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Originally Posted by WDF
This is why you never prepay for anything*. and never, ever prepay with PayPal.
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*Unless it's someone you know well and/or have had past very positive business dealings with.
I'd like to point out that the risk doesn't only roll one way. Plenty of sellers, service providers - designers, writers, etc, have done work for someone who 'hired' them and then once the work was done the person flaked and kept the work.
As a writer, and in the past as a web developer, designer, even a content provider at one time for 5 years, I've been prepaid for stuff plenty of times, never a problem. But I won't go spending hours or in some cases dozens of hours (or even hundreds) on a project for someone I know little about without getting at least something up front, so your hard-and-fast rule of "never prepay for anything" goes out the window.
Just be smart about whom you hire. Vet them. Get them on the phone beforehand, get a read on them, a sense of how solid they are. I realize it's no guarantee but based on this I've had some luck over the years with avoiding the kinds of clusterfucks that a lot of people have come on here complaining about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WDF
Use your CC to fund PayPal when needed and charge-back through the CC issuer and forget the Paypal account.
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Very sensible advice, that.
I've been doing it that way for many years now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WDF
Sorry to hear of your misfortune, be sure to post about it everywhere you can so it shows on all search engines first page when searching his info.
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Indeed. It can actually only take one good keyword-rich forum post to hurt a company. I know this first-hand, as back in 1999 a company screwed me over, costing me lawyer's fees and plenty of headaches, even an undeserved black mark on my credit rating. It only took about six years for them to realize my ONE post on a mainstream forum was causing them to lose business. After the typical sabre-rattling of threatening to sue me they coughed up $2k to make things right with me, and I removed the post. (it's not libel if your comments are TRUE, which mine were)
Quote:
Originally Posted by WDF
Hit me up if you want to make the sellers life miserable. I just need some basic info and to iron out some details.
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I'd be interested to hear what this Brandon's side of the issue would be, but when someone flakes on a deal as bad as this one appears to have done he deserves whatever comes.
As an aside; I constantly find these types of threads amazing. To be in business, and basically trash your good name and entire business just to rip someone off for a lousy few hundred, or a few grand (any amount really)... that level of short-sightedness truly boggles the mind. The ongoing income a person or company who maintains their credibility far out-earns any one scam, yet the ones who pull this crap don't seem smart enough to figure this out.