Due to the lack of responses from the ME site, I have branches out to some of the indies and visiting providers.  Though a bit speedier than I would prefer, I have at least gotten some responses and action from them.   Now, I tried to book through a visitor through P411 and she asked me for references since I was on the Blacklist!   WTF?!?  I’d like to know who put me on there and why. I had thought that I had had pretty good connections and meetings with the providers I had seen.  Anyone know of the Blacklist or had similar experiences?

As far as I know though, there is no THE blacklist.  It's just any site where providers put down the info on a client they claim has behaved badly.  Unsurprisingly, clients are seldom in the know on these things and you are not the first client to be surprised by such a thing happening.  From the client viewpoint, the downside is you don't know this has happened, you don't know why (unless you did behave badly), and there is no apparent way to object to or refute what someone else said you did, which may very well not be true.  Guys aren't the only ones who can be vindictive.  You are pretty much dependent on other providers to speak up on your behalf  You could ask the provider you contacted on P411 what the problem was but she may not be willing to share any info with you.

That being said, as was discussed recently, providers do talk about us and review us, and that provides valuable benefits for them as it does for us.  There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a blacklist.

Ladies, this would be a golden opportunity to hear from some of you about blacklists and provide more information on how they operate, etc and what a client faced with the sort of situation described here can best handle it.  I know I'd love to know more.

There are multiple blacklists out there and yes, providers can put anyone on there if they feel they've been wronged. One lady might take offense to something that another might not care about, it's very subjective.  

But a name on a blacklist comes with an explanation of what happened, too.

So it's up to the next provider to decide what to do.  

Example:  I had a recent new client contact me and I saw that 3 years ago he was put on a blacklist for wasting  time, not showing up, etc.  

Because this guy was pretty young, I gave him a chance (thought maybe he matured since then) but asked for a deposit (unusual for me) once we decided on a date/time, to confirm the meeting. He said yes, but then didn't send the deposit and basically disappeared.

It depends on what the reason was, for the person being put on the blacklist, for me.

You might be surprised by the reasons that it could happen.