Recently I received an offer to program a very simple NES tech demo for €20. The work described in the requirements was roughly the same complexity as the "Blob Ball" minigame from Tengen's Klax. I replied that I would need more money because that much money would barely buy enough time to spin up a new copy of nrom-template and draw tiles for the background and sprites. I counter-offered €80 for a tested and documented program, at €40 per hour for two hours. (I expressed it in euros rather than U.S. dollars to attempt to meet the prospective client halfway.) The prospective client tried to haggle me down to €40, and I replied that the program would not be complete but there would be pseudocode (with links to Wikipedia's articles about pseudocode in both English and the prospective client's native language) to allow anyone who knows 6502 assembly to complete the work.
But in this post, Punch wrote:
"Protip to the OP: PAYPAL ONRY! (or whatever site your programmer agrees to accept money from)"
When I asked in an IRC channel how to express politely that €20-€40 isn't enough for custom programming work, one user recommended a wire transfer instead of PayPal because it was so hard for a PayPal seller to win a purchase protection claim. The two grounds for such a claim are "item not received" and "significantly not as described". PayPal's user agreement defines the latter to include "The item is missing major parts or features and those facts were not disclosed in the description of the item when you bought it." Particularly the pseudocode part is likely to be seen as "significantly not as described".
What should a contract programmer do in advance to protect himself from PayPal purchase protection claims? PayPal also has a seller protection policy, but only for physical goods shipped through a carrier offering delivery confirmation, not services, and not for "significantly not as described". Or what other payment method is suitable for payments of this scale (less than 100 euros, British pounds, or U.S. dollars) without adding the $25 fee of an international wire transfer (source)? If "Bitcoin", then how to find a reputable exchange for me and for my prospective client and not look like the ransomware purveyors in the news recently?
But in this post, Punch wrote:
"Protip to the OP: PAYPAL ONRY! (or whatever site your programmer agrees to accept money from)"
When I asked in an IRC channel how to express politely that €20-€40 isn't enough for custom programming work, one user recommended a wire transfer instead of PayPal because it was so hard for a PayPal seller to win a purchase protection claim. The two grounds for such a claim are "item not received" and "significantly not as described". PayPal's user agreement defines the latter to include "The item is missing major parts or features and those facts were not disclosed in the description of the item when you bought it." Particularly the pseudocode part is likely to be seen as "significantly not as described".
What should a contract programmer do in advance to protect himself from PayPal purchase protection claims? PayPal also has a seller protection policy, but only for physical goods shipped through a carrier offering delivery confirmation, not services, and not for "significantly not as described". Or what other payment method is suitable for payments of this scale (less than 100 euros, British pounds, or U.S. dollars) without adding the $25 fee of an international wire transfer (source)? If "Bitcoin", then how to find a reputable exchange for me and for my prospective client and not look like the ransomware purveyors in the news recently?