
Freelancer.com stole from me and ruined my life - kiraken
https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cc32fe1a8436908c40f60eb
======
rahuldottech
Archived version:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190426163107/https://www.trust...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190426163107/https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cc32fe1a8436908c40f60eb)

~~~
mises
Seeing that the original has been deleted, would a moderator please update the
link to this archived version?

~~~
pvg
It's a completely unsubstantiated ragebait post that's also been posted
previously. The only thing a moderator should do with it is drop it into the
Trench of Terrible Posts.

~~~
mises
Sorry, I was not aware of that as I have not previously seen this post.

------
nickjj
The next time you think about using a platform / marketplace for freelance
work just repeat this to yourself:

 _" I should spend a large portion of my life to become an expert in my craft,
and then I should agree to have my privacy stripped away from me while I race
to the bottom and undercut my competition because I will actively place myself
into situations where I have the highest competition to ensure I receive the
lowest rates. Lastly, I will bust my butt and bend the world to satisfy
clients who take advantage of me."_

Then it starts to make total sense on what you should avoid them like the
plague.

Really, just put in the leg work and build up your own network[0]. It's so
worth it.

[0]: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-
fre...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance-
business-as-a-software-developer)

~~~
matz1
Its not for everyone.

~~~
eropple
It isn't--but if you aren't prepared to do it, the freelancer sites will _eat
you alive_ before you get off the ground anyway.

------
danj
I have used e-lance and upwork to the tune of about $140,000 and in my last
year of hiring on UpWork we plugged $36,000 through them. Generally they've
been pretty good and usually fast and fair to act, though in all my time of
using them I've only had 3 bad experiences, 2 of them were resolved quickly
and well, the third was a shit show.

I think a lot of people get screwed on UpWork because someone posts a shitty
outline of a job and then expects the world to be delivered for $5. I don't
operate like that, we treat it like hiring normally - we thoroughly interview
and the spec is very detailed.

The last contractor we hired was for firmware and an issue we had, we needed
someone with Rockchip experience and someone who could work on it full time.
We explained the problem and the spec of the job repeatedly to him and he
agreed. We agreed a fee - a little higher than what we budgeted but honestly
didn't care - we were getting this solved.

Anyway fast forward and he has done about 50% of what we agreed - we ask him
when can we get the next 50% he said when we pay him more - we said, that's
not what we agreed, it's in the contract (on the job spec) in the UpWork
messages (again reemphasized) and we agreed over phone calls and emails and he
signed. He said he didn't care he wanted more money before he would complete
it. At this point the firmware he has done is essentially useless to us
without the last 50% so I go to UpWork and explain everything - hoping they
would give him a nudge - we had everything outlined on their system - their
response - you need to pay him. I was baffled. So I opened a credit card
dispute to get the money back.

UpWork's behaviour became down right embarassing. The disputed amount was in
the range of about $1000 and they became so hilariously hostile, then angry,
then sorry, then hostile, then derrogatory, and eventually demeaning (offering
us $50 credit if we withdraw the dispute) we said no. They said they
wouldclose our account - we said fine.

How stupid of a company do you have to be - not only that - we had about
$30,000 more lined up for the next 6 months - now we just go through our
network and other job boards. We will NEVER use them again.

~~~
pkaye
How many hours of work was $1000?

~~~
robocat
> The last contractor we hired was for firmware and an issue we had, we needed
> someone with Rockchip experience and someone who could work on it full time.

"Full time" for $1000!

And it was an "issue with Rockchip", which sounds exactly like a problem that
could be easily specified but impossible to predict how many hours it would
take to fix.

GP seems like a rant from someone abusing a fixed price worker.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I do freelance embedded systems development. I do fixed bid work because I
prefer it that way.

If I bid $2,000 to produce something, I either produce it for $2,000 or I say
(hopefully within the first day) "sorry, I underbid this. I need to re-quote
you, or you can have your down payment back." I've "eaten" quite a few
underbids and only once returned a down payment and ended the job because the
buyer kept increasing the scope.

OP's not "abusing a fixed price worker," he's holding them to what they agreed
to do.

------
ivanstojic
I did a lot of work on similar freelancing sites in the 2000s. While it is
true that there is always more than one side to the story, there’s also a
massive power imbalance with these services.

Most of the workers come from outside of the US, work for already ridiculously
low fees, and they have no recourse if they do end up having their payments
cancelled or their accounts frozen / locked.

It’s not the easiest way to make a living.

~~~
devoply
It's an incredibly stupid way to make a living and all the workers there
should unionize and quit using sites like that.

~~~
simion314
You need a third party to prevent abuses, like you don't get paid. But the
issue is that this third party does not want you to build a relation between
developer and the employer because if you build trust then you don't need the
third party.

This is how I started, I found some small projects, then me and the other
person worked on other tasks, trust built and we then worked directly.

~~~
devoply
The union can act as a third party and provide a similar site. Where then the
interests are more closely aligned and not affected by the profit motive. The
purpose of such a union would be to get developers jobs at equitable rates for
their living conditions and their home market.

~~~
simion314
Is there a legal way to create a union to represent people from different
countries,that work as free lancers? I can see this attempts getting stuck in
the laws that probably were not designed for such a scenario.

Some competition would help but the big ones buy the small competitors.

~~~
dbpatterson
Not sure about actually having protected collective bargaining rights (i.e.,
in the US subject to the NLRA), but pooling resources to have staff attorneys,
etc -- certainly possible. e.g., the IWW tries to do this, organizing
"unorganizable" workforces (most recently, for freelance journalists
[https://freelancejournalistsunion.org/](https://freelancejournalistsunion.org/))

~~~
simion314
The only issue I see is that lawyers are expensive in US relative to how low
most of the beginner developers get paid on freelancer.com (you could earn
2.5$/hour or less).

------
loceng
There are similar stories for Upwork (brand name after Odesk + Elance merger).

I was literally blackmailed by an Upwork contractor who refused to release the
already paid-for source code unless I gave them a 5-star rating. I notified
the platform and they didn't care - and the solution was for the platform to
prevent my ability to leave a review at all, making the contractor happy.

That contractor/agency was still on the platform at least a year after it
happened.

~~~
jermaustin1
I've hired a lot of fiction writers over the years on upwork, used to spend a
few hundred a month on getting stories written, I've tapered off a little bit,
mainly because managing a team of writers was getting to be more work than it
was worth for a never ending supply of mediocre fantasy and sci-fi. I even
stopped updating the site I was publishing them all to[1].

All of the writers but 1 were amazing from the start. I had a single bad
experience that eventually I made a good experience by just communicating with
the writer, telling them I knew they were better than the quality they
provided, and to just give it another go. That story eventually became one of
my favorites[2].

1: [http://fictorio.us/](http://fictorio.us/)

2: [https://fictorio.us/2017/10/12/zeta-
mu/](https://fictorio.us/2017/10/12/zeta-mu/)

~~~
dennisgorelik
How much do services of these fiction writers [from Upwork] cost?

~~~
jermaustin1
Typically between 3 and 10 cents per word.

I hired from all over the world to get different viewpoints, and my prompts
were usually very open. It would be something like: An historic fiction set in
your country's or region's capitol city during a war.

And I would have 5 openings for stories similar to that.

------
csomar
I tried Freelancer.com for hiring. After a quite search and failure to find
someone to do the job, I decided to pull out. They refused and did hold around
$500 of my money there. They also ended up locking the account. That was many
years ago. Needless to say, I stopped using these websites for good either
ways (hiring or being hired).

------
Smerity
Disclosure: I worked for Freelancer.com seven or eight years ago back in
Australia and know the founder.

This is a "new" post from an old and now deleted post [1] by the same author.

In the initial post [1] they state "I've been a member in this platform for
over 5 years". In the new post they state "I have worked on this platform for
over 7". The initial now deleted post [1] was posted two years ago.

Make of that what you will.

Edit: I was hoping HN would actually read the deleted post too and/or assume I
didn't have a nefarious motive. It's from the same author, isn't a repost, the
story has an entirely different fact pattern and the deletion of the previous
story (with no reference to it when it was previously posted on HN at [2]) is
at least odd at best. I merely wanted to raise the possibility that an
unsourced post is potentially not the best thing with which to sharpen knives.

I literally just wanted to add this data point to the discussion, that's all
=[

[1]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20171104123112/https://www.trust...](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104123112/https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fdae7d31302a07249dc4fe)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677)

~~~
secretfreelance
What I make of that is 5 + 2 = 7, which of course surprises no one.

~~~
MivLives
I think the implication is that the poster has continued to work there for two
more years despite still having the same complaint.

~~~
secretfreelance
And what of that? I struggled to find work in software development in spite of
claims of worker shortages. It's only due to my being stubborn and having a
decent safety net that I could shrug off participating on freelancing sites.
Not everyone can hold out for a better offer.

------
sm4rk0
Am I the only one to notice the rest of reviews? All of them seem generic with
the same names I see in my spam directory:

> cindi m was a great help. she fixed my issues right away and her bosses
> should give her a raise. cheers

~~~
sm4rk0
Forgot to mention: they are all 5-star reviews.

------
jdubz79
If you can land a contract for development work on freelancer.com you can find
a decent paying job for the same work.

Freelancer.com provides nothing, and takes money out of your pocket.

~~~
x0x0
That's not true at all.

We spent $100k on upwork. The slightly lower rates are nice, but the value is
the contractor rep so we don't get ripped off and dealing with moving money.
Note that moving money requires more than physical xfer, but also the legal
structures and corps and whatever else to make sure we comply with all
relevant laws, both here and abroad. The latter is not a trivial bit of work.

Without upwork, we would not be using contractors in Russia or Argentina.

~~~
prewett
It sounds like what you are saying is UpWork provides great value for
businesses looking to hire inexpensive contractors. For US-based contractors,
which I assume your parent poster might be, it doesn't sound like they provide
such great value. At least, none of your reasons help the contractor any. And
being in a system where they can easily be underbid by overseas labor doesn't
sound so fun, either.

~~~
pvaldes
> Without upwork, we would not be using contractors in Russia or Argentina.

>> what you are saying is UpWork provides great value for businesses looking
to hire inexpensive contractors

Or translators from Russian and Spanish, people can hire overseas for several
different reasons.

------
dewey
Why is this random Trustpilot review suddenly on the frontpage? Is there
anything I'm missing? People that had an issue with Freelancer.com just
upvoting the headline?

------
blueboo
It also should be noted that Trustpilot itself is horribly gamed and its
ratings should never be taken as a signal for trust. It can be useful if you
think other ratings have been manipulated (i.e., Yelp) and you find it has a
peerless Trustpilot rating -- yep, they're fakin' it

------
johnmarcus
recently scammed by freelancer.com and it is already on Bank Of America's
fraudulent businesses list. Correctly so, BofA refused to honor a $10 charge
through my PayPal account freelancer.com was attempting to steal from me. That
forced PayPal to drop my BofA checking account as a payment method. It wasn't
too disruptive for me because I don't use PayPal all that much. Anyway, I
convinced PayPal rather easily that i never agreed to pay freelancer.com
anything and the charge was fraudulent.

Just a warning, using freelancer.com in any capacity can have more downward
side effect on your life then you think. You are doing business with, imho, a
company that is likely surviving as a cleaner for laundered money, aka, a pure
illegal enterprise.

------
hnruss
I stopped freelancing after someone sent me death threats for cancelling work
on a $200 project that they kept increasing the scope of. Not worth it.

------
so_tired
Any low-cost freelancers here? (Mobile & Web UI)

How much do u earn on these platforms ?!

Also - i find it ridiculous that they try to enforce non-external-
communication with the people u hire. I want to talk to these guys 5 times a
day, share repositories, etc. Its weird

~~~
ilaksh
I haven't used the platforms in a few years but I used to. I think the highest
pay I ever managed was like $25 or maybe $40 per hour. It seemed pretty hard
to get those projects though.

I guess the convenience of having all of those potential contracts is a trade
off with the fact that you are competing with everyone on Earth that signed up
and looked at that web page. So people that have $100 rent in a small Indian
village can and do bid extremely small amounts sometimes and they end up
making much more than their friends in the village and are happy to have it.

The reason they try to stop the external communication is because people go
outside the site for projects once they have made a connection with a client.
To me it's questionable whether it should be legal to force people to do all
transactions on your platform. But from a business standpoint it is the aspect
that has the most impact on how much cut they collect.

------
egman_ekki
Btw, after having experience with certain car rental company on trustpilot, I
don't really trust those ratings anymore. I posted a negative review, then was
contacted by trustpilot to provide proof of what went wrong or trustpilot
would remove the review in 7 days. I'm pretty sure that is not needed for
positive ones...

------
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
Does anyone have the content of the review? Seems like it was removed.

------
ishaanbahal
Well, now its 404.

~~~
sm4rk0
Here's the original:

AladinBS 1 review 29 minutes ago STAY AWAY FROM FREELANCER, STAY AWAY!!!!!!
THIS IS A WARNING TO ANYONE WHO USES FREELANCER, STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY, STAY
AWAY!!!

This company has screwed me over so many times and screwed so many developers
and clients that it’s a mystery how they haven't been shut down yet.

It all started with a simple contract i received, and once i received an
initial payment of $1300, my account got limited and frozen, i contacted them
asking about the reason behind this, and they just simply told me it was
because of outside communication, to which i responded that it's very normal
call to go over everything, that is a business standard, and the contract went
through the platform and so did the payment, so there was no reason behind
these extreme majors they took.

The money was frozen and they told me that it would stay that way, up until
they closed my account for good one week after with a simple email, saying
that they closed my account.

I have worked on this platform for over 7 years, finished countless projects
with full perfect five star reviews, never hurt anyone or hurt the platform in
any way, and the only thing i did occasionally that was frowned upon was a
call here or there to explain something to a client or to share my screen with
them, and its not my fault that they did not provide these features on their
platform and i had to use something else to make up for their short comings.

In conclusion, i gave them 7 years of my life; they closed my account for
nothing, stole from me, and took away my main source of living.

I have not been able to even leave my house for the past week, and had to
force myself to write this review, even as just a warning for people, and I’ll
make sure that everyone hears about what happened to me.

~~~
giarc
From what I can see... user lost $1300 and ability to use Freelancer.com. I'm
not sure what lead to "not been able to even leave my house".

Just move on and use Upwork.com.

~~~
masswerk
Comprehensive reading: user lost all but an initial payment of $1300 …

~~~
giarc
I'm not sure that's even clear. "The money was frozen and they told me that it
would stay that way" What is "the" money. The only money mentioned prior to
that is the $1300. No where does the user say all money was lost except the
$1300. They say their account was closed, were they sitting on a ton of cash
in their account that they didn't transfer out? They don't state that.

------
himynameisdom
There are two (or more) sides to every story. Would love to get a full 360
perspective on this scenario.

~~~
dmitrygr
Normally I'm the first to shout the same, but given how many similar stories
about freelancer.com exist, I'm leaning toward believing this by default

------
Hoasi
Similar story, different middleman company...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427086)

The point is, as a freelancer, you are on your own.

~~~
Tempest1981
Similar headline and discussion from 18 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677)
(355 comments)

------
disconnection
Sales is a learnable skill, and in practice I found it straightforward to cut
out the middlemen/women completely and avoid platforms and agents. I wrote a
sales guide here, with all the tricks I picked up over the years. I'm not
selling anything or have ads, I just want other coders to have this freedom,
too:
[https://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/sales.html](https://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/sales.html)

------
megous
Now, how would freelancer.com know that the people are communicating outside
of the platform? I guess if you exchange contact info over their channels...
Is that banned?

What if you send encrypted messages via GPG? Or is that forbidden too? Just
sending a public key for GPG, will reveal an e-mail address.

How do you exchange passwords and other sensitive access info without
encryption?

~~~
tluyben2
They normally do not act like this; they only go bezerk if they suspect you
are paying someone outside the platform.

------
ilaksh
Here is a project attempting to provide a decentralized alternative to
Freelancer and Upwork [https://kleros.io](https://kleros.io)

Here is another one [https://www.cryptotask.org](https://www.cryptotask.org)

~~~
tluyben2
Does that make it better? Does it fix this kind of issue and how?

------
jshowa3
Never get payment through a third party if you don't expect something like
this to happen.

And its insane to freelance develop without contacting the customer/screen
sharing outside the platform. Its amazing the guy lasted 7 years like this...

------
ccnafr
Hope the guy doesn't get an Upwork account now. He'll be really screwed then.

------
konart
Pretty sure I've seen this in 2018.

~~~
tim333
Nov 2017
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677)

~~~
konart
Time flies...

------
jypepin
seems like the post has been deleted?

------
ryanmarsh
The link is 404ing now.

------
Creationer
I've tried hiring artists for video games, and the quotes from
Upwork/Freelancer.com were about double the going rates (I understand that the
platform fee of 20% contributes to part of that). I've had much better success
with free, community-run forums instead:

[https://polycount.com/categories/artist-looking-for-
work](https://polycount.com/categories/artist-looking-for-work)

[https://www.gamejobforum.com/](https://www.gamejobforum.com/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/)

------
VonGuard
Small Claims Court

~~~
ivanstojic
A large majority of people providing work on these sites is very far from any
country where such a notion exists.

