After the buyer accepts your bid, his or her money
is held in an escrow account. After you deliver the product and they
acknowledge that they received everything, you will be credited with the escrow
amount minus the Rent a Coder finders fee. All credits accumulate in your account until the credit cutoff date of your choosing arrives
(either the middle of the month, the end of the month or both). We then pay you
that total on or before the following 7th day. (Note that you can also choose to not be paid, until your account goes above some amount that you specify).
You can choose to have payments
sent to you via a number of methods. Please see the Payment Options Matrix in your Seller agreement for full details on the
different payment methods.
4) How are buyer and seller disputes handled?
Most transactions are completed harmoniously,
but every now and then a buyer and coder cannot come to an agreement. If this happens to you then you can
simply request one of the Rent A Coder arbitrators place the bid request into 'arbitration' to
determine if the contract was met or not. During a court-like process, the arbitrator follows the rules of arbitration to
determine what has and has not been delivered, and may even test the final code to verify a buyer's bug list.
(For complete details, see the complete rules of arbitration in either the
buyer or
seller legal agreements). To ensure fairness, all parties have already
agreed in advance to abide by the Rent a Coder settlement.
6) What protections are there for coders?
Rent a Coder has a
number of features to protect your safety.
First, you can instantly check the reputation of any
customer who is posting a project. You can review their ratings (from 1 to 10),
read the feedback that previous programmers have left about them, as well as
learn other things about them, such as their 'non-action' ratio (i.e the # of times
they didn't choose a coder on the site), and other important statistics. Read
this carefully before deciding whether or not to make a bid.
Second, by the time you begin work, each customer has
already pre-paid the bill for the bid request and Rent A Coder is already holding it in escrow. This means that you don't
have to worry about getting 'stiffed'! If you complete the work as
specified, you can be confident of being paid.
Third, should you ever get into a dispute over what has
been delivered with the Buyer, you can enlist the help of a 3rd party. Just place the bid into arbitration with a Rent a Coder arbitrator.
They will determine what has actually been delivered (or not) and the Buyer (and yourself) has already pre-agreed to abide by their decision.
7) How is my financial and personal information kept safe?
All sensitive information is protected via the highest level of SSL encryption (128 bit) to prevent it from being
intercepted by unauthorized parties. Once the information arrives at our data center, it is password-protected in a datastore. The data store is additionally fortified by an ICSA Certified firewall that blocks out
instrusion attempts. Additionally, we subscribe to vendor security notification lists, and install new vendor patches as promptly as possible...most often with 24 hours. Finally, 3rd party security experts go through all of our system on a routine basis looking for holes, and anything they find is promptly sealed and documented.
8) Can non-US users use PayPal?
Yes, Pay Pal works in a number of non-US countries. For a complete list, as well as information
on opening up an international account, see the
Pay Pal international account info page.
Please note that Pay Pal will charge a money conversion fee to convert the funds from US to your local currency.
9) I don't understand how I communicate with the buyer and/or get clarification on the specs?
To communicate with the buyer or ask questions, simply post a comment on the bid request (a bid with a comment and no bid amount). The buyer will be emailed a link toyour posting and if
he or she responds, you will receive an email of their response as well. It can then continue for as long as the two of you need to communicate.
10) Can you give me a summary of what the 'Coder Deposit Guarantee' is?
The Coder Deposit Guarantee solves 2 sticky issues for both Buyers and Coders.
How does a Buyer make sure that a coder is going to complete their project?
How does a Coder set themselves above the crowd of other bidders and prove to a
Buyer that they are worthy of serious attention? The "Coder Deposit Guarantee" solves both
of these problems and takes the buying and selling of software to a new level.
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It works like this: When the buyer accepts the coder's bid, the coder deposits a certain amount of money to
guarantee completion (the exact amount is negotiated between Buyer and Coder).
If the Coder completes the project as promised, they receive the deposit
back. If the Coder does not complete the project, then they forfeit the
deposit (or a pro-rated percentage of it...if only a percentage of work is
completed).
To protect a Coder from a Buyer who unfairly witholds approval of fully completed work,
the bid request can be placed into legally binding
arbitration (like all projects), where an arbitrator from Rent a Coder will determine if it
truly was delivered as promised or not.
To further prevent an unscrupulous Buyer from abusing this
feature, the forfeited deposit is NOT paid out to
the Buyer. Instead it goes to:
- Offsetting the Buyer's cancellation charge (if any).
(See the Buyer Legal Agreement for information on when
a cancellation charge might apply.)
- 100% of the remainder is donated to charity.
Please understand all aspects of the Coder Deposit so you can best use it to your advantage.
Links to frequently asked questions and the detailed legal agreements are below:
11) How do I pay for a 'Coder Deposit'?
You can pay for a 'Coder Deposit' via any of the normal site payment methods (which are currently
via credit card, PayPal or a check mailed via postal mail). Additionally you can also use the funds in your coder
account from other jobs to pay for a 'Coder Deposit'.
12) What happens if a bid for a 'Coder Deposit' but something happens before the Buyer accepts my bid and I can no longer do it?
You will receive an email and will have the option to 'back-out' of the bid request.
13) I'm getting a warning about my Internet Explorer browser being old and possibly buggy. What is this all about?
You are running an old internet browser
(Internet Explorer v5.x) that Microsoft has found a number of bugs in. These
bugs will not only cause problems for you on some of the advanced features of
Rent A Coder (like posting bids and attachments), but also exposes you to
security risks on all sites on the Internet.
Microsoft provides new and upgraded versions of
its software for no charge via download from the Internet, or via CD for
a nominal charge. You are highly recommended to take advantage of all the
latest bug fixes and security advances by downloading the free newest version of
Internet Explorer. To learn more click here.
14) Is contact information allowed in bids? How about in projects > $500?
To protect our fee, contact information is never allowed in any bid, no matter what the
project amount. However, to facilitate the requirements gathering stage of larger projects, the site "Information Release" system
allows you to release information to buyer without having to post your contact information in the bid. For complete information
click here.
15) Can you give me more advice?
Yes. Check out these additional articles for coders...
