6 ms·

Stay away from Freelancer.com They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the

by lsmod 9y ago

Stay away from Freelancer.com They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other. I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they suddenly reversed both payments at the end of the last month. They should validate/verify payments before accepting/processing them, not after a month after completing a project. Basically, i just did a job for free. no one's going to pay for my time. they have 0 seller protection. BTW, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect. [0]https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png

omegote 9y ago
I think Upwork is a little more protective in that aspect. You can clearly see from the beginning whether the client has a verified payment method.
- lsmod 9y ago
  Same with Freelancer.com, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect. [0]https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png
- shock 9y ago
  I didn't find Upwork's contract without signing up, but before Elance merged with oDesk to become Upwork they had pretty onerous terms in their services agreement⁰: 9.Indemnification Contractor will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Client against any damage, cost, loss or expense arising from a claim, suit or proceeding brought against Client (i) alleging that any Work Product infringes upon any Intellectual Property Rights, (ii) alleging that any Work Product misappropriates any trade secrets, of any third party, or (iii) arising from Contractor's breach of the terms of this Agreement. I read that to mean that if a client I did work for is sued for IP infringement, even if no IP infringement occurs, I need to pay for the client's defense out of my own pocket. ⓪ - https://www.elance.com/p/legal/independent-contractor-services-agreement.pdf https://www.elance.com/p/legal/independent-contractor-servic...
  - everdev 9y ago
    Not a lawyer, but I think you're correct. I wouldn't sign this. (iii) puts the burden on the client to prove that you breached the contract. So, that clause is reasonable even if it is burdensome. For, (i) and (ii) the word "alleging" is problematic for me. Anyone can sue you alleging anything. Yes, you can recover court costs and lawyer fees if you win, but most patent trolls try to out-expense you and figure you'll settle at some point. Either way, always do work and sign contracts as a legal entity, not an individual. Much better to lose your company than lose your house. More detail: https://www.shouldisign.com/what-is-indemnification https://www.shouldisign.com/what-is-indemnification
    - jtmb 9y ago
      Thanks for this domain, very helpful.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- HaoZeke 9y ago
  UpWork is completely biased towards their work force. They treat freelancers like shit and the client is always right. The rating system makes it impossible to have any benefit from conflict resolution. Then again some of the people hiring there are really professional. I was scammed by some guy who gave me a 1 star for overworking me and exploiting me, in spite of showing evidence that his work was completed (and much more) his rating was not even exempted from my total. Suffice to say it makes it hard to work. Luckily it was my 6th job and I had other 5 stars.....
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    So basically they are paypal and ebay combined in business model and should have equally crappy reputations?
    - muddi900 9y ago
      And Amazon. And every other company that is dependent on the faith people put in their arbitrary ratings. I think we are near critical mass of people realizing that online reviews are bullshit.
_wmd 9y ago
Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that would be worth you time. In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt to you.
- twic 9y ago
  A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon after that.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Can you share more? Sounds interesting, especially as I'm reading your comment inside a Tesco store.
    - sgt101 9y ago
      In big companies there are often things like this, if you have 5K people working in finance or procurement and 1 in 100.. and you run it for 10 years... well you can see where this goes with the tail cases. Things like the person handling the case has a break down, or someone didn't put a transaction lock in the workflow, or two accounts got set up because there was a delay and someone helpfully restarted the set up process.
    - twic 9y ago
      Not much, i'm afraid - i can't even remember who it was, it was a tale told in a pub, i think. They'd done some work for Tesco, sent an invoice, Tesco messed them around trying not to pay it, so they brought a case in court, Tesco didn't bother sending anyone to contest it, and this person got the winding-up order. When that is issued, official letters go to the directors, and apparently that got their attention.
      - 9y ago
joering2 9y ago
Sorry to hear you worked for free; noone likes that. I feel for you and had much more problems with freelancer than with upwork. Anyways, depending of how much money they kept from you, you might want to seek a lawyer help or see if Australian Division of preventing Cyber Fraud will be willing to look into it. Freelancer is trading on the Australian Securities and is not some pops&moms Nigerian LTD corp. Good luck to you.
cgb223 9y ago
You should sue them They owe you money, they didn’t pay. A lawyer would love this case
- revmoo 9y ago
  Right? This isn't a customer service issue, this is a legal issue.
anonymous5133 9y ago
Probably used fake credit card numbers or something. That's why these freelancing sites should always use cryptocurrency where the transaction can never be reversed.
gitanovic 9y ago
this to mefeels like an unpaid advertisement from freelance.com reason being that the report feels bogus, and is posted were lots of skilled labor can be found
- lsmod 9y ago
  This is a legitimate claim. You might wanna take a look at this[0]. I've blocked out the project title and the buyer's name, becasue i don't want my real name associate with my HN handle. Dark Red: Buyer's Name Turquoise: Project Title [0]https://i.imgur.com/LpTYbse.jpg https://i.imgur.com/LpTYbse.jpg P.S. Not sure how you got the "unpaid advertisement" idea from my original comment. That is a complete opposite of an advertisement. However, it advertises the fact that you can get work done for free. Maybe that's what you are trying to say :)
emotf 9y ago
Ismod, sorry to hear of your experience - but I have to say that your story is not the first I have heard. Reading this thread and many others like it over the last years I have experienced the rise and decline of the marketplace platforms but I think I have the answer. First I'll give you some background: I have been working with remote developers since before 2003 paying our first Russian developer using Western Union transfers via the post office. We have used and (mostly) enjoyed at different times freelancer sites like rent-a-coder, odesk, elance, over the years. Upwork upset a lot of people early last year when they killed off our beloved Elance and raised their fees, then started charging hirers as well. At this time I began to question what I was actually using these platforms for? I had over 20 developers all around the world, although I had originally sourced some developers on elance, I sourced most myself from AngelList jobs, LinkedIn, Facebook groups and other channels. I had been onboarding them on Upwork (and copping the increased rate!) so I could have all the jobs in one place and to simply pay them automatically. I liked the tracking features: as although I had huge chunks of money coming out my account each week, it gave peace of mind as at least my developers knew I could dispute charges if they spent too many hours on Facebook ;) Apart from fees I found the attempts to keep users on the platform annoying and childish. I just wanted to work with my devs on Skype, Slack, email not in their broken site (which was often down at in opportune times). This got me thinking that the whole process around marketplaces was overdue for disruption. It served us well; however, as many of you pointed out you shouldn’t rely solely on these platforms. So if you found a job yourself, you don’t need the marketplaces, plus you should be able to create the job yourself instead of waiting for your client. And it came to me. Instead of marketplaces, we need a direct peer-to-peer platform to simply create a smart contact, with payment and send to the other party. Get all the security of a marketplace: i.e. escrow, tracking, proof of work but without the marketplace fees. This thread is timely as it explains the pain we are solving at http://payninja.co http://payninja.co. We are in beta and rolling out new features over the coming weeks: cryptocurrency payments mean you will be able to pay or be paid anywhere in the world. Talking to developers in all counties we are getting excellent feedback, we are seeing that the unbundling of marketplaces back to realworld interactions is the way forward. Just to clarify, in relation to your particular case, as we are not a marketplace the sources of trust are real, meaning: who referred the client to you, their LinkedIn profile or social network/community where you met them (as opposed to a subjective rating). You would be protected by secured funds in escrow managed for auto release by smart contract. The client would not be hidden behind an anonymous pseudonym that can vanish from the platform without warning and if they did vanish from the internet!.. the funds would be in your account. I hope this gives hope to anyone frustrated with the current state of the freelancing landscape.

by lsmod 9y ago

omegote 9y ago

I think Upwork is a little more protective in that aspect. You can clearly see from the beginning whether the client has a verified payment method.

lsmod 9y ago
Same with Freelancer.com, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect. [0]https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png
shock 9y ago
I didn't find Upwork's contract without signing up, but before Elance merged with oDesk to become Upwork they had pretty onerous terms in their services agreement⁰: 9.Indemnification Contractor will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Client against any damage, cost, loss or expense arising from a claim, suit or proceeding brought against Client (i) alleging that any Work Product infringes upon any Intellectual Property Rights, (ii) alleging that any Work Product misappropriates any trade secrets, of any third party, or (iii) arising from Contractor's breach of the terms of this Agreement. I read that to mean that if a client I did work for is sued for IP infringement, even if no IP infringement occurs, I need to pay for the client's defense out of my own pocket. ⓪ - https://www.elance.com/p/legal/independent-contractor-services-agreement.pdf https://www.elance.com/p/legal/independent-contractor-servic...
- everdev 9y ago
  Not a lawyer, but I think you're correct. I wouldn't sign this. (iii) puts the burden on the client to prove that you breached the contract. So, that clause is reasonable even if it is burdensome. For, (i) and (ii) the word "alleging" is problematic for me. Anyone can sue you alleging anything. Yes, you can recover court costs and lawyer fees if you win, but most patent trolls try to out-expense you and figure you'll settle at some point. Either way, always do work and sign contracts as a legal entity, not an individual. Much better to lose your company than lose your house. More detail: https://www.shouldisign.com/what-is-indemnification https://www.shouldisign.com/what-is-indemnification
  - jtmb 9y ago
    Thanks for this domain, very helpful.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
HaoZeke 9y ago
UpWork is completely biased towards their work force. They treat freelancers like shit and the client is always right. The rating system makes it impossible to have any benefit from conflict resolution. Then again some of the people hiring there are really professional. I was scammed by some guy who gave me a 1 star for overworking me and exploiting me, in spite of showing evidence that his work was completed (and much more) his rating was not even exempted from my total. Suffice to say it makes it hard to work. Luckily it was my 6th job and I had other 5 stars.....
- paulie_a 9y ago
  So basically they are paypal and ebay combined in business model and should have equally crappy reputations?
  - muddi900 9y ago
    And Amazon. And every other company that is dependent on the faith people put in their arbitrary ratings. I think we are near critical mass of people realizing that online reviews are bullshit.

_wmd 9y ago

Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that would be worth you time. In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt to you.

twic 9y ago
A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon after that.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  Can you share more? Sounds interesting, especially as I'm reading your comment inside a Tesco store.
  - sgt101 9y ago
    In big companies there are often things like this, if you have 5K people working in finance or procurement and 1 in 100.. and you run it for 10 years... well you can see where this goes with the tail cases. Things like the person handling the case has a break down, or someone didn't put a transaction lock in the workflow, or two accounts got set up because there was a delay and someone helpfully restarted the set up process.
  - twic 9y ago
    Not much, i'm afraid - i can't even remember who it was, it was a tale told in a pub, i think. They'd done some work for Tesco, sent an invoice, Tesco messed them around trying not to pay it, so they brought a case in court, Tesco didn't bother sending anyone to contest it, and this person got the winding-up order. When that is issued, official letters go to the directors, and apparently that got their attention.
    - 9y ago

joering2 9y ago

Sorry to hear you worked for free; noone likes that. I feel for you and had much more problems with freelancer than with upwork. Anyways, depending of how much money they kept from you, you might want to seek a lawyer help or see if Australian Division of preventing Cyber Fraud will be willing to look into it. Freelancer is trading on the Australian Securities and is not some pops&moms Nigerian LTD corp. Good luck to you.

cgb223 9y ago

You should sue them They owe you money, they didn’t pay. A lawyer would love this case

revmoo 9y ago
Right? This isn't a customer service issue, this is a legal issue.

anonymous5133 9y ago

Probably used fake credit card numbers or something. That's why these freelancing sites should always use cryptocurrency where the transaction can never be reversed.

gitanovic 9y ago

this to mefeels like an unpaid advertisement from freelance.com reason being that the report feels bogus, and is posted were lots of skilled labor can be found

lsmod 9y ago
This is a legitimate claim. You might wanna take a look at this[0]. I've blocked out the project title and the buyer's name, becasue i don't want my real name associate with my HN handle. Dark Red: Buyer's Name Turquoise: Project Title [0]https://i.imgur.com/LpTYbse.jpg https://i.imgur.com/LpTYbse.jpg P.S. Not sure how you got the "unpaid advertisement" idea from my original comment. That is a complete opposite of an advertisement. However, it advertises the fact that you can get work done for free. Maybe that's what you are trying to say :)

emotf 9y ago

Ismod, sorry to hear of your experience - but I have to say that your story is not the first I have heard. Reading this thread and many others like it over the last years I have experienced the rise and decline of the marketplace platforms but I think I have the answer. First I'll give you some background: I have been working with remote developers since before 2003 paying our first Russian developer using Western Union transfers via the post office. We have used and (mostly) enjoyed at different times freelancer sites like rent-a-coder, odesk, elance, over the years. Upwork upset a lot of people early last year when they killed off our beloved Elance and raised their fees, then started charging hirers as well. At this time I began to question what I was actually using these platforms for? I had over 20 developers all around the world, although I had originally sourced some developers on elance, I sourced most myself from AngelList jobs, LinkedIn, Facebook groups and other channels. I had been onboarding them on Upwork (and copping the increased rate!) so I could have all the jobs in one place and to simply pay them automatically. I liked the tracking features: as although I had huge chunks of money coming out my account each week, it gave peace of mind as at least my developers knew I could dispute charges if they spent too many hours on Facebook ;) Apart from fees I found the attempts to keep users on the platform annoying and childish. I just wanted to work with my devs on Skype, Slack, email not in their broken site (which was often down at in opportune times). This got me thinking that the whole process around marketplaces was overdue for disruption. It served us well; however, as many of you pointed out you shouldn’t rely solely on these platforms. So if you found a job yourself, you don’t need the marketplaces, plus you should be able to create the job yourself instead of waiting for your client. And it came to me. Instead of marketplaces, we need a direct peer-to-peer platform to simply create a smart contact, with payment and send to the other party. Get all the security of a marketplace: i.e. escrow, tracking, proof of work but without the marketplace fees. This thread is timely as it explains the pain we are solving at http://payninja.co http://payninja.co. We are in beta and rolling out new features over the coming weeks: cryptocurrency payments mean you will be able to pay or be paid anywhere in the world. Talking to developers in all counties we are getting excellent feedback, we are seeing that the unbundling of marketplaces back to realworld interactions is the way forward. Just to clarify, in relation to your particular case, as we are not a marketplace the sources of trust are real, meaning: who referred the client to you, their LinkedIn profile or social network/community where you met them (as opposed to a subjective rating). You would be protected by secured funds in escrow managed for auto release by smart contract. The client would not be hidden behind an anonymous pseudonym that can vanish from the platform without warning and if they did vanish from the internet!.. the funds would be in your account. I hope this gives hope to anyone frustrated with the current state of the freelancing landscape.