Have you heard any of the horror stories that are plaguing the business community these days? I can't recall how many times I've heard and read about small and even large businesses who have depended upon a computer programmer or web developer to complete a website or other task, only to be left in the lurch.

I recall one business friend of mine who told me how he needed a simple web page for his business. So, he went to one of those offshore programmers listing websites and picked one of the people listed there for $10 an hour. So, he waited three weeks before he even got a response from this person, who, by the way, barely spoke English and lived somewhere in South-East Asia.

It took him a couple of hours to communicate to the person what he wanted his website to look like. My friend tells me that the end of the conversation was simply, "Yes, yes, Ok, I will do website like that...", or some such. My friend was a little leery of the way the conversation, and looking back, he knew that the "offshore" programmer didn't fully understand the requirement.

The guy wanted my friend to send him a money-gram, which meant that my friend would have no way to get the money back if this offshore guy just decided to not do the work. And, unfortunately, he fell for that and sent the money anyways.

In the end, the offshore programmer never returned my friends calls and simply walked away with the money.

My friend's experience is like so many others that my readers are telling me about. I recommend to all people and businesses to stay away from offshore programmers website mills. They are filled with deceptive resumes and most of the time, there is no way to get back money sent to individuals. Fraud is rampant on those offshore sites.