Is there such a thing as a "Worker's Page" on Rentboy

[Guest RexB]

Once I hired an escort on Rentboy who turned out to be a fake and who, it turns out, even currently regularly posts fake ads, some of them having pictures of several different guys on one ad, trying to pass them off as the same guy. When I met him the pictures on the ad were not of him, but he was rather OK, so I stayed and had a very mediocre time because he was very nervous and kept jumping up and looking out the window or door or something. I didn't say anything about the pics being fakes.

A few months later I contacted an escort and it so happened it was the same guy, but this time when I got to his door and saw him I told him we had met before and his pictures were fake both times and I left. I hardly got out the door and he immediately began sending me insulting texts which I didn't respond to and yet he kept sending them.

Soon after that I reported the ads that I suspected were his to Rentboy and they checked them out but said they couldn't find anything conclusive.

The pictures he posts on these ads are of the type of guys I'm into so I got fooled again, but this time in response to my e-mail he told me that he wouldn't meet me because my name, phone number, and email address were on the worker's page and that I had bad reviews. I asked what worker's pages were and he said those pages were escorts' reviews of clients.

I wrote Rentboy and asked them if such a thing existed and they said they had no knowledge of it, but I'm not sure they understood what I was talking about because they told me I could check out the Rentboy Reviews or Daddy's Reviews to read reviews of escorts. I wrote them back and said, no, I'm talking about reviews that escorts have written about clients. They didn't seem to get what I was talking about, so I just let it go.

Does anybody know if there's such a thing? I felt rather paranoid because I wondered what any escort I've ever been with would object to about me since my experiences with them have been 95% good and, except for that couple couple of times where this guy was a faker and I called him on it. Perhaps he might feel compelled to say bad things about me out of vengeance.

So is there such a thing or not?

[Amoco]

There are, though I never heard them referred to as "workers pages" before. I was told about them by a well known and reviewed escort who actually showed them to me. He indicated that there were several different ones and that they frequently were used by working guys in response to cancellations, no-shows and/or bad reviews. Unlike Daddy's site, there is zero accountability and essentially no verification of information - if I remember correctly, they were also repeatedly shut down for legal reasons related to both defamation and slander. I'm sure there are escorts on the Forum who can give you the name and other specifics. You can also try googling your phone number and see if anything shows up. Wish I had more details for you - it was new to me, too.

[Guest RexB]

Thanks, Amoco. I'll see what I can find out about this further. Seems unfair that escorts can refute claims made in reviews but clients can't and don't even know that they're being listed.

[Amoco]

Y sense was that the sites existed mostly as opportunities for vindictiveness rather than as a legitimate review site, but again, I don't know much about them beyond what I was told.

[Guest RexB]

So as far as you understand, this is not a part of Rentboy itself, right?

What you said about vindictiveness makes sense because the crook who originally said anything about this was hysterical with vindication. It's those who feel guilty themselves who are always looking to condemn others.

[Amoco]

I would doubt that RB would have anything to do with that kind of thing - they have too much to lose and little to gain.

[down_to_business]

There is definitely such a thing on men 4 rent now. I hired a guy and prepaid his airfare. He didn't call, didn't show, nothing. He gave me 2 bad client reviews, despite never having met me and doing who the hell knows what with the airfare. It's kind of like getting screwed twice for price of one!

[+ dutchmuch]

It's kind of like getting screwed twice for price of one!

 

http://www.companyofmen.org/showthread.php?102901-What-a-deal!-For-70-she-screwed-him-twice

[Guest borger1582]

Hm. I recently had begun to discuss tentative plans with an escort, but we had never confirmed anything. When I said the date would no longer work for me, he became completely enraged (via text), and told me (also via text) that he would 'make certain' other escorts knew of my flakiness and I'd never be able to hire again. From my perspective, I was shocked; but I checked my emails and texts carefully to make certain neither he nor I had ever confirmed. As we hadn't, I merely apologized for the misunderstanding. After another fairly angry text, I've heard nothing else. This was some weeks ago.

 

So far, no trouble hiring anyone else. As I had never actually flaked on an appointment in my short hiring career, I'm not too worried about it. He's new, I think; and I'm guessing I might have avoided an intimate and compromising session with someone who is, at best, a poor communicator, and at worst, unstable. As I'm partial to bondage, stability is pretty important to me . . .

 

The point being, he seemed to indicate that he had a way of letting other escorts know about the 'wrong' I had done him. As with the other posters, from my perspective, I had done nothing wrong; so any 'black mark' on me as a client would be irritating (again, from my perspective) and untrue.

[SteveEscort]

In the UK we have the ugly mugs scheme and many escort message boards also have an escort only timewaster section. Ugly mugs is for dangerous and untrustworthy clients and is backed by the police and local authorities. Many rapes, robberies of escorts are listed in the database and it's accessible to known escorts only on a need to access invitation only basis. When I joined I had to prove who I was and use an email address they could verify online had been used by me in historic adverts.

 

The local escort boards nearly always have a secret section where you will have numbers and details of prolific offenders, timewasters, non payers etc, I read them and decide which ones I wish to take notice of. I've seen bad feedback placed on there about clients I know to be ok. If I see a posting by an escort who has been visited by a client who didn't pay then I am likely to store his number and ignore calls but if I see one about hygiene or an attitude complaint I'll usually store the number but give that client a go, should he phone me. It might just have been an issue on the day. No escort is going to blacklist you to anyone, they're just using it as an soundbite because they're pissed off.

 

Most escorts will circulate numbers by text to warn other escorts of bad clients. If I get a text message sent then I know there's a distinct problem with the client, especially when it's reports about force, alcohol, drugs, non payment, weapons (like a flick knife in their pocket). In the last year I had a couple of really bad experiences and a few years ago I was thrown down a flight of stairs. These are men who you need to warn others about because if I thought for a second that another escort wasn't alerted and was subsequently attacked ....or worse... I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. Just two months ago, around Christmas, I visited a black guy in the west side of my city and when I went into the bedroom, three other black men were sat waiting for me. I managed to turn around and leave. I alerted a couple of local escorts that should they visit a property in this particular street there's likely to be four men there and not one as arranged. Twenty minutes after leaving the property, another escort phoned me and thanked me for the information because after I had left the property they phoned him to come along and when he mentioned that there was a report circulating that there were four men in the house he hung up. I felt I was walking into a robbery because the guy who booked me asked me three times where I had parked my car.

 

In answer to your question, yes there are many places that escorts can share information and you're unlikely to be blacklisted anywhere to be honest, it's not as if we have a brotherhood code of conduct in operation. If you are listed on one of those sites it's up to the readership to decide whether to take a risk on you and if you know for sure you're on a site I would email the site owner to have your details removed because at the end of the day it is an invasion of privacy.

 

As for escorts writing reviews. I write reviews of clients and experiences on my blog. I never identify who these men are or share that information but the people I write about know I'm talking about them.

 

There's an unwritten rule that clients can write reviews and say what they like about escorts and they can be as nice or as scathing as they like to be but we're not allowed to do it in reverse. That comes with the job unfortunately but there are many reviews out there about undesirable clients and they're in private sections on message boards everywhere. To bury your head and think that escorts don't discuss clients in private is silly, however I often take what I read with a pinch of salt.

[+ quoththeraven]

There is such a site in the US geared toward male escorts that recently expanded to allow female and transgender sex workers to post complaints: http://blacklistedjohn.com/

 

There's also a forum for escorts and agencies using Backpage that also has a client verification function: http://backpageblacklist.com/

 

There's at least one other for the benefit of female escorts.

 

I only know about blacklistedjohn.com, and only because it came up in a discussion. (I knew about it but didn't know it was a public, rather than a private, forum.) I don't have a problem with a private escort-only site where such information is exchanged. Escorts need a place like that to exchange information to keep themselves safe and avoid timewasters, scan artists, and deadbeats. I have a problem with a public site that keeps the provider entirely anonymous while providing as much information about the client as the provider knows and wants to disclose. In addition to name and telephone number, there's a field for employer and for social media presence.

 

Note, this is different from another site that's been discussed here before, the name of which I don't remember but which is similar to blacklistedjohn.com, that is a scam for getting people to pay to remove their names from the list and which might well amount to extortion or racketeering.

 

Escorts are going to exchange information on clients behind their backs, whether it be by phone, e-mail, or website. Clients do the same. For those of you who wonder why this site is less wide open than blacklistedjohn.com and that the playing field is tilted toward the escort, (1) clients hold the ultimate power through their decision to hire or not hire and (2) the greater restrictions are there to make the site someplace escorts see value in and ask their clients to submit reviews to. The Message Center as a whole is geared toward client interests; as long as you don't post a review (or preview a review) here or engage in direct personal attacks, anything goes, including criticism of escorts' appearance and physique that no client would ever want to read of themselves, score-settling, and other things that have in the past caused escorts to stop posting here.

[Amoco]

I completely understand the value and need for escorts to have some mechanism to share concerns related to dangerous, aggressive, unreliable or otherwise problematic clients, as long as there also exists an infrastructure to monitor and vett the reports in the same way that Daddy and his crew do. My understanding, however, is that these sites allow anyone to post anything without any verification or accountability, and if that's true than there is serious risk of being abused by someone who simply doesn't like the cut of your gib and can put up destructive stuff. Does anyone know if that's true?

[BaronArtz]

The information posted on blacklistedjohn.com can very explicit: name, phone number, email address, physical address, place of work ... Here is an example:

 

http://blacklistedjohn.com/showthread.php?tid=587

 

And here is another 'gem' that, sadly, shows a rare glimpse into what service providers have to put up with:

 

"He came for his third visit.

He was high on cocaine and did several lines in my home, without permission.

He used my douche hose without permission and left shit all over my bathtub and bathroom floor.

He paid for the hour and a half he was visiting, then asked for another hour. When the hour was up, he didn't have the money. He promised to get the rest, but when he left, he did not return and did not respond to further communications."

 

(http://blacklistedjohn.com/showthread.php?tid=591&pid=614#pid614)

[BaronArtz]

About accountability and about being destructive: this very site does a good job screening reviews, informing escorts about impending client reviews and giving the escorts a chance to respond. In all honesty though, I have seen more than just a few cases on this site were no formal 'review' is submitted but escorts are critiqued - appearance and performance being the main issues - in the forums. While these are not 'reviews' in the strict sense of the word, the comments on forum threads can be just as damaging as a negative review. I remember a recent thread in which the escort was disclosed with a disparaging description of his willingness (or lack thereof) to 'kiss' or to 'French kiss'. You got to wonder whether the escort referenced in this discussion was even aware. To me, that was worse than even a negative review. And it was all out there, in the forum. Let us not be hypocrites, please.

 

On the forums of 'Muscle Service Station' (http://muscleservice.com/) the client reviews are simply part of the forum discussion, they are not treated separately. There is no oversight whatsoever by the moderators to verify the reviews, nor are the referenced escorts notified. The only thing that is a NO-NO on that site is disclosing the real name and pertinent personal information about escorts. Everything else goes. This is particularly heinous because Muscle Service Station is a closed site (you need to be admitted to post/read). Therefore, the escort in question, unless if he is admitted as a member, is not aware at all of what is being said, nor does he have a chance to respond. I can imagine somebody's frustration when that happens. It seems totally unfair to me.

[+ quoththeraven]

As far as I know, blacklistedjohn.com has no verification process. If it were a closed site with escorts posting under their identities rather than totally anonymously, I'd have no problem with this. After all, how can most of what's posted be verified anyway? As it is, though, I think it's highly problematic for the reasons BaronArtz points out.

 

I haven't gotten the sense that the site has caused problems for clients who post here, although an escort may not cite it as a reason to turn a client down, so the client might not know. I don't know if escorts always check it or only in some instances.

 

As for the inappropriate comments: Those are more a problem with human nature than with the site itself. That's an impossible area to police. It's up to those posting to be kind and considerate in their remarks while still getting valid points across, keeping in mind that the people they are describing, whether anonymous or named, may well read what they wrote about them and what other posters say in response.

[SteveEscort]

I completely understand the value and need for escorts to have some mechanism to share concerns related to dangerous, aggressive, unreliable or otherwise problematic clients, as long as there also exists an infrastructure to monitor and vett the reports in the same way that Daddy and his crew do. My understanding, however, is that these sites allow anyone to post anything without any verification or accountability, and if that's true than there is serious risk of being abused by someone who simply doesn't like the cut of your gib and can put up destructive stuff. Does anyone know if that's true?

 

Ahem.... Not all, most do but not the UK Ugly Mug scheme, it's a legitimate scheme for the protection of sex workers and the information contained in it is not hearsay, accusations or anything, it's actual accounts of malpractice where sex workers are put at risk and as I said its endorsed by the authorities of the United Kingdom

[SteveEscort]

The information posted on blacklistedjohn.com can very explicit: name, phone number, email address, physical address, place of work ... Here is an example:

 

http://blacklistedjohn.com/showthread.php?tid=587

 

And here is another 'gem' that, sadly, shows a rare glimpse into what service providers have to put up with:

 

"He came for his third visit.

He was high on cocaine and did several lines in my home, without permission.

He used my douche hose without permission and left shit all over my bathtub and bathroom floor.

He paid for the hour and a half he was visiting, then asked for another hour. When the hour was up, he didn't have the money. He promised to get the rest, but when he left, he did not return and did not respond to further communications."

 

(http://blacklistedjohn.com/showthread.php?tid=591&pid=614#pid614)

 

 

I've had the mess but been paid but yes I've had that mess and had it left and not mentioned

 

I love it when client says "Gee I think I will become a gay escort it looks so easy and it's so well paid for what you do"

 

They wouldn't last 5 minutes. For a start ...this fantasy you have about being a sex worker, well why don't you just jump to my side of the fence and see very quickly how it becomes all about him and not about you. How could he cope with that. He's on the other side where it's all about him, he contacts me, he pays for my time, we do what he likes. Let's try this on a paid scenario where he's the escort. He doesn't get those luxuries for a start off.......... Could do my job..... Yes of course you couldn't

[BaronArtz]

Ahem.... Not all, most do but not the UK Ugly Mug scheme, it's a legitimate scheme for the protection of sex workers and the information contained in it is not hearsay, accusations or anything, it's actual accounts of malpractice where sex workers are put at risk and as I said its endorsed by the authorities of the United Kingdom

 

I sympathise with your point of view, but I would think it is difficult to prove 'being put at risk', or worse even. For the purposes of the UK Ugly Mug scheme, is it required that the escort go to the police (or another authority) and file a report? I am just curious how it works.

[SteveEscort]

It's run by a charity and they only allow access to the site once they can verify you are a legitimate escort

 

The idea is that it's a go between, you don't have to identify yourself to police.

 

You can report sex worker crimes to the police via the scheme.

 

I was interviewed as part of the pilot scheme by Shelly Stoops who is part of the initial team who set up the scheme (do a Google search on her, shes a sex worker protection pioneer.......she's a personal friend of mine and I know her husband and son too, we have all been for dinner many times and she had been to my home - she really really really looks after sex workers) I was face to face interviewed two years before It went live to ask what I wanted to see from it and to give input to the scheme before it went live. I had an easy track into being accepted into the scheme obviously.

 

The scheme administrators do not allow access until they can verify the escort is genuine. I've no idea how they do that sorry

[Electra225]

I'm told that there is a "Workers' Page" on Men4RentNow that is only for the use of advertisers. I have no way to verify this.