Net-ARB.com is a service forced by Elance on the users when there is a dispute. If you are a buyer on Elance.com and your provider doesn't deliver on the project, Elance will FORCE you to pay $199 and enter into an arbitration run by a scam business called net-ARB.com. If you don't want to pay $199, Elance will threaten to suspend your account.
Elance was once a great place to hire cheap overseas workers but bulk of the business has moved to new companies like Odesk and Freelancer.com as Elance has historically sided with the provider if something went wrong. This has resulted into serious and regular buyers leaving Elance and it now attracts only new and unsuspecting American small businesses who are then scammed by providers with little fear of action from Elance as Elance makes their money by charging those providers and not buyers.
Net-ARB.com is NOTHING but just a website. There is no contact information on the website but just an email address (which rings a lot of bells). They give you an impression that they have a lot of legitimacy but arbitration when one party is forced into it has NO legal grounds. The site is full of fake testimonials, legals misrepresentations and false claims. Even a piece of law doesn't stay valid from one state to another by NetARB.net wants you to believe that their decisions are binding by law.
They tell you that they have a panel of arbitrators which is another white lie. There is ONLY one guy called Robert whose name has come up in many internet complaints. He claims to be a software developer himself and in MOST of the cases, he would just side with the provider because he can only think from their perspective.in our case, he went ahead and sided with the provider. Two months later, the provider was suspended from Elance from receiving too many complaints - talk about the quality of decisions coming from Mr. Robert. If you are a buyer and have a current dispute going on, Robert (most likely the ONLY employee of net-ARB) will rule against you.
There are others reasons that net-ARB or Robert will rule in favor of dodgy providers such as the fee Elance will receive from provider.
If net-ARB is a real, legitimate company and NOT a scam, they are more than welcome to challenge this complaint. If they challenge it, I want them to answer following questions:
1) What is their physical office location?
2) What is their business phone number?
3) What is company name behind net-ARB? I want to know business incorporation details.
4) Their association with US arbitration associations or any other industry bodies.
If you are a buyer and being tricked by Elance/net-ARB into an arbitration, just refuse politely and rather do a chargeback with your credit card company. Chargebacks can only be initiated by a certain period and the whole purpose of Elance net-ARB is to push you past that date.
Thanks
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