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Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not sustainable. To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had

Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not sustainable. To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had a system to buy/sell on signals. But when it came down to it, it didn't trade profitably. He wouldn't believe the code worked, and I couldn't convince him his scheme was flawed because it worked when he did it manually - and I've watched his youtube videos of him trading live. Obviously his scheme on paper didn't capture his feel for trading visually. (And I know now it is very challenging to make it work at all). Went to arbitration and they decided I'd get 50% of the fee.

pmorici 9y ago
Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery. Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if he had paid the fee.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  Genuinely curious: why would you accept a job to do the impossible? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding and his refusal to pay was totally separate from the fact his whole idea was flawed?
  - edoceo 9y ago
    Refusal to pay is directly related to the lottery "system". Buyer was an idiot. One reason I never hire from freelancer sites. Every coder has been burned by some idiot and it affects my purchase ability.
    - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
      Where do you go to hire freelancers then?
      - edoceo 9y ago
        Local network, same advice others give. Don't need to pick one from 10k ransoms, pick 1 from 5 in extended network.
  - pmorici 9y ago
    I'm glossing over the details. The actual description of the software the guy wanted written was very straight forward. That said something like, Python program that imports the historical pick-4 results from the North Carolina Lottery and allowed the user to look-up the last date those numbers were picked regardless of order. The job had a fixed price of $10. This was a long time ago but I think my thought process was that doing the hourly rate jobs at $2.00 per hour would never be viable so I was trying to find fixed price jobs that were miss priced in the sense that I knew I could perhaps do them in 30 minutes but the purchaser assumed it would be several hours of work. This project fit the bill. The job description didn't actually explain that the guy wanted to use the software as part of his nutty system to game the lottery. That only came out later after the work was done.
    - nkrisc 9y ago
      That makes much more sense. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  The more they haggle the more unlikely it is for them to pay
- auggierose 9y ago
  $10 price?? Why did you even start the work?
- raarts 9y ago
  I dealt with a pair of founders that prided on having grown their company without needing funding. Turned out they deliberately forced every freelancer and supplier into arbitration. Complained about the quality and just withheld payments. It always ended up in settling, which meant that in the end they paid less. Of course they had to find new ones every time but hey, the market is huge. Ended up settling too.
  - notyourday 9y ago
    That's why I'm friends with lawyers. It is like using a nuclear weapon to kill mosquito -- mosquito dies.
rokhayakebe 9y ago
Next time just tell the person "No problem. Keep the money. I will publish the software for free online since you believe it does not work, let's see what others think."

pmorici 9y ago

Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery. Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if he had paid the fee.

nkrisc 9y ago
Genuinely curious: why would you accept a job to do the impossible? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding and his refusal to pay was totally separate from the fact his whole idea was flawed?
- edoceo 9y ago
  Refusal to pay is directly related to the lottery "system". Buyer was an idiot. One reason I never hire from freelancer sites. Every coder has been burned by some idiot and it affects my purchase ability.
  - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
    Where do you go to hire freelancers then?
    - edoceo 9y ago
      Local network, same advice others give. Don't need to pick one from 10k ransoms, pick 1 from 5 in extended network.
- pmorici 9y ago
  I'm glossing over the details. The actual description of the software the guy wanted written was very straight forward. That said something like, Python program that imports the historical pick-4 results from the North Carolina Lottery and allowed the user to look-up the last date those numbers were picked regardless of order. The job had a fixed price of $10. This was a long time ago but I think my thought process was that doing the hourly rate jobs at $2.00 per hour would never be viable so I was trying to find fixed price jobs that were miss priced in the sense that I knew I could perhaps do them in 30 minutes but the purchaser assumed it would be several hours of work. This project fit the bill. The job description didn't actually explain that the guy wanted to use the software as part of his nutty system to game the lottery. That only came out later after the work was done.
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    That makes much more sense. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.
raverbashing 9y ago
The more they haggle the more unlikely it is for them to pay
auggierose 9y ago
$10 price?? Why did you even start the work?
raarts 9y ago
I dealt with a pair of founders that prided on having grown their company without needing funding. Turned out they deliberately forced every freelancer and supplier into arbitration. Complained about the quality and just withheld payments. It always ended up in settling, which meant that in the end they paid less. Of course they had to find new ones every time but hey, the market is huge. Ended up settling too.
- notyourday 9y ago
  That's why I'm friends with lawyers. It is like using a nuclear weapon to kill mosquito -- mosquito dies.

rokhayakebe 9y ago

Next time just tell the person "No problem. Keep the money. I will publish the software for free online since you believe it does not work, let's see what others think."