
Freelancer.com is destroying my life - davidbarker
http://medium.com/p/3a2af69cf977
======
patio11
In the future, you should stop using freelancer sites, because the customers
on them are substantially worse than you'd get otherwise. You will also want
to note that not getting paid on time is actually quite common in freelancing.
This is one of the reasons why, in the future, you will charge a lot more than
you currently do, because you need to essentially self-insure against
nonpayment in a way that W-2 employees mostly do not.

More immediately useful to you: you currently have a receivable against
freelancer. That receivable has value and can be sold or borrowed against. The
terms you get for it would typically not be that great, because they have to
factor in both risk of non-collection and the costs of doing business in
comparatively small dollar amounts. Still, that's likely the easiest option to
make cash appear on Monday, unless you have consumer credit you didn't
mention. (Get it if you don't, after passing the immediate issue. Cash flow
issues happen frequently and consumer credit is often the cheapest remedy for
solo freelancers.)

The magic word for selling receivables is "factoring."

~~~
nthj
> You will also want to note that not getting paid on time is actually quite
> common in freelancing.

Really, really common. I've started offering 10% discounts for payment
upfront—even some of the larger, "corporate" clients can get pre-payments
through their strictly-net-45-billing department. And I'd rather have, say,
$3,600 today than the possibility of $4,000 two or three months from now.

(I also generally only extend these up-front payment discounts to ACH or wired
payments, not checks. Avoids other common scenarios: "yep, your check is in
the mail" or "Hello, this is your bank, we've placed a hold on your deposit
for 5-10 days because we felt like it, sucks to be you”)

Given the current situation, I'd recommend a full-time job to save your sanity
(I speak from personal experience as a freelancer/consultant for ~10 years).
But if you're looking for immediate or additional income, your lowest risk
bets are maintenance retainers. These clients generally have money (because
their product has customers), and urgency (because their product has
customers), and want stability (because their product has customers). $2K-$3K
paid up front each month, and you just have to log your 20-40 hours, write up
a report, and you're home free. No scope creep, no delayed payments, and you
know the song will repeat again on the first of the month.

~~~
edanm
I'd actually recommend _against_ giving a 10% discount for payment up-front.
10% is a _lot_ of money. Giving it up because of cashflow issues is not a
winning move most of time. And while non-collection happens to everyone, if
you're regularly working for clients that you fear won't pay you, you're not
in the best situation anyway.

What I would recommend instead is: 1) charge more money. This will get you
better clients. 2) save up some of that money, so that you're no longer in a
situation where not getting paid _this week_ is a big deal. 3) stop extending
a huge discount for cash up-front.

Another reason not to insist on cash-upfront is that some customers are _not_
going to be able to bend to this. Corporate clients might be able to pay with
different terms, some of the time, but you shouldn't rely on this. Instead,
get enough savings to give yourself flexibility.

~~~
nthj
Generally, I agree with you, and yes, you described exactly how you want to
run a business long-term, but when your wife is in and out of the hospital and
you were just served an eviction notice, $3,600 now is way better than $4,000
in 2 months. And saving up 6 months salary doesn't happen overnight. Reality
is reality.

On the other side of the coin, it's just numbers. If you can justify, say, a
$4K/week rate, charge $4.5K standard or $4K for upfront. If the customer is in
a position to bend payment terms to save $500/week, they can, and you're now
in line with market rate but more favorable payment terms. If they're not in a
position to do so, $500/week probably doesn't matter one way or the other to
them, anyway. Either way, you win.

Most customers will ask for a discount, as a rule. Hinge that discount on
something you want (faster payment) instead of just giving it to them. Then
they can make the decision. Either way, they feel good about it. Either way,
everybody wins.

~~~
edanm
Yes, life situation matters, obviously. I recommend people don't think of
themselves as freelancers, but rather managers of a company that happens to
currently have one developer. But I digress.

That last piece of advice you gave is golden: "Most customers will ask for a
discount, as a rule. Hinge that discount on something you want (faster
payment) instead of just giving it to them."

Agreed 100%. And it doesn't just have to be faster payment, either. There's
plenty of things you can do to change the rate.

Also, if you haven't read this, here's tptacek's briliant advice on why your
"rate" isn't everything:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848685)

------
objclxt
I feel for the guy, and freelancer.com seem to have terrible, appalling
customer service. But this brings up another point, which is that freelancing
often isn't a good way to get money quickly. You can't live paycheck to
paycheck freelancing.

Your clients will pay you late. They'll pay you the wrong amount. Your
freelancing agency will delay the payment. You'll get a check, but it'll
bounce. It would not be unusual when freelancing to start receiving your money
for a gig two months after you started it (30 days for your client to pay your
agency, 30 days for your agency to pay you).

Freelancing and needing money fast are, in my experience, mutually exclusive.
One of the (many) reasons a freelancer charges a comparatively higher day rate
than his or her salaried counterpart is there's risk involved with
freelancing. If a company fails to pay their full-time, salaried employees at
the end of the month it's a _big deal_. If a company fails to pay their
freelancers on time...that's not out of the ordinary.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "But this brings up another point, which is that freelancing often isn't a
good way to get money quickly."

Although I agree with most of what you've said it all depends on how you
structure the milestones. On every job I work the first milestone gets paid
immediately. In other words if I win a job, I immediately get some money. If
they job is small I use two milestones:

1\. Project started (50%) 2\. Project completed (50%)

For larger projects I split the job up further and reduce the amount required
in the first and last milestone. But the result is the same - money up front
as soon as you win a job. It's also a good way of gaining some trust the
client will pay. I didn't do this for the first 18 months I freelanced and got
screwed several times. That happens rarely now.

~~~
erikb
You are probably one buying work on freelancer websites? I don't have any
experience in this area, but what the author in his blog post says is that the
transaction itself did not start. So the client had already paid, and the
website would have probably showed him that the first milestone is paid, but
the freelancer didn't receive his money in that instance. Even if everything
goes as it should it would have taken a few days till his money would have
arrived.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "You are probably one buying work on freelancer websites?"

No, I sell my services. My main point was that if he took money immediately he
might have got these issues sorted out sooner. No guarantee though. I've been
stung by freelancer.com's 14 day wait for the first payment too + they used to
only process withdrawals once per week.

------
hagbardgroup
Freelancer/oDesk are terrible middlemen that don't achieve what they promise
to. Businesses tend to go there looking for cheap labor rather than value.
It's the white collar version of a boss driving up to the Home Depot parking
lot, except with more bureaucracy.

Another thing that freelancers should learn is that the business is high risk,
and if you're one late payment from doom, then you have to go get a job, go on
welfare, sell plasma, sell hair, or whatever until you can afford the business
risk again. It isn't a safe or easy thing and the people who tout the 'gig
economy' as if it is should be fed to zoo animals because it leads people like
this down ye olde primrose path to penury.

If your wife has some kind of weird medical issue and you're being evicted,
you are loaded up with too much risk to freelance. Stupid things like this
happen all-the-time and it's not unique to this website. It happens all the
time when you sell directly to clients. You either sue to collect, demand
contracts for larger numbers that you can sue for, or eat the loss.

There is this concept of balancing risk and reward that is painful to learn
because risk isn't easily perceptible or measurable ahead of time.

Also we should beat people over the head with Poor Richard's Almanack
repeatedly. Expecting people to read it is probably a little much, but some
lessons may be transmitted through bludgeoning according to the experts.

~~~
riffraff
Since, I am probably missing some cultural subtext: what do you mean with the
"Poor Richard's Almanack" line?

I tried looking it up but it would seem a generic almanack. While I find those
entertaining, I'm confused by how they relate to the topic.

~~~
hagbardgroup
It was a book written and updated annually by Benjamin Franklin extolling the
practical virtues of prudence, saving, hard work, humility, and so on and so
forth.

You can read a rambling summary of his views in this essay 'The Way to
Wealth':
[http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/franklin.htm](http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/franklin.htm)

>If you would be wealthy, says he, in another almanac, think of saving as well
as of getting: the Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are
greater than her incomes. Away then with your expensive follies, and you will
not have so much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable
families...

and...

>Great estates may venture more, >But little boats should keep near shore.

Ben Franklin is known as one of the 'founding fathers' of the United States.
He's remembered as an inventor, natural philosopher, publishing magnate,
political propagandist, capable diplomat (to France), and orator.

------
mattbarrie
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.htm...](http://www.freelancer.com/news/articles-
verification-309.html)

~~~
angilly
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
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

~~~
angilly
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
By specifying exactly what the verification issue is they likely break trust
with users and potentially expose themselves legally.

~~~
scintill76
The customer is claiming their "verification process" is not possible to
satisfy, and customer service is non-responsive. If the customer's story is
true, the only issue is stupidity on the part of Freelancer.com. All the CEO
said is the customer "failed to complete our Know Your Customer (KYC) process"
\-- ignoring the customer's claims that the process is completely broken and
customer service is not providing a way to meet the requirements. If there
were more to it, I think Freelancer.com could get away with something like
"The customer has not submitted what he said he did." In the absence of that,
I think it's reasonable to assume the customer's story is correct and honest,
and Freelancer.com has really bungled this and is only digging their hole
deeper with form-letter responses on social media.

As for privacy and legal liability, he's already confirmed that someone is a
customer, revealed the location (New York) of an employer of said customer,
and divulged details about their response to the employer, so ducking behind
"privacy" when the crux of the issue is questioned, rings hollow to me.

~~~
richardw
If there is anything truly wrong about his application details [1], they
shouldn't publish that on the open web but deal with it privately. If he
publishes his application details that's fine, but if they do they might be
liable.

Their real mistakes are: 1) hanging onto his cash and dicking him around
because they can't afford to give good support to all 11 million users who
depend on their site for income and 2) having such an opaque process that it
takes posts to HN to sort his issue out. By comparison, refusing to post his
(supposed) application errors when doing so would absolve them doesn't exactly
look like a smoking gun.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657942)
hints that there might be more to the story. If the support person screwed up,
just accept the ID and send him his money. Instead they reversed the
transaction, are 'investigating the project further' and are being cagey about
details. Assuming they're not idiots, why would they not post the specifics?

~~~
scintill76
More information here[1]. It's interesting that they're giving out so many
details now. They indignantly state, "We don't subvert [anti-fraud] processes
because a post makes its way to Reddit or HN", yet they apparently don't mind
blaming both customers and publicly providing more details about their
transactions, when it becomes clear Reddit/HN anger is going to hurt their
bottom line.

It seems to boil down to OP possibly oversimplifying in his understandable
frustration, and essentially his word against theirs (they say there's a "good
reason" his documents were rejected, he says all communication was
contradictory and unresponsive, with no reason given for his documents being
rejected.) If the communications OP quoted are legitimate, Freelancer deserves
the outrage, no matter the exact reason OP couldn't get verified.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7663726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7663726)

------
elleferrer
Contact Freelancer's CEO. It won't hurt to try, I guess...

CEO, Matt Barrie email: matt@freelancer.com

Alaister Low twitter.com/@AlaisterLow Director of Customer Experience
@freelancer.com: alaister@freelancer.com

This DP forum post says they received an email from the CEO after many
unsuccessful tickets from customer service:
[https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/yet-another-
freelanc...](https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/yet-another-freelanc..).

~~~
rpedela
link doesnt work for me

~~~
elleferrer
[https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/yet-another-
freelanc...](https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/yet-another-freelancer-
com-scam.2672887/)

------
softbuilder
Two thoughts on this:

1\. Any time you're in business for yourself and you don't have a buffer,
you're basically out of business. (I keep re-learning this one.)

2\. Using a site like this turns you into a commodity. It's structured to be a
race to the bottom. There is no substitute for finding your own clients and
building relationships with them. That's hard to do and takes time and energy.
See #1.

~~~
kevinchen
> Using a site like this turns you into a commodity. It's structured to be a
> race to the bottom.

There's a difference between "I can't negotiate a higher price" and "The
middleman stole the money I negotiated"

------
lnanek2
This happens all the time, unfortunately. Google Groups bans me because I open
too many tabs at once and they think I'm a robot, there's no one to talk to
about this. eLance refuses to close a job where a contractor has done no work
at all, but keeps billing me. I call their support numbers and just get told
the department isn't open no matter when I call. I used AirBnb for years then
one host refused to let me come to the address, said they would pick me up,
never picked me up, and happily charged me. I finally get her to agree to
cancel the stay and she tells AirBnb to refund but they never do.

All these companies just have atrocious customer support because they don't
want to pay for customer support. This guy's problems are probably due to
support being outsourced to some foreign country not familiar with the fact
that most people in the US have no passport or national ID other than a
driver's license.

~~~
loceng
In one experience I had with oDesk it was determined that blackmail wasn't
considered a high risk activity by a contractor, and therefore wasn't removed
from the platform - no action was taken. Fun times.

------
canadev
I have sympathy for the guy.

\- He has faced some hardships.

\- Obviously the Freelancer.com customer support team is giving him the
runaround.

\- It's hard to see anybody in trouble and not feel bad for them.

I do wonder though, why doesn't he plan better? Having found himself in a
tough situation a couple of years ago:

\- Why didn't he build some savings before becoming a freelancer? Doesn't he
understand that is a really bad idea?

\- Why didn't he test the waters of Freelancer.com with a much smaller
project? Any time you have some middleman between you and your money it seems
like you want to know that they are not going to jerk you around.

At this point, it seems like he should go to one of those "work for cash"
places and do some quick manual labor to get at least some of his bills paid
off. And then learn how to avoid this sort of situation in the future...

~~~
greenyoda
Most of his savings were probably wiped out when his house was stolen from
him, and the legal fees for the house battle and medical bills from his wife's
illness probably ate up the rest. As he mentions in the article, it's hard to
plan for a _series_ of catastrophes.

It's not clear that manual labor (probably at close to minimum wage) would get
him the money he needs faster than finding another freelance job.

------
noonespecial
He's in direct contact with the client. I'd just explain that he can't (not
won't) continue to work on the project because Freelancer effectively stole
the client's money.

I'll bet if he's doing as well for them as he indicates, the client will hire
him outside of freelancer. It may violate some TOS, but I'd call that bridge
burned already anyway.

~~~
mattbarrie
All funds have been returned to the employer's credit card and the employer
has been called to inform them to pay directly.

------
re1ser
Thats why you shouldnt do any larger jobs over these sites. Do smaller scale
projects over them to build your profile and reviews, and each larger project
should go directly through wire or any other kind of payment processor,
without freelance sites being middleman.

Just a tip, but maybe you should try to put public pressure on them. I had a
case once when I got scammed for $1200 on Elance by a guy doing chargeback
frauds, and Elance locked my account because I didnt had enough funds loaded
to cover up the scam cost (they wanted to minus my balance by $1200 to cover
chargeback, which I had no right to appeal to). I was locked out for a months,
until I found a relatively popular blog post about Elance (over HN too,
coincidentally), and an Elance representative who commented on it in comments.
I replied to his comment and asked him why they did what they did to my
account, and got account unlocked in less then a day. He probably figured out
1k$ bucks is less worth than negative publicity.

------
zackmorris
What I wouldn't give to have a freelance site that paid instantly. oDesk takes
5 business days to release funds (plus another day for the bank deposit to go
through), so I often find myself paying rounds of bills, all with late fees
(my gym's is $20!). Due to various financial struggles in the 2000s, I have
not used a credit card since early 2008. So even though the amounts of money
I'm dealing with are small, not having them can be expensive.

This country comes down hard on people who choose self employment. But there
is an honesty to humble living that I’m not ready to give up. I remember back
to the vacuous state I was in while working for other people, fighting every
fiber of my being to simply get up in the morning and face people that I
vehemently disagreed with. It’s like racing with the pedal to the metal but
the transmission is stuck in first gear. To me, underemployment is a wedge
between the life I have and the one I wish I could lead. Even though it’s hard
at times, liberating myself from other people’s expectations was one of the
best decisions I ever made.

So why backpack around Europe when you can experience everything life has to
offer right here in the US? Become a freelancer today!

~~~
zackmorris
I realized that my comment was disingenuous because I just got a $500
CareCredit line for my pet. So the first time I used credit in 6 years was for
a medical emergency. I'm not sure what that means for my overall life, but the
one reason I would probably take an office job at this point is because the
prospect of being powerless to save someone in an emergency is unsettling.

------
ivanhoe
What really sucks is that so many services nowadays use the similar tactics to
postpone the payments, effectively keeping the millions of dollars that don't
belong to them. And they know that no one will sue them for a few thousands,
so they're getting away with this bullying...

~~~
waps
Be glad you're not living in Europe. Bank transfer from bank A to bank B (e.g.
your paycheck).

Day 1: transferred from source account into internal bank-owned account. Day
2: transferred from internal bank account into internal bank-owned account
dedicated to the destination bank (e.g. ING has an internal ING->FORTIS
account). Day 3: transferred from interbank account at ING to interbank
account at FORTIS. Day 4: transferred from interbank FORTIS account into
internal account. Day 5: deposited into "target" account. Day 6: you can
actually spend the amount. (confusingly, this is not day 5, it needs to wait
for your card to be updated)

Needless to say, the amount is deducted from the source account at the exact
moment you give the transfer order. So this is really done so the banks can
avoid paying 0.15% interest on the amount transferred for 2-3 days.

Bastards.

------
_asciiker_
Freelancer.com is a joke and shows no respect for its freelancers.

This has happened to me also, the other reason I switched to Elance was that
ridiculous (we'll pay you only once a week) payment deal.

Stay away from freelancer.com

~~~
mattbarrie
This is incorrect.

If you can supply me your username I will be happy to personally look into
your issue.

------
k-mcgrady
It sucks this guy has to go through all this. I used freelancer for a few
years but it consistently got worse and worse. Eventually I had to move away
from it. Customer service was one of the big problems and from reading the
responses in that post it's got even worse. I'd highly recommend not using
them. I use Elance an although I've had minor issues with them they've always
got resolved. They still aren't great but they are 100x better than
freelancer.com.

------
davidbarker
As a side note, and out of curiosity, is there a mechanism on HN I've missed?
Soon after I submitted this link, it was around #3 on the front page, but when
I refreshed 2 minutes later, it'd dropped to #25 and didn't rise again even
though it was still quickly gaining points.

As an example, right now, this post has gained 199 points in 5 hours and is at
#49, but the submission directly above it at #48 was also submitted 5 hours
ago but has only gained 6 points. What am I missing?

~~~
ilaksh
Hacker News submissions and rank are definitely moderated and manipulated.
First and foremost the site is here to promote the investment portfolio.

------
edsiper2
When using Freelancer.com for the first time is a pain, i faced something
similar when setting up documents, withdraw limits and so on. My suggestion
not related to your main problem is:

1) you mentioned you were charged 1000USD because of service fee, because when
you accepted the project they charged you. I assume your project was for a
total of 10k and you are paying 1000, means you are in a basic plan where they
charge you 10%. Suggestion: before to accept any big project, make sure you at
least sign for the 25USD membership plan, on that way they only charge you 3%,
so instead of pay 1000USD, you pay 300USD.

2) The customer service is horrible and schedule payments may fail any time.
Make sure you have at least two methods to receive the money, my suggestions
are: Moneybookers.com account and a Payoneer card. Both are fast and safe.

I know you are facing a very complicated situation, just keep moving forward
and dont let you get down on this. Talk to your customer so may he be able to
help you with a direct deposit from his side, i asked that once while ago and
it worked. You can agreed with him to transfer back frunds from freelancer to
freelancer account. Some fees apply but is better than nothing,

best of luck.

------
bruceb
He shouldn't need a passport but the cost is $110-135 (depending on if first
time) not hundreds of $. Of course it does take up to 6 weeks.

~~~
3pt14159
In Canada there is an option to get it in 24 hours if you pay more, is there
something like this in the States?

~~~
wtmcc
You can get a passport the same day in the US. Most but not all State Dept.
“passport agencies” [1] require proof of international travel in the next 2
weeks.

I know, because I had one made in Atlanta, the day before a trip to Europe.

[1]
[http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/...](http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/information/where-
to-apply.html)

------
iDemonix
I'm not much clued up with legalities of these kinds of situations, but is
there any law that allows him to threaten legal action? Surely if they're
holding money owed to him due to lack of ID and they're violating their own
policies by not accepting it, then something is legally applicable to the
situation?

~~~
hga
From Wikipedia's entry on them
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer.com)),
which helps explain their lack of clues with US types of ID:

" _Freelancer is a global outsourcing marketplace, founded in 2009. Its
headquarters are located in Sydney, Australia, though also has offices
spanning Vancouver, London, Buenos Aires, Manila and Jakarta._ "

Looking at their web site, I see no sign they have a US office, unless they
kept some of the people in their two acquisitions of US marketplace firms. For
stakes this small, it sounds like they're essentially judgement proof in the
US. Which is no doubt why they can get away with such tactics.

~~~
XorNot
Australia has no form of national ID though (beyond a passport). Driver's
licenses here are state-specific as well, which means even the most naive
operators would expect a drivers license to be state-specific.

I suppose passport holding might be more common though but everything about
this still sounds ridiculous.

~~~
hga
Oh, geeze, how could I forget the Australia Card debacle!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Card)

(OK, that was 3 decades ago and I live in the US, but it was significant, a
somewhat akin nation's people zapping such a proposal.)

So right you are.

On the other hand, I suspect a lot of the tech support is in cheaper places
than Australia.

~~~
ghaff
There's been similar controversy in the US from time to time. And there was a
real tug of war between a few states (notably Maine) and the federal
government over certain common standards for drivers licenses more recently,
e.g. [http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/drivers-license-
controver...](http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/drivers-license-controversy-
ends-with-a-whimper_2011-03-24.html).

Viewed rationally, it's mostly silly but "national ID" in some countries
(including the US and, apparently, Australia) carries a lot of emotional
baggage with it.

------
dustinls
Update #2: The CEO has called me and notified me that the first wire was held
up at an intermediary bank in California, and has been resent. They have also
refunded the $ 1,000.00 project fee back to the client so that he can pay that
to me as well.

After numerous emails and support tickets and live chat conversations that
didn't provide any answers, Matt Barrie finally gave me an explanation at
10:30 pm when he called me.

The explanation given for why my driver's license was rejected was because
their manual states that potential counterfeit ID’s would have a brown
background in the photo section of the driver's license instead of a white
background. When I renewed my license a few months ago the DMV gave me the
option of using my recent license photo or take a new one. I opted to use the
old photo. It's a black and white photo as far as I can tell, but according to
Matt Barrie the background of my driver's license photo appeared to be
"brown." I think it's a rather ridiculous reason for why they rejected my ID,
it clearly does not look like a brown background photo and is in fact my valid
New York ID issued from the state. Regardless, they should have told me this
immediately instead of giving me the runaround for days and holding up my
payment. They also should have done this verification process before I began
working on the project and before I waited for 2 weeks for the first wire.
They also never requested that I do a keycode verification where I hold a sign
using the unique keycode they give me and holding up my ID. I am displeased
with their handling of this, but thankful that my client is dependable and
professional and has opted to continue this project off of freelancer.com.

I regret that these are the actions I had to take in order to get
freelancer.com to clarify why they were holding my payment and rejecting my
ID. I am lucky enough to be working with an understanding and motivated client
who has gone out of his way to help clear up this situation. He was gracious
enough to advance me a payment this evening even though he is still awaiting
his returned funds from freelancer.com

In the future, I hope that freelancer.com will be more direct with their
customers when issues like this arise. I also hope that everyone who is having
a similar issue gets it resolved ASAP without it having to come to this
ugliness.

My wife and I cannot thank all of you enough for your support. When companies
won't do the right thing, it's good to know that the power of social media can
help keep them accountable.

~~~
hga
" _They also should have done this verification process before I began working
on the project and before I waited for 2 weeks for the first wire._ "

While we can see from your case many problems of their waiting, I don't think
it's economic for them to do a Know Your Customer (KYC) process until there's
enough money on the table.

Surely many if not most if not the vast majority of freelancers signed up on
the site will never receive enough money to require this. They'd have to not
only get hired for a project, but also not get stiffed by the client.

The inexcusable thing is of course is that once they had thousands of dollars
in their hands (albeit since it was from a credit card, subject to a charge
back, which I'm sure is one of the reasons they resolved this in your and your
client's favor), their KYC "process" (not sure their's deserves such a grand
name) was so bogus, inconsistent and opaque.

There's a slight excuse for the opaqueness, implicitly telling you to
Photoshop your "brown" photo section background into something more acceptable
would negate that metric's usefulness, but ... well, they could have told you
_something_ that would have prompted you to go to the DMV and get a new
license with a new photo (you could tell them you lost your old one).

E.g. "your photo on the license doesn't pass muster, why don't you get a
replacement with a new photo" ... although that wouldn't necessarily work in
my home state of Missouri, they have metrics for when they'll take a new photo
and refused to the last time I renewed it (and for what it's worth, it has a
deep blue background, one would hope that's OK by them...).

" _They also never requested that I do a keycode verification where I hold a
sign using the unique keycode they give me and holding up my ID._ "

There are two issues here: sending money to the right person, which I suspect
was never in serious doubt, and sending money to a legit person, which is what
the "Know Your Customer" words of art are all about:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer)

------
whitewhidow
these guys are the biggest scammers ever, i completed a project for +6000
dollars on freelancer, and after beeing payed by the amployer, and the project
beeing completely finished, THEY WONT LET ME WITHDRAW THE FUNDS !!!

they now claim that the employer of that project is under investigation, but
when i contact them, they know nothing about this ..

note that at this point in time, the employer has no reason whatsoever, to
spend anymore time fixing this matter, as his work has been delivered, and he
has already made payment to freelancer, released the milestone, and finished
the project.

but now, I have to tell me employer, to ask freelancer whatsup ?

so freelancer told them they didint trust that the account was china based,
yet logins where made from other locations. so my employer explained why they
needed a vpn in China, DUH

they then proceeded to request pictures of documents a copy of his id, AND a
photo of him holding a printed out code wich they provided !! so he complied,
but they them also needed a copy of hi's ENTRY STAMPS ON HIS PASSPORT? showing
that he entered china ...

so my employer complied again .

(note that i knew all this from communicating with my employer at this point,
as freelancer was ignoring me completely)

but now freelancer needed more documents, in english, wich my employer cant
seem to get hold of in China (if i go to my Dutch bank and request chinese
docs they wont comply either, duh)

anyway, so now we are stuck, beeing ignored, with +600 dollars in my account,
wich they wont let me withdraw

notice the whole trivk here,

if you DO manage to get money from your employer into your account, they will
simply refuse it when you try to wothdraw . at wich point you have to go haras
your EX-employer, wich has not time for taking selfies, days on end, scanning
docs, rescanning docs, over and over .

so their whole plan is simply for the employer to get sick of it, and stop
trying, THEY HAVE NO REASON OTHERWISE, THEY PAYED AND GOT RESULT, DONE. and
freelancer goes of with the money ..

~~~
mattbarrie
Whitewhidow, I have looked into your account and the limitation has now been
cleared.

------
scottydelta
I prefer using oDesk over all other freelancing sites as it is very straight
forward. And plus clients there prefer quality and are ready to pay high
prices rather than choosing the cheap bids. I remember a customer paying me
400$ for a 10 line python script as he wanted it done quickly without
problems.

Wish We could do something to help you, like may be bombard freelancer's
facebook page to resolve your issue.

------
funkyy
Either this guy is unluckiest person in the world, or he is extremely poor in
money/project management. I cant find much sympathy where you promise your
lenders payment based on possible payment from Freelancer (you didnt even knew
it takes few days to process wire for them which you would knw after quick
Google search). You proved you are not doing your research properly and you
are getting in situations like that. Previous lessons didnt teach you much imo
and you are failing to research basics and you are putting all your eggs in
one basket affecting you and your wife.

If you are good at what you do - contact guy you work for and ask him to send
money directly. If you are really valuable to him - he will do this.

If you have time to write this piece - you could as well use your skill and do
some content writing jobs that would pay you fair money while waiting for
other payments/jobs.

I am not trying to defend Freelancer as they did a bad job here, but man -
protect yourself, learn how to avoid sucky situations you are in constantly...

~~~
WrongYouAre
>If you are good at what you do - contact guy you work for and ask him to send
money directly. If you are really valuable to him - he will do this.

That will not work for an already paid money, because now it is stuck in
Freelancer's account.

------
koalala
sent them a rant on facebook.

their response: Hi, Kiwee. We're already on the user's case and we're
absolutely keen on resolving it at the soonest time possible. We appreciate
your concern on the matter.

hope all the attention is doing something for you.

------
akosk
This behavior is exactly the same what online poker sites did some years ago.
(FTP, Absolute poker, etc. ) They can't "pay off" everybody because they use
that money somewhere. (or just "borrowed"...)

~~~
computer
No, it's not the same. The poker sites you mentioned did try to pay (albeit
with some delays); what did them in was that they spent their customer money
on running their business, among other things that are in hindsight completely
incredible.

They did have a lot of payment delays later in time, but that was not because
of ill will, but because of issues with payment processors. Those processing
companies were getting shadier and shadier as time went on, often getting
their bank accounts seized, processors running away with tens of millions, et
cetera. The lack of decent payment processors was what caused most of their
delays by far, and incidentally also what caused them to resort to things like
miscoding credit-card transactions and semi-bribing banks, which in turn
resulted in them getting indicted in the US.

There's some other companies that did leave players waiting for months for
their withdrawals because they were short in funds, but that wasn't the major
issue at FTP or AP before their government-triggered collapse.

Source: I intimately know the business.

------
mjhea0
I have had terrible luck with Freelancer.com as well. One and done for me. In
fact, the majority of freelancing sites miss the mark on making developers
interest top priority as well as what they are supposed to do as the curator
of a freelance site - to ensure projects are completed successfully.

Gun.io ([http://www.gun.io](http://www.gun.io)) has been the only freelancing
site that take that extra step to ensure that both sides are satisfied.

Sorry, to hear about your awful experience with Freeelancer. :(

------
atarian
Can someone explain how OP's house fell through? I'm trying to understand what
happened and how the builder managed to steal his down payment and kick him
out.

~~~
tmikaeld
I guess you usually commit to paying for the house and then pay a downpayment
that is non-refundable if you then cannot pay for the house. This way the
money will be a safety net for the builder, since he could have found a
different buyer during the time that the house will be empty.

------
misingnoglic
This is starting to sound like how Paypal is today...

~~~
hga
I see a qualitative difference between the two:

When Paypall's fraud detection flags an account, their repeated demands for
more and more "documentation" are clearly not in good faith, they have no
intention whatsoever in immediately unfreezing your account, they want you to
do one of two things that will address their risk of chargebacks:

Refund all the money in question; this can work for charity efforts, which
look suspicious, a whole bunch of money flooding into an account all of a
sudden. In that case, the donations can quickly go back and be funneled to
another charity.

Or wait 180 days to get your money.

Of course you have the third option of appealing to social media et. al.,
which can work particularly well in the charity situation.

For Freelancer.com, they obviously don't turn the crank on their Know Your
Customer (KYC)
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer))
process until there's money on the table. Many, probably most freelancers who
sign up will probably never reach this point, either because they don't get a
job, or the client stiffs all concerned.

However, once that necessary action was triggered, if we are to believe
Dustin, Freelancer.com's KYC unit was grossly incompetent. Heck, they might be
lying to the CEO about what happened ... but he's ultimately responsible for
all this.

------
scottydelta
I just posted link to your article as comment(page posts are disabled) on all
major posts on freelancer's facebook page, they will probably block me but
hope it will help in some way. :D

[http://www.pastemehere.com/bbkm4sk5](http://www.pastemehere.com/bbkm4sk5)

------
neil1
One mistake, I noticed was

> They pretend to resolve the issue in private, hoping to shut you up in
> public, only to continue the run around in private, offering absolutely no
> solution

I think you meant public instead of private.

------
mattbarrie
This was reposted on /r/programming so I have copied here my reply to that
thread:

\---

Hello everyone.

This is Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Freelancer.com.

I see this has been reposted again in /r/programming. I think that we are
being treated a little harshly here when the facts behind this case are not
fully known, and nor are we able to provide them to you due to privacy issues.

Dustin did successfully withdraw funds the first time only a few days before.
This has been omitted from his article.

On Thursday 24/4 he queued a substantially larger withdrawal for processing
which was queued according to our normal timetable for Monday 28/4\. This
larger withdrawal triggered our KYC process (Know Your Customer) which
required provision of identification. Documents were provided on this day but
did not pass our process. I personally looked into this and it was for good
reason that the anti-fraud team rejected them.

On Sunday 27/4, further documents were provided (still not completing the KYC
process), but at the same time Dustin posted his article on Medium.com which
blew up both here on Reddit, and HN.

By this stage it was early Monday morning here in Australia, and this issue
was brought to our attention (thank you to those of you that emailed me). I
personally looked at the accounts and was present when the team called (at
about 7pm NY time) both Dustin (who didn't answer) and the employer to resolve
the matter. The employer told our team "he does not wish to cooperate or
assist us in any request" along with several expletives. We informed the
employer on that call that in that case we were likely to refund the payments
back to his credit card and that he would have to pay direct.

Our team then investigated the project itself- and became concerned enough
with the nature of the project (which was against our Terms of Service) to
cancel it, refund all the fees- for both Dustin and the employer- and refund
all payments back to the employer's credit card.

I hope that you all understand that we have robust anti-fraud procedures in
place designed to protect you in the event that your credit card is stolen. We
don't subvert those processes because a post makes its way to Reddit or HN.

Over 5.8 million projects have been posted on Freelancer.com. We are a public
company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. We are not in the
business of "actively delaying payments to contractors". This is a ridiculous
assertion from OP.

NO payment was delayed in the above process with Dustin. We process
withdrawals for Monday EDT. We were attempting to resolve this issue Sunday
evening EDT.

Both Dustin and his employer were, to say the least, unhelpful in getting this
resolved.

Regards Matt

~~~
dustinls
> Dustin did successfully withdraw funds the first time only a few days
> before.

Those funds still have not been transferred to my bank account. I didn't omit
anything. The article has two paragraphs detailing that the wire was sent and
that I was informed that it would take 3-5 days to reflect in my bank account.

> Documents were provided on this day but did not pass our process. I
> personally looked into this and it was for good reason that the anti-fraud
> team rejected them.

Do you ever plan on emailing me the reason? I've only asked a dozen times for
an explanation.

> I personally looked at the accounts and was present when the team called (at
> about 7pm NY time) both Dustin (who didn't answer) and the employer to
> resolve the matter.

It has been four days of that runaround. I emailed you personally the day
before and didn't receive a response. I called the phone number you had listed
on your whois for your personal blog, got your voicemail, left a message, and
received no response. You still have not responded to my email.

> The employer told our team "he does not wish to cooperate or assist us in
> any request" along with several expletives. We informed the employer on that
> call that in that case we were likely to refund the payments back to his
> credit card and that he would have to pay direct.

My employer accomplished in one phone call something that took me a week.
Clearly, I was being too nice about it.

> Both Dustin and his employer were, to say the least, unhelpful in getting
> this resolved.

I complied with every request you asked. The only requests I did not comply
with were unreasonable ones such as "get a national id".. The U.S. has no such
thing, and "get a passport", which would have taken weeks to obtain.

~~~
mattbarrie
Dustin and I just spoke on the phone and hopefully all remaining issues are
being resolved.

------
ForHackernews
Are there any actually-good sites for finding freelance work? Maybe something
curated?

~~~
churchillls
We are working on a multilingual platform for freelancers that will be curated
and we hope will solve some of the problems most of us are experiencing.
Curation will probably lead to problems with scalability, but that's not
something of concern to us at the moment. As a startup, we have more important
issues to worry about. Here is a link to the landing page for those of you who
would like to check it out - [http://galilea3.com](http://galilea3.com)

------
vz0
in Argentina a passport costs ~$150 (ARS) but you have the choice of paying
10x (~$1000) and getting the document on the next working 24hs.

------
beachstartup
> _The builder ended up stealing our down payment and evicted us from the
> house._

i'm now in my 30s and many of my family and friends own their own property or
own rental property. having been personally involved in and witness to many,
many real estate deals including ones that have gone completely south and/or
had extremely tenuous goings, i am wondering how exactly this is possible.

the entire system is regulated to prevent this sort of thing from happening
unless you just fork over a bunch of cash directly to a seller, in which case
- that's your problem.

the older i get, the more skeptical i am of these cases in which the
protagonist finds himself in financial trouble over and over again. being a
victim is incredibly addicting because nothing is ever your fault.

sorry if i come off as an asshole but those are my thoughts on this matter. he
posted it publicly on a blog and it ended up on HN and i'm offering feedback.

~~~
diek
This was my first reaction as well. If you're having a house built you have to
prove you can get a loan before they start construction. Then you have to go
through the closing process on the house before the builder will let you move
in. No builder that I'm aware of is going to give you the keys to your new
house without going through closing with a title company. Something does not
add up in the story.

~~~
kbenson
The impression I got from his statement regarding prior owners is that the
"builder" was not building them a house, but build a small development or
single home to then be sold. Often a general contractor will get a loan for a
plot of land and construction and develop it into 1-4 homes for sale.

------
notastartup
Please add Guru to this list. Actually all the commodity coding marketplace is
destroying us in North America. What we need is a marketplace that isn't so
greedy and doesn't let just anyone with $50 to create the next Facebook in. It
also should be limited to citizens of Canada and United States.

------
campuscodi
Doesn't this guy know how to use Google?

There are tens of blog posts about Freelancer.com's customer support and their
shady payment tactics.

~~~
Mithaldu
That is a very unreasonable expectation. This is the first time ever i have
personally seen any criticism of freelancer.com online and i read a lot of
online tech news and work as an online freelancer myself. Without an ongoing
history of negative press about them, there is no reason for someone to
suspect that their business is fraudulent and to go looking for such
information.

~~~
waps
? Having worked for freelancer in the past, it is pretty obvious that their
site is a scam, meant to extract money from freelancers as much as from
buyers.

If you really want to work on a site like that, go ahead. I'd warn you though.
You're going to lose money if you take them up on _anything_.

------
dennisgorelik
> Two years ago I had multiple mortgage commitments to close on what seemed to
> be our dream house.

They live above their means.

> We managed to get one and a half truck loads

They have too much stuff.

Freelancer.com is barely relevant to their problems.

~~~
kubiiii
Depends on the size of their dream and of the size of their trucks.

~~~
dennisgorelik
No matter what size is the house, if they got multiple loans in order to buy
their dream house - they live above their means.

> size of their trucks

"we were up for two days packing" indicates that the truck was not small.

