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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#101

Post by watwut »

gexla wrote: post #33

This review should get pulled. If the reviewer posted this under his real name, then he should remove it. This review will kill his reputation, which will cause more problems than anything mentioned in the review. If it's not a real name, then I imagine it's a violation. This is the only review under this user. The review has a TLDR at the top, but my own TLDR for this review would be "I was desperate". It's easy for…

0.) What is "person is susceptible to disasters"? You seriously suggest there is something shameful about people who had parents die/car accidents and such people should keep it secret?

1.) Companies and services are open to criticism from their customers or providers.

2.) If you allow and accept positive subjective reviews, you should accept negative subjective reviews too. They are part of the system.

Free market requires access to full information, that means both good experiences with provider and bad ones.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#102

Post by robjan »

vbezhenar wrote: post #31
gressquel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the hour rate in europe is much higher than in Asia because the living costs are much lower. So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY

iPhone or Macbook price is roughly the same everywhere. Cost of living is a tiny part of expenses for a competent worker.

Developers in the developing world typically don't use iPhones and Macbook pros. You can easily get a "good enough" machine for 10% of the price of a Macbook.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#103

Post by sideproject »

I have heard a lot of bad things about freelancer.com from the users' perspectives like the one in the post - but also on both sides - those who do the work and those who post work.

I think Freelancer as a company though has somewhat of a positive feel here in Australia (correct my if I'm wrong fellow Aussies).

It's probably seen as one of the better tech products from Australia and its CEO Matt Barrie is at times outspoken about the aussie startup scene, lack of innovation in Australia etc [1][2].

[1] http://www.afr.com/technology/matt-barrie-says-doomed-austra...

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-plea...

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#104

Post by jimnotgym »

It makes me wonder if there is space in the market for a freelancing website that has minimum rates and does some more vetting, or referencing as we might call it in the real world.

Ditch the credit card nonsense and make people pay by bank transfer, like real agencies would. It sounds like a product I would use. I have a need for Freelancer style services, but I don't need to have to vet people and read reviews, thats what agencies are for. I want the service that I get from my local contractor agency, but availability for small projects rather than long contracts.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#105

Post by pmorici »

nkrisc wrote: post #62
pmorici wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery. Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if…

Genuinely curious: why would you accept a job to do the impossible? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding and his refusal to pay was totally separate from the fact his whole idea was flawed?

I'm glossing over the details. The actual description of the software the guy wanted written was very straight forward. That said something like, Python program that imports the historical pick-4 results from the North Carolina Lottery and allowed the user to look-up the last date those numbers were picked regardless of order. The job had a fixed price of $10.

This was a long time ago but I think my thought process was that doing the hourly rate jobs at $2.00 per hour would never be viable so I was trying to find fixed price jobs that were miss priced in the sense that I knew I could perhaps do them in 30 minutes but the purchaser assumed it would be several hours of work. This project fit the bill. The job description didn't actually explain that the guy wanted to use the software as part of his nutty system to game the lottery. That only came out later after the work was done.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#106

Post by dboreham »

vbezhenar wrote: post #31
gressquel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the hour rate in europe is much higher than in Asia because the living costs are much lower. So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY

iPhone or Macbook price is roughly the same everywhere. Cost of living is a tiny part of expenses for a competent worker.

It is hard to understate just how totally wrong this statement is.

Perhaps you meant: "compared to cost of living MacBook is a tiny fraction of developer cost". That's true.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#107

Post by auggierose »

pmorici wrote: post #47
PeachPlum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not sustainable. To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had a system to buy/sell on signals. But when it came down to it, it didn't trade profitably. He wouldn't believe the code worked, and I couldn't convince him his scheme was flawed because it worked when he did it manually - and I've watched his youtube videos of h…

Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery. Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if…

$10 price?? Why did you even start the work?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#108

Post by Kenji »

Should've have accident insurance. Should have diversified his business and not relied on a garbage website. Especially after the first 2 months limitation. All these problems were completely avoidable. He might be a good engineer but he is not a good manager. Sorry, no pity from me.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#109

Post by opmac »

BjoernKW wrote: post #90

Some people, freelancers as well as clients and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in this market, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a freelancer or contractor is. Freelancing is not some alternative form of employment that allows you to conveniently dispense with social security costs. A freelancer is a self-employed service provider. Like with any other kind of self-employment you’re responsi…

Classic victim blaming. What you say is mostly true, but it completely glosses over the potential issues raised by this post. So what if the author made a mistake about using Freelancer.com? That doesn't change the fact that what Freelancer is _supposedly_ doing here is incredibly shady and they should be held accountable. The only real issue I have with the author's post is there are a lot of details missing. What did you do to step on the toes? Where are these chat logs? I can't assume that Freelancer is 100% in the wrong here without proper evidence and at least hearing their point of view. That being said, the author is using this as review a platform to raise attention to a potentially serious issue, and there should be no reason to immediately blame him with "sorry, it's your fault for using Freelancer to begin with... good luck."
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