Odesk.com I used Odesk's services in late September to hire a remote contractor in Pakistan. The contractor cloned my site. I made an upfront payment of $1500. Now contractor has my money and won't refund after Menlo Park, California
I hired a remote contractor in Pakistan through Odesk.com to design a custom ticket website for me. The total price of this effort was around $2700 -w- a 50% upfront payment. The contractor had worked on a previous project for me that was extremely simple and did a pretty good job on it so I had no problem using his/her services again. Well the contractor gave me a really good sales pitch on how my website will be customized and unique. I decided to hire him/her again for this project. Well after about a week or so into the project the contractor showed me how the site looked and it was an exact clone of another partner website except for the logo! (please see my site TixStation.com and compare to Ticketnest.com) I did not approve this at all so I ended the contract. I am trying to get my money back through Odesk.com but it is not possible through their upfront payment system. It's a total fluke! I look at Elance and they all have escrow systems in place yet Odesk refuses to implement this system and shift all liability to a contractor on the other side of the world. Odesk does a good job of communicating and they might have good hourly rate processes in place but their upfront, fixed rate process is extremely flawed and now I have been paying the price. I have been working through the BBB to get my money back and it consists of going back and forth. I have chat transcripts that show this contractor was an expert cloner. I feel that I am being taken advantage of. We tried to continue the contract but I do NOT trust this contractor now. What am I suppose to do now? I want to go after Odesk.com because I know I am not the only customer this has been an issue with. Please contact me at(((REDACTED))) if you want to join the effort to go after Odesk.com and their flawed payment system.