freelancer.com is a scam

I worked and often still work with freelancers there.
Why i call them scam?

After i had a turnover around 20k there i saw a pattern.
There are "freelancers" which apply to a job and of course asking for a milestone, on these milestone freelancer.com make profit.

Now 5 from 7 last Jobs i had the problem that the freelancers accepted the job, i made the milestones, freelancer.com get the % and then baaaammm. NONE OF THESE FREELANCERS HAVE DILIVERED ANY THING.
So that i have get my money back BUT not the freelancer.com %.

Quality example:
We run a coding project with serios skilled devs, as we have looked for fulltime react devs we have looked on freelancer.com.
around 25 applyed. AND SERIOS ALLL SUCKED.
We have give them a simple task super simple for even a junior dev, ALL FAILED.

- Indian and Chinese guys buy russian accounts, to claim they are russian.
Our main dev is russian, as i offered them to have a phonecall after hire they blocked me.

- Horrible quality, we never have saw so poor work.
Looks these days everbody who saw a YT video claims he is a dev.

Last time freelancer.com gived me the recruiter service for free. WOOW thank you.
The recruiter brought me a guy WHO EVEN DONT WORK WITH THE NEEDED SOFTWARE.

Even with higher hourly rates all the same results, even the same people apply just with a higher rate lol.


These is serios hard timewaste.

On Upwork the coding quality also sucks, ONLY for the super high priced guys like 80usd per hour it is "ok". But still overpriced.

Looks it is a serios huge demand on good coders.

Agreed. On Sunday I tried to hire some US or UK native for some voiceovers. What do you think? There were people from Bangladesh, India Indonesia and some other countries who claimed that they are native and they live in the US or UK. I found that Fiverr is way better than Freelancer.

You lost me in the "Indian Dev" section lol.. but it's okay. I know there are lots of scammers who are from India/China. However, there also are good people from there. I am from India and I am quite familiar with React/RN, and I would never scam people. But I guess that's me... I can't say that for everyone.

The thing is, the country does not matter. The dev in question does. You should always try them out before handing a project over. Take it as an interview perhaps.

Gogol said:

The thing is, the country does not matter. The dev in question does. You should always try them out before handing a project over. Take it as an interview perhaps.

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+1 for this comment.

PPH is a better alternative in my opinion. You'll have a hard time shortlsting freelancers on almost any platforms. Assign them a trial task beforehand. This should make things much easier and save time.

yeah fiverr is so far better than this sh*t

If you check very cautiously, you can find the bots of freelancer.com.

Projects will get duplicated in few seconds, under some random new accounts. Bot will even say a hi.
Bots even award you project (without milestone) and if by mistake, you accept the project--boom-- they will deduct 10% from you wallet.

Walt0n said:

Indian and Chinese guys buy russian accounts, to claim they are russian

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PS - I hate such statements.

Gogol said:

You lost me in the "Indian Dev" section lol.. but it's okay. I know there are lots of scammers who are from India/China. However, there also are good people from there. I am from India and I am quite familiar with React/RN, and I would never scam people. But I guess that's me... I can't say that for everyone.

The thing is, the country does not matter. The dev in question does. You should always try them out before handing a project over. Take it as an interview perhaps.

Click to expand...

Thing is though; they're not purposely trying to scam people. They legit think they're devs. I have encountered numerous of them on UpWork and I always get shit quality work. Not saying all Indians/Chinese/Russians are like that, but it's a trend from my experience for sure.

Once I even got a straight copy-pasted code with the website he ripped it from in the code annotations...

Go on Fiverr, for sure you're getting what you want ... only 5$ btw...(sarcasm)...

I think you just had the bad luck of meeting the wrong people. Anyway, I would encourage you to find freelancers on BHW. There are some good coders/programmers around .

HustleTong said:

PPH is a better alternative in my opinion. You'll have a hard time shortlsting freelancers on almost any platforms. Assign them a trial task beforehand. This should make things much easier and save time.

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This.

You probably drive away some talented people who won’t do a trial up front but it’s a small price to pay for all the nonsense you can filter out.

DunderMannen said:

Thing is though; they're not purposely trying to scam people. They legit think they're devs. I have encountered numerous of them on UpWork and I always get shit quality work. Not saying all Indians/Chinese are like that, but it's a trend from my experience for sure.

Once I even got a straight copy-pasted code with the website he ripped it from in the code annotations...

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Lol those are the noobs. I can look myself doing something as stupid as copy pasting code without any modifications, or modifying core code; from like 13-14 years back.

It's really easy to fix though. Just interview the dev like I said earlier, or give him a small task to complete before handing the project. It will be super obvious after that.

Walt0n said:

- Indian and Chinese guys buy russian accounts, to claim they are russian.

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@pofigy
Attack!!

realtimedata said:

PS - I hate such statements.

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Thats not a statement, that is the reality.
I

Of course, we give them all a testing task since the last misstakes with them.
Some say "ok i will do". Then you give them these simple task and they are lost lol.
Some diliver in super horrible quality.

I just think thad good devs dont need to work as freelancer, the demand looks real super huge.

Now the best example, also from india.... (maybe just not lucky with them).
I need a illustration, all good. I pay 100usd, real good price.

Allready 2 days over deadline... and try to talk, and talk and talk...

Here we go again:

realtimedata said:

PS - I hate such statements.

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It may sound racist but i am sure he didn't mean it that way, and most of hes other point are valid to be honest.

Work rates are different in every country, claiming you are from another country to charge more, is a scam, maybe a minor one, but still a scam.

He tried to confirm they are russian, i am sure he did that because he suspected they are not, and not because he will work only with russians.

my point is, that there is no racism in that statement in my opinion, he is just giving us a heads up and its good to know.

The worst freelancer site by a long way.. quality of hires there is terrible, stick to Upwork.

the cheap price equates to cheap quality.

As a developer on those platforms it's hilarious to me. People hire these shit devs only to realize that they're getting such awful code that it's not working or unmaintainable. And then they hire me to fix it lol.

If you want "serious" work done, you need to pay a "serious" price

Gogol said:

Lol those are the noobs. I can look myself doing something as stupid as copy pasting code without any modifications, or modifying core code; from like 13-14 years back.

It's really easy to fix though. Just interview the dev like I said earlier, or give him a small task to complete before handing the project. It will be super obvious after that.

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I mean - if I want something done, that means I can't do it myself. Luckily, I'm a dev myself so I only hire them for small tasks. But how would a non-dev know what's good work and not after giving them a quick task?

DunderMannen said:

I mean - if I want something done, that means I can't do it myself. Luckily, I'm a dev myself so I only hire them for small tasks. But how would a non-dev know what's good work and not after giving them a quick task?

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That's a big problem in software industry. You need managers who know they are doing.. and then, you need managers to manage the managers... lol.. it goes on and on and on..

I don't like freelancers because every project that shows up is claimed by people who don't know what to do. They join into all projects and waste people's money and time.