Net Arb

This is horror that brings chill to my sleep. I had been ripped off by a contractor from Elance and are currently in Arbitration with these clowns of net-arb.

The guy who is the arbitrator is shady to say the least and for all the reason, is bias from the very beginning siding with Elance and the contractor to not refund my money. I am out $5000+ USD and no work was done. I am really scared, because these people are thieves and when I thought there was justice, this is so obvious.

I have wasted already 7 weeks with these money thieves, and so far the arbitration is so skewed that is ridiculous. Any suggestions since I'm in the middle of it?

Net ARB just sided in favor of my client, so not only do I have to refund them $5,000 for the project but they also were awarded the rights to the website and ownership of it as well. This is the most ridiculous joke of a process i have ever seen.

Took 3 months of ARB :( and they didn't even give a reason as to why they sided with the client.

I was scammed by the Elance - Net-Arb team. I hired a contractor to build an instant messenger module and laid out approximately 10 requirements very clearly in the initial documentation. It was quickly evident that the contract was not competent enough and too inexperienced to finish the project. After laboring through a month of excuses and extending the project an extra two weeks to allow him some time to finish, he still only had about 3 of the 10 requirements completed. Nearly ever feature expected from a generic instant messenging application was missing. A fact I brought up on multiple occasions to the contractor. I informed him of these shortcomings before I extended the project for him and thereafter. After two more weeks of little progress I had enough and kindly explained to him that I would pay him for the work he had done and offered him $800 out of the $1500 project which was very generous on my part.

He sent me to Elance's arbration/mediation and my only recourse was to use Net-Arb who they offer as the only arbitration firm you can use. I should have done my research ahead of time and might have known better. There are experiences similar to mine all over the internet. They have no physical address, very few employees, they do not use a "panel" of judges that they claim to have. They work extremely closely with Elance and are in direct collusion. In most cases they side on the side of the worker so that Elance does not have to refund the money or their fees. They will not review any evidence you provide. Their arbitrators are either incompetent or seem as so because they have no intention of offering you a fair hearing. They ask for evidence that has very little to do with the case and ignore essential questions like: Did the programmer complete all of the work? They will ask a non-technical person to look through all of the code and explain why the code does not work.

I thought that it would be enough to explain that only 1/3rd of the work was complete. So of course they made a decision against me which never addressed the issue of the work not being complete, a fact that the programmer never disputed. They wanted me to look through the lines of code to tell them exactly what was wrong. If I could have done that I never would have needed the programmer in the first place

I have posted this experience on multiple boards and now Elance and Net-Arb employees are writing rebuttals to them. Making up extremely upsurd statements about me and my company that are total lies made up to discredit me. They said that my " company had failed because of my poor management which stemmed from a culture of scapegoating and that only employees left were those that had been the most negative about other employees."

This is a 100% fabrication. My company is still alive and well, I am a startup and only work with myself and one other programmer. I do not even have any full time employees. Beware of this company, there policy, to lie, and deceive to try to protect their corrupt practices is truly disheartening.

Hi Ryan,

My name is Varun and I came across your posting at a very good time. I m involved in a similar situation with elance, however just before the arbitration is about to start with netarb I have come across many posts showing how elance and netarb are just scams. I m planning to get in touch with lawyers soon. Would you be interested to get in touch with me if I engage lawyers against elance? My e-mail address is varunkhanduja@***.com and i m based out of boston.

Thanks,

Varun

It is a difficult one. I am currently involved in an arbotration case with Net-Arb..

I am a provider. The client asked for a video demonstrating software. The software didn't actually work but many hours were put into the project. I was not able to deliver exactly what they wanted because the product they aske dme to demonstrate was clearly faulty.

I had other people look at it and they agreed. I produced what I could by the deadline and said I would complete the rest when the software was fixed. The client tried to withdraw the money from escrow but I disputed it because of what had already been delivered and the work that had gone in, I felt at least a discussion was warranted. Instead he filed for Arbitration which I HAD to accept as if I didn't they would shut down my Elance account!!!

I have a very very good reputation on the site and didn't want a large source of income taken away. I read up on Arbitration process and thought I was doing what was requested. It also stated that the case would go at the pace determined by the participants. But I got sarcastic and pressing emails the whole way through, demanding that I answer detailed and complicated questions whilst I was working on site with other clients.

I tried to explain that I could not respond immediately but just got more harrassing emails, including the client being quite offensive even though he was not supposed to be adding anything to the case unless asked a question. Eventually, the arbitrator has closed the questioning stage and just asked us to submit final testimonies. I am submitting mine tommorrow with the evidence of the work done and that the software doesn't work.

I do not know how it will turn out but I am not hopeful after the way it has been handled. It is unbelievable to me that the client couldn't just be adult about it and have a conversation to come to an arrangement.

Your English isn't great. Maybe that was part of the problem?

But yes, Net.Arb is a scam. It's a shell company based in Gerogia, and it's physical location is a house!

I'm actually encouraged to hear your stories - because I am in a very weird situation.

The usual drill, I'm a small business, haven't work on elance in a while, so I wasn't aware of what a den of sharks it has become.

I got another 'honest John' from asia, that thinks if you do anything other than follow his orders, that you've accused him of being a thief - and he's not one of those, he's a good guy. They go into this story even when it makes no sense at all. I never accused him of being a thief - and yet the story starts coming out as if it made any sense.

Obviously they can't speak english well, so they go with tried and true story lines.

Anyway, what happened to me is I contracted the guy to do some work, he did - some work. Lousy, no attention to detail, many mistakes - game unplayable.

But I'm a programmer, so I noticed he did do some of the work, and I fixed the other issues. I said, look, I have no further requests from you so I'm obligated to pay.

So I paid him -100% full amount.

The arrogant *** opens up a dispute against me - because he wants a perfect 5 star rating.

What? Open up a dispute over a 3.4 star rating - not a 5 star?

I'm like geez dude, I said I was obligated to pay you and did, but if you want to dispute the transaction - I'll accept the refund. LOL

Sounds to me like NET-ARB has no intention of granting that refund so - I'll 'win' this dispute, in the upside down world where the contractor files a refund dispute - lol...can you imagine?

The problem is these people don't speak English, and are culturally arrogant, combining arrogance with stupidity is always dangerous.

The guy claims he could have fixed all issues i- that begs the question why not fix them then? Why take some garbage upload it and ask for payment?

Oh well Net-arb here we come :zzz