I joined this site and they tout their escrow feature to protect buyers and programmers.
I won a job that was $750. Scriptlance charged me a fee of around $25 for winning, I paid, $500 was put in escrow by the buyer so I could get started.
I got started, send the files to the buyer to confirm everything was complete, and the buyer disappeared.
I contacted scriptlance after a while to try and at least get the money put in escrow for me. Despite putting URGENT as the priority for my case with their helpdesk, I didn't receive a reply for days and when I did they asked me questions they would have know the answer to if they actually read my initial query.
After a long drawn out process of them asking questions in their ticketing system, me answering right away, and them replying days later. I was finally told, on 9/12/09, my money would be released 11/27/09, if they didn't hear back from the buyer. They were going to contact him in the mean time. I agreed because I had no choice.
FYI: Their TOS, which can be read at the bottom of their site. Says specifically that escrow will be released to the programmer if the buyer doesn't respond in 30 days. That's 30 days, not the 2 1/2 months I was asked to wait.
I waited extremely patiently. I only put a response in on 11/24/09 asking them to withdraw my money to my paypal when released, because I knew this is also a lengthy process.
11/27/09 came and went. I opened tickets and got no response for nearly a week. Their response was, with in the same ticket, "Only the buyer can release escrow". This response was despite when I was told 9/12/09 and despite what their TOS says.
Again after a week or so of going back and forth I was finally told the escrow would be released 12/15/09 at 9am EST. They would not tell me why I had to wait again, or anything.
I emailed Rene and got a vague response that he doesn't do any work and that I have to deal with scriptlance helpdesk.
12/15/09 came and went and the money was not released, despite me updating the ticket every day from 11/27/09 - 12/15/09
They're thieves. This money was not theirs, they lied in writing on both their published TOS as well as their support site.
I was never offered a refund for the project costs I had to pay them.
Do not trust these guys. They will take advantage of you in any way possible. They hide behind the fact that the only source of contact is internet based.
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