Stay away from freelancer.com

matt broody said:

agree, freelanceis bad one there are quite good alternatives around like rentacoder( now vWorker )

Click to expand...

hello i think so freelancer is acquiring vworker
An important message from Ian Ippolito, CEO of vWorker:We are currently migrating all vWorker member accounts, balances and projects over to the Freelancer network. The migration is due for completion by 9:00am EDT on Wednesday November 21st, 2012.(it might be done idk) You will receive an email with complete information on how to log in when the migration is complete.Have any questions? Find out more in the vWorker migration FAQ or login to a limited version of vWorker. (its on the vworker site)

mattbarrie said:

Hi DJP

I have looked into the matter and you are indeed correct. I have also reprimanded the ad sales team for double booking you. Unfortunately that other customer in SEO has booked out the category until April 8.
I can do one of the following for you:
1) Refund your money in full
2) Give you two weeks in another category

Please let me know what you would like to do.

Click to expand...

Well we already waiting for refund around 2-3 weeks. I have PMed you our paypal, so you can clear this.

Freelancer is More Buyer Friendly than say seller friendly they need to balance both. I would try Outsourcerr(dhot khom) in its place

mattbarrie said:

Hi Guys

I'm Matt Barrie, the CEO of Freelancer. Someone passed on this thread and I though I'd respond.

I see a few of you have had some issues and I'm here to answer any questions you may have and help with any support or billing issues.

Fire away. If you supply your username it will make things easy to fix quickly.

Regards
Matt

Click to expand...

Okay then. Why are you not allowing me to use my paypal for one time payment and instead, you are asking me to give you full authority? I am short of $6 and I want to pay my programmer but you are not letting me do that unless I give you full authority to auto-charge my paypal account... That is scary as hell....

Another thing is, how come I owe $10 for membership when it's been a while that I haven't logged into the site? Did I ever said I want to upgrade? Heck I don't even knew that you changed to paid membership...

my username is "myseoblog". I cancelled my subscription because I don't know what else can you charge... now I can't send even $6...

I was happy in vWorker, then really sad in freelancer... for a while. Now I am kinda happy again.

There are some issues, but all of them are fixable. For example

1) Support! you don't know if the chat is an advanced bot or an human (maybe skynet already started and it is answering in freelancer).
2) No direct pay with PayPal, I can cancel the subscription but why I can't quickly pay ONCE?
3) Some kind of tutorial or something to force the employers to make the milestones, there are too much employers without noticing this is required and freelancer is keeping the money safe NOT the worker.

I lost around $20 usd learning this stuff and I was pissed as hell daily with freelancer, you try to contact support and they don't help in anything and take forever to answer, and they ask you at the end of the chat, "Can I help you with another thing?", not sure if is to piss you more or is another default canned answer. Now, doing the correct steps, I am feeling ok again with the site, even I got a real human in support once with some guy (I wrote back support that day to say thanks to that guy!). Support is really important, I worked like a year in vWorker and the site was the crappiest website you can imagine, but the humans in there were helpful as hell, you felt like somebody really cared about your issues with a job and they had the power to help you: Here we have advanced bots heuristically chosing a canned answer based on the keywords you type, I am sure this is the number one complain for every freelancer.

Kudos to mattbarrie anyway, directly facing complains is admirable.

Hi DJP

I got your PM, your refund is being processed and will be back to your funding source shortly.

Hi SolidSnake

Actually your account was at 0 not -$10. I have refunded the only membership fee on the account which was $4.95. You can either go to the deposit page to make a deposit one time in a number of ways that don't require a billing agreement.

Regards
Matt

Hi Eried

Thanks for the feedback
1) They are all human! Skynet hasn't been developed yet. There's about 140 in the support team right now.
2) I believe that this is the same as our competitors.
3) I agree there's lots of things that can be done here and we're working on several right now to increase the awareness and use of milestones. Don't start on a project unless they are in place for your own protection.

If you let me know your username I can fix up a credit on your account for the $20 or so

Regards
Matt

Thats very strange though.. I've also heard that complains from my friends ..
that sucks. internet resource like freelancer should do that to his users

Thanks. But since you are not allowing me to make one time payment, I am happy to leave freelancer.com after my pending project is done by my contractor... I am not allowing anyone to automatically deduct my account anymore unless for specified subscriptions....

mattbarrie said:

Hi SolidSnake

Actually your account was at 0 not -$10. I have refunded the only membership fee on the account which was $4.95. You can either go to the deposit page to make a deposit one time in a number of ways that don't require a billing agreement.

Regards
Matt

Click to expand...

yes even i had experienced and lost my 150 usd into vein.
please stay away from freelancer and even i contacted support but they refused me
the money never comes

BE AWARE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm new on this forum and this is my first post (after introduction) and I would like to share my experience about Freelancer.

My name is Mladen Djukic (same username on Freelancer too, also my real name), I'm from Belgrade, Serbia and I'm a graphic designer for last two and a half years. Since December 2010 I am registered on Freelancer. For almost two years everything was ok, 15 jobs completed, stayed in touch with few employers that I still work with today (out of Freelancer), payments on Freelancer were regular and on time...like i said everything seems to be fine...since two months ago.

At Saturday, November 17th 2012, I've won the contest on Freelancer (Logo design for iisoft, ID: 11325). Contest was guaranteed, prize was 490$. Same day when contest holder chosen me as a winner I have sent files to him, same day contest holder transferred money to my Freelancer account. Same day I've even withdrawn money to my debit card (status pending, for almost 24 hours)...suddenly tomorrow there was no any money on my account, my balance even was -40/50$, because of Freelancer's fee of 10%...after few emails they refunded 10%, but the rest of the prize, of course no.
So, what's happening?
Contest was deleted, as well as employer's profile. First step, contacting Freelancer support... Support suggested me that I should contact employer directly, which I did. He was suspicious (?) and they said that money is reversed to him. I've contacted him, he replied me back (which I didn't expect cause they told me that he is a fraud) surprised by Freelancer action and deleted account. Obviously, he's not a fraud...if it is, he wouldn't reply to my email...pretty simple and obvious. Is he or not, that I'll never know and that shouldn't be my concern...I don't know that person and I don't have anything with him, he didn't take money from my account, Freelancer is. So, Freelancer don't want to refund me, nor the employer (probably)...and I'll repeat, contest was GUARANTEED.

After tons of emails, tickets and complains I didn't get right answer nor my prize back. Freelancer's Support is a pure rubbish, they send copied texts from Terms & Conditions or something like that. Of course, no one from Freelancer will ever admit system failure (if it is failure, if not pure stealing).

Who knows, maybe that's the best thing that happened to me...after that I've started on other website and won 3 contest in 1 month, and earned almost 1000$.

Yes, Freelancer is a big scam, avoid them!

I have used the site .. and i never had a problem ....

Its funny i see better service providers on fiverr these days that on freelancer, lol I am completelly off freelancer for a year or so. The only thing i like is the milestone/disoute system they have and invoices. So when you work with a new stranger oversee it is better to run a project through freelancer to protect both of you, then when trust comes into play direct contact is much better.

I also have bad experience in freelancer. Most of the clients are scam and freelancer do not have a security for the service provider. The projects that I worked before they just go away after I sent my completed task. I worked for almost 4 days without having a good rest then they just go away and freelancer just ignore this issue. This is insane lol!

Hey solidsnake, You can remove the payment contract every time

mattbarrie said:

Hi Eried

Thanks for the feedback
1) They are all human! Skynet hasn't been developed yet. There's about 140 in the support team right now.
2) I believe that this is the same as our competitors.
3) I agree there's lots of things that can be done here and we're working on several right now to increase the awareness and use of milestones. Don't start on a project unless they are in place for your own protection.

If you let me know your username I can fix up a credit on your account for the $20 or so

Regards
Matt

Click to expand...

Wow! thanks for the answer. My username is the same "eried"

I am sure it is part of the learning process, but maybe you have the power to fix something in my account, hahaha because I think I will never have the credits needed to chat directly with you thru the awards bonus:

-Can you delete project 2671139 ? It is an old project, already paid but in the import process got screwed, employer and I try to contract support but they say we have to re-award the project and re-pay the fees to cleanly finish it because there are some money pending for me inside (what is nonsense because I already received all in vWorker!).

The 20 usd lost I count are because 4080180 (my mistake, employer never created a milestone and I trusted him, so worked for free) and 4078084 (it was a cloned project, employed was unsure about how freelancer work and I got fees charged). But I don't really feel these as a loss, more like as a learning. But if you can fix that other one, my completion % will rise finally to 100%!

i really believe in freelancer! it's an amazing website but it's very unfair with freelancer....
last month a bulgarian man have opened a project for 1500 eur and this was awarded to me...
but he disappeared and I had to pay 150 eur for fees.. was on christmas and i was working hard.. you know...
i've try to speak with the support but nobody help me.
this is very unfair
i' have payed more than i earned!

Haven't had any answer before, so let me ask you "mattbarrie" (he is not that polite; not a long time ago referred to people criticizing his company as "crazies" and "peanut gallery") again:

1. Why is your company outing customer's data on purpose? (including: name, surname, nicknames and country)
2. Why has your company been using user history to blackmail your customer?
3. Why is your company engaging in slander? (the paypal part, the conspiracy part, the traffic part...)
...

The list of such questions is quite long...

May i recommend Elance?
I had some good experience with them.

wappi said:

May i recommend Elance?
I had some good experience with them.

Click to expand...

You can't compare any site with FreeLancer. As I said I was happy in vWorker, then very sad in Freelancer, then happy again. It is different, sure, but the amount of work to do is amazing and you can't find that in other place. Freelancer can be the heaven if these couple of issues everyone say are fixed.