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02-21-2008
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Greentech12
First of all, if anyone has a scriptlance account, please use it. I will show you why here shortly:
I was perusing through our logs today and viewed a site with excessive linking and clicks to GlowHost.com. We always like to see that!  With our new Green Initiative, I was sitting there scratching my head, wondering who "Green12" was and how they were somehow involved with our Green Hosting program. I took the link found in our logs and put it in my browser. Untitled Document Hmmm. Red Flag number one: greentech12@gmail.com (Two actually if you think about the "Untitled Document" thing, anyways...) A free email address. Why do they not have an email address @theirdomain.com? Okay let me look some more... Let's shorten the URL to just plain ole greentech12.com then see what the site says... Me thinks, hmmmm, must be some sort of "design firm" from overseas with a cheap template and bad language file. (scratching head still, uses the back button) I am again looking at the proposal page. I finally read past the first paragraph and see that GlowHost.com, Inc, is listed in their "Portfolio" This makes me laugh!  Apparently some clowns at greentech12.com dreamed up that they built our website...and now they want to put it in their portfolio. I can safely tell you that greentech12 had nothing to do with GlowHost.com. If I were a betting man, (which I am) I would say all of the other sites that they list on their portfolio are also bogus. It is a real downer when someone decides that they like your design so much, that they will claim it for themselves. I suppose it is a compliment right? The ultimate compliment is imitation? The cliche goes something like that. It just proves we are always imitated, but never replicated. (See, I messed that one up too!) Lesson One folks: Don't buy anything from a "Company" offering services from a free email address. What is a free email address? @yahoo.com @gmail.com @hotmail.com These are places where anyone on the planet can get their very own email address. The difference is, people with @my-real-company.com actually had to purchase that email address. What that means is, at the very basic level, my-real-company.com had to pay someone real money to get their email address, and if they did that, they probably have a website that can be found by googling it. The point here folks, (especially you noobs) is do not buy anything from people that use free email addresses. Domains and web hosting are cheap compared to phone service, cable TV, and you water or electric bill. You can get both for under $5.00 per month. If someone is asking you to send them hundreds or thousands of dollars, but cannot afford a $5.00/mo website and domain, you should be concerned. Very concerned actually. They are posted on scriptlance as legitimate developers. If you happen to have a scriptlance account, please debunk their perfect reputation and reference this thread. They obviously have found a way to defraud the scriptlance rating systems. Here are the sites that these chuckleheads claim they made all by themselves: Matrimonial Sites: http://matrisearch.com/ http://www.imilap.com http://www.muslimintro.com/ http://www.salaamlove.com/ http://www.indianmatrimonialhub.com/ http://www.matrimonial.org/ www.1matrimonial.com Web Hosting Sites: http://glowhost.com/ http://www.freewebspace.net/ http://www.startlogic.com http://www.bizhostnet.com/ http://www.kenyaweb.com/ http://www.stormloader.com/ http://www.webhosting.info http://www.pandela.com/ http://reiprosites.com/ http://www.melbourneit.com.au/ Celebrity/Gossip : http://x17online.com/i http://www.recentgossip.com/ http://www.newswealth.com/ http://celebrity.rightpundits.com/ http://www.orange.co.uk/ http://www.bollywood-stars.net/ http://www.bollyvista.com http://www.celeblisted.com/ Article Directory Websites: http://www.besthopes.com/ http://www.articlesrevenue.com/ http://www.directorycritic.com/ http://www.prolinkdirectory.com/ http://www.articleaffair.com/ http://www.selfgrowth.com/ http://www.9searches.org/ http://www.articlecache.com/ Auctions Websites: http://www.rmauctions.com/ http://www.shopnsee.com http://www.shopgoodwill.com/ http://www.123sold.com/ http://www.oztion.com.au/ http://www.propertyroom.com/ http://www.dubaibid.com/ http://www.dubai-net.com/
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::::: 01001100 00110011 00110011 00110111 Last edited by Matt; 02-25-2008 at 09:42 PM.     
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09-09-2008
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Hi Matt,
You have just saved me. I use Scriptlance and was about to hire greentech12 ($1000 in escrow and handover of some trade secrets in application spec). Last minute, I put greentech12 into Google and discovered your warning. I then looked through the other results. Turns out, they appear on a lot of sites like Scriptlance and their customer feedback is the same on different sites. That's conclusive proof that they are dodgy. I have banned them from contacting me on Scriptlance and cited your post. I owe you one. Richard
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09-09-2008
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Wow - that is great news Richard
Congrats to you for doing your homework. I guess if you owe me one (thousand!!), you can order hosting from us someday, hehe. Cheers! 
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09-10-2008
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wow good find matt - so they are basically scam artists, not good, people like this really annoy me.
i use getafreelancer.com to get my stuff done, golden rules are ALWAYS read the feedback, if anything dodgy do not use them, also NEVER use someone who doesnt have heaps of feedback - again always dodgy. Use well know people that have good feedback etc and you should be ok. OH and lastly dont pay 100% up front, and when requesting someone to do a job for you make sure you specify UNLIMITED revisions.
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09-10-2008
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Yeah well if you look at green12's ratings they are all 10 star ratings. You have to remember the vast majority of rating systems on the web are seriously flawed and its not uncommon for a company to pump their own ratings. Feedback isn't always a good method to judge a service unless the people providing that feedback leave contact details like a domain or email address so that the claims can be legitimized.
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09-14-2008
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Defensive measures
Couple of other tricks:
1. Invite bidding for a small piece of work that, if it goes tits up, does not matter much. This way you get to trial programmers for their diligence, rates, technical ability and communication skills without risking much. Then, if you like them, invite them to work on your higher risk project. 2. When programmers send their bids or write on the message board, write back to them. I had selected a bid and then wrote to all the other guys I did not choose to thank them for their bid and apologize that I would not be using them this time. Two of them wrote nice and civil messages back. This tells me that they are probably genuine - a con would not bother.
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