Ever Pay for an Article from Scriptlance?

Dear Blog,

Let me tell you about my first experience hiring a writer from Scriptlance.com

I prepared for the worst from what I had read in the Sitesell resources. The gist is, you get all kinds of funny people claiming to be experts in a faceless online community. The only way to find out if the writer is good is to pay for a small project. What is considered "small" is USD 50 minimum. Mama, that's my three quarters' month food bill.

With the intention of finding the suitable writers to help out in the future. I was thinking of peak seasons when the kids drive me nuts to the point of having headaches every day, then I can at least get some help to beef up the content in my websites.

So I picked two topics: enema and diverticulitis and posted a job. Within minutes there were offers coming in. Since I can't buy the great stories the applicants say about themselves, I thought maybe I could use the reviews of the other clients. So I picked the guy who got the most good reviews.

Three days later, I received this:

A story on how a 10-year old girl was asked to do a painful barium enema to find out the cause of her severe constipation. The story did not say what was wrong with her. Then the article goes on on how barium enema helps to relieve constipation, side effects of barium enema and blah blah barium enema.

I wrote the writer, telling him what I know about barium enema and asked him to include the enema that needs to be warmed up before use.

His reply :
He has no idea about that the enema I mentioned and that the story is based on the experience of his work mate who actually had barium enema like 20 times to relieve constipation.

I wrote him again to inform that it was fleet enema that I had in mind and I asked the focus to be on enemas in general so other common enemas such as coffee enema and alcohol enemas should be mentioned.

The result:
He added extra information, literally like picking up what I had said and wrote 'em word for word and gave me more or less the same article that barium enema helps to relieve constipation. This time I also get the diverticulits piece which is same @#$%^&*+*&^%$#@ crap that I can't use at all. By the time I counter-checked all the facts in his articles, I have come to know more about these topics than him.

Yeap, I paid USD50 to read about enema and diverticulitis for one week and another one week writing the articles myself. Hard lesson: Also, don't trust those *&^%$#@#$%^ reviews because they are just " I scratch your back, you scratch my back" garbage.