[TheDean]

I tried to give Arthur the benefit of the doubt on this one and waited a very long time to make this post. I have reached my wits end.

Several moths ago I replied to a post he made on this board for this Rakeback Software for my site. The backend I have now is not great and developing a new one would cost me tens of thousands of dollars. He made an amazing pitch. He told me RakebackRus, RakeTherRake and RakeReduction (among others) all use his software. That was enough for me, I signed up.

He told me I'd pay $1500 per month for the license and I'd get a total of four sites for that price. I told him I wanted a written agreement and he told me he was used to doing handshake deals. Alarm bells should have gone off, they did not.

He promised me the absolute world. I'll give him this, he is a great salesman. He told me I'd get unlimited mods to the backend, customize it to do everything I want etc. For the first week, he was very responsive. Always available on AIM and answered all of my questions.

He got a copy of RakeUpdate.com up very quickly for me to look at and log into. It was on my domain, but it was not usable at all and hadn't been customized in any way. He then asked me for payment after about a month. I agreed though I told him that I needed him to be quicker about getting our updates done but would give him the benefit of the doubt and pay him, but before he got any more money out of me I wanted a written contract and I wanted my site done.

I also asked for a discount on the two months of service as he was being very slow about updates. He agreed and I paid him $2500.

Then I heard from him maybe one time in the next 2 months. He was always on AIM but he would never reply to me or my designer. Didn't do any updates at all, nor respond to any email or anything. Then very recently he pops up on AIM like nothing has changed and tells me he needs payment for the last two months or he's pulling the software.

Is that some kind of a joke? No apology, no telling me when he'll finish, nothing...he wants payment because i paid for a license to and not a usable website. I have no idea what he's talking about but clearly I'm not going to pay $1500 a month for something I cannot use and he knows that.

I propose a solution to him. He can keep the money that I paid him as an 'activation fee' for our agreement. Then I'll pay him monthly once he completes each of my four sites, in higher and higher increments up until the $1500 level, starting at $500 per month. We come to an agreement on a slight variation of this and he gets back to work.

He does a great job for a couple of days and I start promoting the sites. Then today as the main site is finally finished, he comes to me and says:


'What was it we agreed to again?'

I tell him.


'Ya, that isn't going to work...I need $1500 per month +$200 per month for each additional site'


We have a long exchange via AIM about this and I finally tell him that he can take his software, lies, laziness and lack of honor and integrity and shove his software up his ass. I'll never do business with somebody who I cannot trust.


Do not trust this guy.



A) His software is horrible, buggy and the interface is designed like a retarded nine year old made it

B) He is all talk and no results. He'll promise you the world but not deliver in a timely fashion or nearly as good as what he says

C) He cannot be trusted with regard to price. What if I went to all of my rakeback players now and said 'what did i tell you i'd pay you? 27? that isn't going to work...you're getting 20'.