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Hello I am the Chief Executive Officer of Freelancer.com and I have personally investigated this situation. While I sympathise with Dustin's situation, he has

Hello I am the Chief Executive Officer of Freelancer.com and I have personally investigated this situation. While I sympathise with Dustin's situation, he has failed to complete our Know Your Customer (KYC) process, which involves the provision of bona fide photo identification. We take the security of our marketplace and the protection of our users very seriously and have robust checks and balances in our anti-fraud procedures. I have looked at all the details for this case, and our support team have done exactly the right thing in this instance. We have decided to refund all funds associated with the project back to the employer's credit card (who is also located nearby in New York) as well as all fees associated with this. The employer has been called and informed that he will need to pay Dustin directly. We will also be investigating the nature of this project further. Thank you also to those of you that took the time to email me to bring this personally to my attention. My email address is matt@freelancer.com and I am happy to receive emails about any issue, even if it is to just drop me a note saying hello. Regards Matt EDIT: Let me add that we accept driver's licenses as identification: http://www.freelancer.com/news/articles-verification-309.html http://www.freelancer.com/news/articles-verification-309.htm...

elleferrer 12y ago
Thank you for taking the time to take care of this issue, Matt.
- waps 12y ago
  How exactly did he handle this issue ?
  - dpacmittal 12y ago
    Form-letter reply to a form-letter response.
  - elleferrer 12y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657942
angilly 12y ago
I appreciate that you're here to answer questions, Matt. Two questions if you're still around: 1. Are you saying that Dustin lied about submitting a drivers license? His blog post clearly states that he submitted a drivers license. So are you saying he is lying? 2. Why do you allow clients to pay you before you've properly identified the freelancer? That process seems completely backwards and asking for trouble. I would expect that a freelancer would need to verify their identify before they are allowed to even be listed in the marketplace, way before you would accept funds on their behalf.
- mattbarrie 12y ago
  Hi Angilly 1) I cannot comment on the specifics as I hope you can understand. 2) We don't ID check all the accounts at signup. That would be logistically impossible. We have 11 million users. Regards Matt
  - kylemclaren 12y ago
    Matt, I refuse to use Freelancer or endorse it until the murky issue regarding the drivers licence is cleared up. Why was it not accepted as valid identification?
  - angilly 12y ago
    That's a very poor answer, Matt. The audience here is a hell of a lot smarter than that (and right now, very skeptical of your business). Showing up here was a nice gesture, but if you're not going to answer questions thoughtfully, it's not going to help you.
    - richardw 12y ago
      By specifying exactly what the verification issue is they likely break trust with users and potentially expose themselves legally.
      - ForHackernews 12y ago
        You're doing it wrong, and we're not going to tell you what you're doing wrong.
cardiffspaceman 12y ago
You have written this several times but the empirical evidence is that you don't accept them, you seem to have vehemently and repeatedly refused to accept this client's drivers license. Do you not acknowledge that the client's DL was refused? Do you not see how saying "we accept DL's" several times has not helped your reputation at all?
richardw 12y ago
Can you generalise the solution so other Dustins don't have to resort to online fora in future? You seem to have many reasons to hang onto cash while people can't pay their rent. If the customer is happy with the milestone the money is no longer yours and your TOS are now an impediment to reasonable business.
whitewhidow 12y ago
you matt you lying * of FREELANCER YOU ARE FULL OF CRAP, YOU HAVE BEEN IGNORING ME FOR A WEEK NOW, REFUSING TO LET ME WITHDRAW MY MONEY FROM MY ACCOUNT, CLAIMING THAT YOU ARE INVESTIGATING MY EMPLOYERn WICH HAS SENT YOU ALL THE REQUIRED DOCS SEVERAL TIME, JUST TO BE IGNORED, YOU ARE LYING TO ME? ABOUT HIS ACTIONS, AND ARE LYING TO HIM, ABOUT MY ACTIONS, YOU OWE ME 600$ AFTER MY PROJECT WAS FINISHED, AND PAYED INTO MY ACCOUNT, YOU REFUSE MY PAYMENT, ANDDO NOT EVEN INFORM MY EMPLOYER. YOU ARE IGNORING ME ON EMAIL AND TWITTER, YOUR COMPANY IS A BIG HUGE SCAM !!!! USERNAME ON FREELANCER WHITEWHIDOW !!!
- mattbarrie 12y ago
  Whitewhidow. I looked into your situation and it has been resolved at our end now.
ilaksh 12y ago
He provided a driver's license, obviously, and you obviously are pretending to "answer" without addressing that. I believe based on this case and many other cases coming up in Google and similar threads that there is a large amount of evidence that Freelancer.com is systematically and deliberately defrauding freelancers and/or outright stealing their money. Or in some cases withholding it long enough to accumulate interest on the money if it can't be stolen outright. Based on the outpouring of responses to this case, I am certain there will finally be a number of very serious lawsuits. I am quite glad you decided to come out in the open and expose your fraud to the Hacker News community directly. It will make the litigation much easier.

elleferrer 12y ago

Thank you for taking the time to take care of this issue, Matt.

waps 12y ago
How exactly did he handle this issue ?
- dpacmittal 12y ago
  Form-letter reply to a form-letter response.
- elleferrer 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657942

angilly 12y ago

I appreciate that you're here to answer questions, Matt. Two questions if you're still around: 1. Are you saying that Dustin lied about submitting a drivers license? His blog post clearly states that he submitted a drivers license. So are you saying he is lying? 2. Why do you allow clients to pay you before you've properly identified the freelancer? That process seems completely backwards and asking for trouble. I would expect that a freelancer would need to verify their identify before they are allowed to even be listed in the marketplace, way before you would accept funds on their behalf.

mattbarrie 12y ago
Hi Angilly 1) I cannot comment on the specifics as I hope you can understand. 2) We don't ID check all the accounts at signup. That would be logistically impossible. We have 11 million users. Regards Matt
- kylemclaren 12y ago
  Matt, I refuse to use Freelancer or endorse it until the murky issue regarding the drivers licence is cleared up. Why was it not accepted as valid identification?
- angilly 12y ago
  That's a very poor answer, Matt. The audience here is a hell of a lot smarter than that (and right now, very skeptical of your business). Showing up here was a nice gesture, but if you're not going to answer questions thoughtfully, it's not going to help you.
  - richardw 12y ago
    By specifying exactly what the verification issue is they likely break trust with users and potentially expose themselves legally.
    - ForHackernews 12y ago
      You're doing it wrong, and we're not going to tell you what you're doing wrong.

cardiffspaceman 12y ago

You have written this several times but the empirical evidence is that you don't accept them, you seem to have vehemently and repeatedly refused to accept this client's drivers license. Do you not acknowledge that the client's DL was refused? Do you not see how saying "we accept DL's" several times has not helped your reputation at all?

richardw 12y ago

Can you generalise the solution so other Dustins don't have to resort to online fora in future? You seem to have many reasons to hang onto cash while people can't pay their rent. If the customer is happy with the milestone the money is no longer yours and your TOS are now an impediment to reasonable business.

whitewhidow 12y ago

you matt you lying * of FREELANCER YOU ARE FULL OF CRAP, YOU HAVE BEEN IGNORING ME FOR A WEEK NOW, REFUSING TO LET ME WITHDRAW MY MONEY FROM MY ACCOUNT, CLAIMING THAT YOU ARE INVESTIGATING MY EMPLOYERn WICH HAS SENT YOU ALL THE REQUIRED DOCS SEVERAL TIME, JUST TO BE IGNORED, YOU ARE LYING TO ME? ABOUT HIS ACTIONS, AND ARE LYING TO HIM, ABOUT MY ACTIONS, YOU OWE ME 600$ AFTER MY PROJECT WAS FINISHED, AND PAYED INTO MY ACCOUNT, YOU REFUSE MY PAYMENT, ANDDO NOT EVEN INFORM MY EMPLOYER. YOU ARE IGNORING ME ON EMAIL AND TWITTER, YOUR COMPANY IS A BIG HUGE SCAM !!!! USERNAME ON FREELANCER WHITEWHIDOW !!!

mattbarrie 12y ago
Whitewhidow. I looked into your situation and it has been resolved at our end now.

ilaksh 12y ago

He provided a driver's license, obviously, and you obviously are pretending to "answer" without addressing that. I believe based on this case and many other cases coming up in Google and similar threads that there is a large amount of evidence that Freelancer.com is systematically and deliberately defrauding freelancers and/or outright stealing their money. Or in some cases withholding it long enough to accumulate interest on the money if it can't be stolen outright. Based on the outpouring of responses to this case, I am certain there will finally be a number of very serious lawsuits. I am quite glad you decided to come out in the open and expose your fraud to the Hacker News community directly. It will make the litigation much easier.