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 d…
Freelancer.com has ruined my life
121–130 of 359 posts
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#122Some 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…
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#123Stay away from Freelancer.com They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other. I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they sud…
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#124It 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, tha…
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#125I tried Freelancer.com when I was starting out, I was really happy when I got my first gig, I did a good job, the client was pleased, I got paid an equivalent of £1 an hour but accepted that as my foot in the door... I tried to keep going down this route but quickly realised that this kind of competitive race to the bottom in terms of price is not just the the entry level experience, it's just generally expected. Thi…
Some of it may also depend on where you live. A pay rate people in Western countries would scoff at may be a perfectly comfortable living wage in less fortunate countries. There's probably some dip in the quality of products you get, but sometimes clients view shoddy and affordable as good enough... If they are even aware of the difference.
I also get the "shoddy is good enough" thing, and while I hate to write junk code, I know it has it's places such as proof of concepts... that in fact is exactly the kind of work I did on freelancer.
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#126Well, first let me say that my experience as someone who has hired on freelancer has been very good. I have found some excellent developers there. But I'll also point out that (1) I spec my projects pretty carefully, almost to the point of 'hell I might as well build it myself'; and (2) I pay. And when the project is harder than I originally thought, I don't say "tough shit you signed a contract dumbass" but rather I…
The protection afforded to you as the buyer does not extend to the seller. There are better places like upwork for additional protection for developers.
But yes he does seem a little depressed but that says more about the top 5% earners on a site like this. This is what it looks like after 5 years on freelancer.com
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#127Stay away from Freelancer.com They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other. I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they sud…
I think Upwork is a little more protective in that aspect. You can clearly see from the beginning whether the client has a verified payment method.
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#128It seems you have a good reasons to sue. You got perfect reviews. It shows your dedication to providing great customer service. Maybe you got carried away and said some things to the agent however the lockdown is unacceptable. She doesn't have the right to make these decisions. You should speak with senior management before to get your money out.
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#129There’s a suspicious amount of “I’ll just leave those details out” in this article. That aside, this just goes to show why it’s important to work toward controlling your own destiny. That seems to be a theme here at HN, and for good reason. Your services will likely always be resold to someone, regardless of how high up the chain you are. However, the less layers above you there are, the lower your risk in ending up…
The severity of this persons claims are why arbitration was invented. If he's right, complaining on the internet isn't enough of a remedy. And if he's wrong, there ought to be some attempt to hear the other side
Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life
#130All of those "freelancer" websites are scams. Freelancing is about not working for other men. It's about being your own boss. Those websites are not really freelancing, they're temp agencies hiring out short term contract work. That is not freelancing. Those websites all share specific qualities: The salaries are too low, the service quality is poor, and you'll be outbid by unskilled indian labor 90% of the time. Put…
Your comment is unfair. These websites are not scams. A couple of years ago I was looking for 10-15h/week gigs and using one of competitors of freelancer.com proved to work for me. Was it annoying to bid for gigs? Yes. Was the quality of their service low? Yeah, I'd say so. Were salaries low? For someone coming from Eastern Europe - not at all. On top of that, I always got money on time, which is not always the case…