, sticking to an agreed timeframe and always communicating via their site reduces the frustration when things don't work out.

Would recommend you have a look at Rentacoder next time.
 
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keywords2 said:
I've had similar experiences with bad programmers. But I found that going through Rentacoder, sticking to an agreed timeframe and always communicating via their site reduces the frustration when things don't work out.

Would recommend you have a look at Rentacoder next time.

Thanks for the advice, but I think I've been scared away from freelancer sites for a good long while
 
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