
Freelancer.com scammed me What should I do? - ahmedaly
Well..
I have been member there since 2009.. and I pay them more than $700 per year in fees..<p>Suddenly they suspended my account because an employer filed a report against me.
I contacted them and they agreed to restore my account.<p>Less than 24 hours later, they suspended my account again after they agreed to restore it!<p>I kept messaging them about the reason.. they sent me a fake reason that the acceptance rate for the work I deliver to employer is very low and that employers dont accept THE COMPLETED WORK I deliver to them!<p>I replied to them and asked them to prove it, and told them that all the work I COMPLETE AND DELIVER is accepted, except very few cases that I usually solve friendly and without their dispute system!<p>They replied again back and told me that the reason is not that, and the reason is that I abused their dispute system again!<p>I replied back and asked them for a proof! I did not really do it and asked them for a proof that I really abused their dispute system!<p>It has been 3 days and they don't respond!
Employers contacted me and I had to cancel 3 projects, 2 of them were very urgent for my clients and caused frustration to them!<p>I had to cancel it, because the money associated with these projects exist on freelancer website's milestone system!<p>Of course I canceled these milesetone (escrow) payments because I have no guarantee that my account will be restored and can't risk having such a loss!<p>Those projects I already paid 10% fee in advance cut from my money immediately once I win projects!<p>They caused me to lose $500 projects' value, adding also the $50 I already paid, which is already cut from my funds and they ALREADY received it!<p>They are clearly unprofessional and dont understand that time is critical in IT projects, specially urgent projects!!<p>I intend to build a competitive website for them.. that will cover all horrible mistakes they have there! But such a thing would take yrs to grow!<p>What should I do with freelancer dot com ?<p>They are clearly scammers! They have no reason to suspend my account, caused me so much of loss and pressure, and my money in the account there!<p>If they have a legitimate reason and legitimate proof that I abused their terms of use, they would come and tell me and I will admit it... but they really don't!<p>What would you do if this happens with you?
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user48
Well, freelancer are quite obviously scammers, but I am not sure about this
scenario here, where I am not sure the term scam would apply at this point,
even though it seems very shady.

However. When they bought vworker.com my account migrated to freelancer where
I obviously did the procedure of connecting my PayPal to get it certified for
future possible payments. I got an e-mail about getting their Basic Membership
for free for the next month due to the vworker->freelancer thing and whatever.
One month later I get an e-mail telling me that the Basic Membership ended and
in order to renew it I will have to pay the fee, obviously I didn't, not
having used the side as I didn't really like it too much. 6 hours later I get
another e-mail saying that they just booked the amount from my PayPal, which I
gave them the right to when connecting my PayPal to my freelancer account.

The support didn't want to give me my money back until I made it clear that
they're not acting on legal grounds as they never stated anywhere that the 1
month free Basic Membership will renew automatically afterwards and that I
would have to change it in order to have the free membership (at least I know
it's not legal in my country, but after 1 week of waiting they finally replied
that they're going to give me my money back). I wonder how much money they've
made by scamming hundreds and possibly thousands former vworker users who then
didn't claim their money back.

~~~
ahmedaly
Why you don't think that this is a scam?

Suspending my account - which has more than $550 in milestone payments there,
for no clear reason and without any note, and even without any prompt
communication!

If this is not a scam.. then what the scam is?

------
ig1
Calling a company scammers because you don't like them, not providing any
evidence and ranting is unlikely to help your cause.

You're much more likely to receive useful advice if you take a professional
approach to describing the issues you had.

~~~
ahmedaly
I am acting "professionally" and I understand the difference between "liking"
and being fair.

Its pretty clear rule! Every time they come with a different reason, they take
2 days to respond to such a critical matter, and they don't take it seriously!

They say a reason then they change it back! Don't you think that this is a
scamming?

If they have a clear reason with a proof that I violated their terms of use,
then why don't they say it?

This is a clear scam! It's pretty clear indeed! I said the story honestly and
without any lies.. and I challenge them to give me a single proof that I
violated their terms of use!

This is not a company! This is nothing but a group of scammers!

~~~
relaunched
If you posted all of the email correspondence somewhere and linked the url, we
would had something definitive to refer to. While it's no unheard of for major
sites to have cases like these (lord knows adwords / paypal have led to
similar posts), it's not in any major website's best interest to scam. So, the
burden of proof is really on you, to gain our sympathy / help.

It's not that we don't trust you, but there's usually 2 sides to every story
and the truth lies somewhere in the middle...and TBH, we don't trust anyone
:-)

~~~
ahmedaly
I am taking snapshots of emails and I will post it here, but let me make
something clear for you.

Its known about Freelancer that they suspend a large number of accounts in a
very suspicious behavior, and those accounts usually have from hundreds to
thousands of dollars!

But I am still going to post snapshots for emails here and I challenge them
indeed to respond! I sent them the link of this post and I am here waiting for
their response!

~~~
relaunched
I wish you the best. But, thwarting fraud is a legitimately difficult
undertaking and is often the same reason cited by google and paypal for why
they are freezing accounts. Unfortunately, you might be the false positive and
they should have a better policy in place, if that's the case. Good luck and
hopefully you'll get the attention required to get them to engage and resolve
the problem.

------
smartwater
Take a deep breath and handle this like a professional. There is no need to
use 20+ exclamation points. Abusing the English language isn't going to help
the situation.

My consumer side feels your frustration. My business side feels bad for
Freelancer.com. It has been 3 hours since this thread went live. Are you going
to provide any proof of your own?

------
gesman
Cannot help your specifically, but there are growing number of cases of people
relying on certain platform only to find out that platform burned them at
their mercy at will.

Lessons:

1\. All platforms are ought to be used only as a tool, not as a foundation of
business. In other words earn trust with your clients and steer them to do
business directly with you, without platform-as-a-middleman. Use platform to
gain clients, gain business. Pay fair commission for it's services but don't
sell yourself short to platform just because they want you to.

2\. Have plan B (or rather platform B) in case platform A failed to deliver,
got disgruntled or becomes unruly. Maintain accounts at different platforms as
a backup.

3\. Platform's TOS is not a law (although they want you to think that) it's a
guidance for crowds. Have your own brains.

~~~
ahmedaly
Very good points! Thats exactly why I am suffering now.. because I relied on
them 100% to get business leads.

I already have created a list of repetitive customers, but keep in mind that
most of the customers are individuals or very small offices that don't need
work frequently.

So thats why I plan to start my own freelancing website.. to guarantee that I
own the source of jobs.

