Neil's Blog

The last laugh

2007-07-04T05:26:00.000-07:00

After finishing my swim last weekend at Tadley swimming pool, I came out side to find my bike had been tampered with. Someone had peeled the sticker off the bell, fiddled with the gears and removed the batteries from both front and back lights.

No lasting damage, but annoying all the same.

However, if they tried to do anything with the batteries they would failed - they were completely worn out awaiting replacement - I just hadn't got around to doing it!

That phone probably was a scam

2007-06-04T02:49:00.000-07:00

It looks like the phone call I received on 25 May was a scam. I think they were just trying to be intimidating to possibly get a credit card number or something like that. If they were going to invoice me, they would have done it by now and I am certain that only a few months ago, the same person rang me up claiming that I'd signed up to sponsor their book and that it was now ready and what schools did I wish it to be sent to. I'm sure it was the same person.

If I really had have signed up to this, they would not have called my mobile phone number for starters, they would have my correct name, I would have already paid for whatever it was I was supposed to have purchased and I would have had to have sent them some sort of confirmation as per ever other ad I have signed up to.

Watch out for this. I can see others getting conned without thinking about it.

Watch out for this scam

2007-05-25T04:05:00.000-07:00

Watch out for what appears to be a scam. Someone will phone you and ask if you want to sponsor a book that seems to be health related. You say no, but a few months later they will phone you again and ask what local schools you want the book to be distributed to. You tell them you don't know what they are on about, they insist you said yes to the sponsorship and when you get a bit annoyed, they say they will invoice you for £1799.

This happened to me. I don't even rememnber getting the original phone call, but I am certain that if I did, I said no. When they phoned back, they didn't even know my name!

It's an unweanted sales tactic at best, or at worst it's scam. Watch out.

Does anyone ever reply?

2007-05-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

Following on from the Scriptlance posting, I have applied to quite a number of projects on freelancers.net yet never had a reply apart from on 1 occasion, which led to an interview, possible work, and now nothing!

The same goes for replies to a leads directory called firstratedirectory.co.uk - I pay for leads, send them the information, follow it up, but no one has the courtesy even to say thanks but no thanks.

Scriptlance - what's the point?

2007-05-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

Scriptlance is supposedly a place where people can place projects that they need help with and then others can come along and bid to do them. Seems simple enough and I've been signed up for some time.

However, there was one flaw - those bidding seemed to be bidding stupidly low amounts for the work to be done. We're talking $5 for a 5 page web site for example.

Whenever I bid for a project, I bid a more realistic amount and mentioned that in my bid. This must have annoyed a few though because first I got suspended and then I was banned.

Try and talk to Scriptlance about it though and you come up against a wall of silence.

The first thing you know about it is when you get an email that goes something like "The admin has suspended your account (aipuk) on ScriptLance. Please submit the form at https://www.scriptlance.com/suspended.shtml to find out how to get your account re-activated."

so I did.

In order to use that form though, you have to use your username and password, but mine apparently wasn't just suspended, it had been removed altogether!

I did have two accounts though - programmers and a webmasters account, so I used the other one to enquire.

The response I got was "

At 4/25/2007 06:57, Jamey said: * aipuk (banned username)"

The original email remember said "Please submit the form at https://www.scriptlance.com/suspended.shtml to find out how to get your account re-activated."

so I asked for a more descriptive reply to find out what I had done wrong to which the reply was "At 4/28/2007 09:29, Jamey said: The account is banned from scriptlance no information will be given out"

and then

"At 5/2/2007 05:17, Sanjay said: ScriptLance reserves the right to provide services at its discreetion and don't wish to provide you the same anymore. Please don't use ScriptLance anymore."

So, I am left mystified. Both my accounts have been removed completely from their system, my IP address has been banned, there is no way of emailing Scriptlance and I can't even log into the forum as I need an account to do so and I am still none the wise as to why Scriptlance felt the need to ban me!

Mind you, I only once got anything out of Scriptlance, and that turned to nothing anyway. I can only think it was because I dared to speak up about the low bids that were constantly being made and that Scriptlance SAID in another exchange of emails they would not tolerate.

So if you are on Scriptlance, be careful what you do - you may find yourself banned and if you are, don't expect to be told why!

Welcome

2007-04-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome