Did I get a salesman's pitch

luckylucky

Warning : no poker content here... just looking for opinions on a discussion I had.

I was discussing online with a small company about them designing a website for me. Everything about the discussion went fine except for one thing. I think the guy lied to me about being a poker player though. I won't repeat the conversation verbatim, but basically he said he missed not playing on pokerstars.net.

Now what strikes me about that is I've never heard any poker player call Pokerstars Pokerstars.net, pokerstars.com etc etc. It's just Pokerstars.

It's as if he googled online poker and came up with that name. The only genuine explanation that I can think of is that maybe someone who just dabbled in poker might call it Pokerstars.net, but even then!

Anyway rightly or wrongly this irks me that this guy may very well have lied to me to try to make it seem like heh look you should give my company the job we got so much in common, it felt like a window salesman or car salesman (I'm sure Dave Masters would never do that though ) type thing to pull to endear themselves to a potential client.

So basically just thinking would people think I am right to suspect that he lied?

And if he did lie, should I not read too much into it, he might still do a good job on the site after all. His business looks genuine. Has Google page rank of 5 so it's unlikely to be dodgy.

RedJoker

All pokerstars adverts are for pokerstars.net since that's the play money site and pokerstars.com is the real money one, so it's also possible he just saw an advert for them on tv as well.

Maybe he just lost too much money playing the highstakes play money games and had to quit, the swings are terrible in those games.

5starpool

If I could think of a forum to move this to then I might, but anyways......

Personally I wouldn't really care. He may just have seen coverage a couple of times of some WSOP shows or similar and saw pokerstars.net plastered everwhere and thought he would drop it in to the conversation to impress a potential client.

If he looks legit and might do a good job, then I don;t really see a problem.

Also, there are other forums on boards that you are free to use as well, people don't bite outside the poker forum (well some do, but ignore them).

luckylucky

5starpool wrote: »

If I could think of a forum to move this to then I might, but anyways......

Personally I wouldn't really care. He may just have seen coverage a couple of times of some WSOP shows or similar and saw pokerstars.net plastered everwhere and thought he would drop it in to the conversation to impress a potential client.

If he looks legit and might do a good job, then I don;t really see a problem.

Also, there are other forums on boards that you are free to use as well, people don't bite outside the poker forum (well some do, but ignore them).

Yeah I know it was a bit of a stretch posting this on the poker forum, couldn't think of anywhere else to post it really and it had vaguely to do with poker and of course I value the opinions (the non sarcy ones that is ) on this forum more than anywhere else. .

Anyway I guess it's no big deal, he does look legit, I guess it's just a standard sales ploy type thing, I just don't like it tried on me.

Bandara

lol, yeah he did abit of homework to 'makes friends' with you and get the business. Standard practice.

Years ago colleague of mine was going to meet a fanatical Chelsea fan to try sell him a huge amount of IT equipment. Knowing nothing about football he asked a few of us in the office to give him a few things to say that would make him look good and help him get on with the guy.

About 4 hours later he returned from the meeting and went a tad mental at us.

Apparently Frank Rijkarrd wasn't actually the Chelsea manager at the time and Glen Hoddle never played in goal.

Lazare

Yeah, white lies are pretty standard practice with salesmen, I wouldn't get too offended. Reminds me of that episode of Curb when Larry's selling cars...

Larry: Hi, what's your name?
Customer: Aepheon.
Larry: Wow, that's eh, my step fathers name.

LOL.

luckylucky

I remember we had a window salesman call around to us a few years back and he was absolutely superb saleman. It wasn't until after he left that alarm bells went off for several reasons. Fortunately we wer able to pull out of the contract, as you get 14 days to do so (in the UK at least) . This guy reminded me of him in an online way. When I was chatting to him on msn last night he seemed like he could do wonders, a bit too smooth really. it was like he had his pitch down to a fine art. Like telling me stuff that he had a slot available just now as a contract he was due to start today was postponed for 2 weeks, how convenient :rolleyes:

I've just googled his website now and have seen some horror stories about this guy, looks like he is actually dodgy as fook :eek: Looks like I got luckylucky again, my instinct runs goot

5starpool

There are probably people on boards who would do that for you for a fee, including some of the poker regs. I believe there are a few who do it for a living.

luckylucky

5starpool wrote: »

There are probably people on boards who would do that for you for a fee, including some of the poker regs. I believe there are a few who do it for a living.

Yeah I might check out the web forum here. Btw thanks for indulging this thread. Feel free to close it now if you wish. I just wanted to get a few peoples thoughts on it, thanks for the replies.

bops

hi lucky

i managed a web dev co for a couple of years - pm me your proposal/quote and i'll hapily give it a look over

...i don't want the job (i don't work for a living anymore lol) but am happy to be of help

anyways with regards .net line - standard sales spew

RasTa

Aye PM me to some small company's can still charge a fortune for a basic 6 page HTML set up.

dvdfan

If you dont get any luck with the guys on here, elance and scriptlance are 2 good sites. You basically post your project details and people make bids on it, you can pm different providers and get more details and then when you decide on a project winner you escrow the funds, they are held until the project is completed to your satisfaction and then you release the funds. Afaik you get charged nothing and the project winner gets charged 10% or something. Obviously ask for examples of previous work but theres so much competition on there that you can get some great deals especially from asian countries etc where they can afford to work for a far lower hourly rate but again just be wise in who you choose. To save a few bob i would recommend going to templatemonster.com and pick a template, you should get a good .html one for $30-$50 and have them alter it for you to your needs.

hotspur

"I miss playing on pokerstars.net, I also have extensive previous experience of designing poker sites" - www.theloftcardclub.ie/ (sorry Paddy)

Lazare

hotspur wrote: »

"I miss playing on pokerstars.net, I also have extensive previous experience of designing poker sites" - www.theloftcardclub.ie/ (sorry Paddy)

WOW.

They really need to set fire to that website.

ArmaniJeanss

hotspur wrote: »

www.theloftcardclub.ie (sorry Paddy)

Brilliant, but did it not used to have snowflakes?

luckylucky

dvdfan wrote: »

If you dont get any luck with the guys on here, elance and scriptlance are 2 good sites.

cheers dvdfan. I wanted the design done in joomla cms, it's a particular area of web development so I wasn't expecting there would be many if any on elance, but there seems to be quite a few

Also getting back to my OP, the more I think about it, trust is paramount when doing business over the web. I've paid people online before to do stuff for me but I always trusted them. It's one thing if a salesman bs's you face to face, but the fact that you can be dealing with someone from halfway around the other side of the world, at the first sign of something smelling anyway funny, then it probably is I reckon.

again Mods feel free to lock now.

mewso

My speciality would not be joomla even though we use mambo (a former iteration of it) but one thing I would always be able to help folks here with would be in sifting through IT speak (particularly web development - 10 years at it rubs off) if anyone wanted to know if who they were dealing with knew their stuff. Just pm me anytime.

Icarus152

Is it a porn site your doing?

RoundTower

I don't get what he said, did he say he missed playing on Pokerstars.net? Was he trying to hint that he designed their website? That would be pretty unlikely. But why else would he not be able to play there?

luckylucky

Icarus152 wrote: »

Is it a porn site your doing?

lol, maybe for the next project

RoundTower wrote: »

I don't get what he said, did he say he missed playing on Pokerstars.net? Was he trying to hint that he designed their website? That would be pretty unlikely. But why else would he not be able to play there?

No he said it was taking up too much of his time playing there thats why he didn't play there anymore. It was a load of BS anyway, the guy I'm 99% sure is a con artist/confidence trickster.