More of the Rentacoder Drama!

It gets better and better, I swear.

So, I have been firing emails back and forth with this individual from Rentacoder. I do not know their name, though I'm sure it might be buried in their signature somewhere among the various website links, fax numbers and phone numbers. In truth, I do not care that much.

What is making me laugh, and laugh a lot -- is that the fact I have been stating all along that the account they're associating with my account belongs to my husband. What does this woman do? Offers to give me access to that account.

Hello, privacy concerns! How are you today?

I don't know about you, but I am completely offended that someone who claims not to know if we are working together or not, offers to give me access to an account that I have repeatedly informed her was not mine. Would this, by any logic, seem like a good idea?

How does this help anything at all? Beyond making me feel like if I pursue business with this company any further, I will never know if someone will gain access to my account through the easy method of changing their name in the system to match my name and put in the same location as me. Addresses, after all, are fairly easy to acquire. I took several long paragraphs to point this out to her. If that is all it takes to gain access to an account, I am glad that this drama happened so I won't be taken advantage of by someone *other* than in the accounting department of this organization.

I wonder if she understood. I doubt it, seeing as her entire efforts have been to preserve the 40 or 50 or whatever dollars in fees that the company took from the account before transferring everything over.

At least, I think this person is a she. I will call her a she, seeing as I don't actually know her name.

To add insult to injury, when I informed her I would not be able to complete the contract seeing as they've rendered my account useless, she replied with something along the lines of "We will be forced to take a fee."

Do you know what I said to her?

I mentioned the 40 to 50 or whatever it was fee I was already charged, plus the loss of the funds in that account to an account that was not mine. I guess they can just claim interest on that. Or just take it, seeing as they have already done so.

I wish businesses realized that there are actually people behind things, not just little sources of money. At this point, I am convinced that this woman (or man?) views me as a convenient little source of additional revenue so that she might make some form of threshold so she keeps her job at said company.

This has gone beyond silly and into the realm of tiresome and a complete waste of my time. Keep the money, but seriously, learn to have better relationships with your customers. I don't even care if I'm right or wrong or whatever, but I think the original request of "just mail me a cheque and give me my money" was rather reasonable. Seeing as they are holding the money hostage, well... oh well. Obviously, they cannot tell if we are sharing the accounts. But, you would think, after stating the same thing over and over again like a broken record, just wanting access to the money I earned through them, they would have learned by now.

From how I have been talked down at, you would think I hacked an account or something, rather than just being married and living in the same household as someone who -- once upon a time -- used this site. You know, before he got a stable job that pays far, far more than this site could ever hope to render to one person in a year.

More of the Contract Work Drama

So. Back to this. I woke up this morning to a rather displeasing email from Rentacoder.

The individual representing the company managed to somehow give a lengthy reply without actually answering any of my questions, especially the most important one regarding giving my money back.

It makes me wonder if the company is going bankrupt, seeing as they are targeting and grabbing a small amount of $ in the grand scheme of things without a single care on how much they tarnish their business' reputation.

At this point, I am certain of one thing: My money is lost. My husband doesn't remember the email account associated with the rentacoder account, nor does he have any care to go look into the account issue when he no longer does any work on that website. I can't blame him, this is my problem, and he has enough stuff that he needs to worry about.

Part of me understands their concern relating to people in, say, Nigeria, that wish to take advantage of people who are less than intelligent or easily gullible. Seeing as I have never done any nefarious activities while doing business with them, well, this is a bit idiotic in my opinion.

This has boiled out to be a rather large waste of my time and money. I have to go through and inform all of the people that I had referred what has happened and suggest to them that they remove their funds from this site to ensure that they do not fall victim just like I have. This is also a rather large was of my time (that also wastes money...) seeing as I had referred quite a few friends and family members.

I'm sure the site feels the victor, taking their 50 dollars or so in fees, and running off with the rest of the 160 or so I was going to use on entertainment purposes this month. And for my birthday.

Thanks for the awesome birthday present, Rentacoder. You have *totally* made my month. No, really. Thanks a lot. I should have been taking that money and having a better time on my birthday than worrying about if I could get my money back.

And I bet, if anyone from said company were to stop by, they would flap their jaw about how they can't tell who is who on the internet so people in the same household can't have duplicate accounts... go ahead, rentacoder. I don't really care. Your policy hurts people trying to make a living and who are legitimate. But, if it makes you feel better, go for it. There is a little comment box right below this blog post.

Upset Rebecca is angry.

This is definitely a Monday. Despite being a holiday, I feel it in my bones. It exudes the presence of Monday.

In other news, I have finished Chapter 4 of my Ghosts of Atlantis project. I am hoping to get some work done on Chapter 5 today. At least, once I am no longer fuming over the email I have received from that company.

I haven't even had time for my cup of tea yet today. Grrr.