Client's Complaintnet-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. 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 RIP-OFF report. 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.
Our Response
Quotes from the Complaint
"net-ARB.com is a service forced by Elance on the users"
The word "forced" has to be understood in context. For nearly the past 10 years, net-ARB has been and continues to be the only arbitration service in the world with the capacity to hear the number of technology-oriented disputes that arise on a platform like Elance and more importantly the expertise to decide them fairly. We are still the only firm doing it completely online through an interactive hearing.
Over 7 years ago, Elance decided it was not in their best interest for them to decide their own user disputes because the perception of bias would be too great to overcome. Even without that burden, Elance even today suffers from the perception among some clients that Elance favors freelancers and just as many freelancers believe it's the other way around. Our perception is that they are neutral.
"arbitration run by a scam business called net-ARB.com"
We are obviously not a scam business or we could not have existed for nearly 10 years (July 4, 2015 will be our 10th Anniversary). We are proud of our service to Elance, now Elance-oDesk, and look forward to many more years of the same. "as Elance has historically sided with the provider if something went wrong"
This is bias issue we covered above. Moreover, when applied this way it's a logical fallacy. Clients are the ones bringing money into Elance, not the freelancers. If Elance wanted to favor one side, it should be the clients. There are always more freelancers than clients. Taken as a whole statistically, our decisions are right in line with expectations. "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)."
The short answer is that we cannot speak with potential parties by telephone. We must have a written record of everything we do or we would be exposed to all sorts of claims from establishing biased relationships to giving improper or illegal advice. This is a legal process and we are obligated to maintain a paper trail of everything we do. We have an FAQ with more information on this topic.
The company's founder resides in Atlanta, GA and net-ARB, Inc. is incorporated in Georgia, but we have no office space. Everyone doing work for net-ARB is doing it from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. We do not accept any physical evidence from parties and all communication is solely by email. We can't entertain visitors. Publishing an address is also somewhat deceptive, inferring we have physical offices when in truth we don't. We have an FAQ with more information on this topic.
"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."
Most modern democratic law is based on "common law", a system of rules that originated in England beginning in the 11th century. For that reason, variances in the law across jurisdictional boundaries tends to be nil to slight and usually differ by only a technicality to two (comparative negligence in tort cases is a good example). net-ARB's guiding principles are common law, common sense, and common decency. The combination is often called Equity Justice and is still used today in a handful of U.S. states that maintain Chancery Courts. By adopting equity justice, we are able to transcend legal jurisdictional boundaries where the law changes depending on what side of the street you live on. We don't believe that's real justice anyway. Click Equity Justice for more information. "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."
Robert has been with net-ARB from the start and helped create a lot of the software we use today. Since our service to Elance began, Robert has been the backbone of our technical team and handles a lot of cases for us. Along with Robert, there are five other regular members of our technical team and two more on stand-by.
Arbitrator's ExplanationWe would be happy to show you the arbitrator's explanation for the decision but the client's complaint didn't mention any details about the case nor did they identify themselves. |
