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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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131–140 of 359 posts

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#131

Ever since Elance merged with ODesk to make Upwork getting online work has dried up, and so I have to rely on my personal network. With Elance you'd get leads for jobs, and take them offsite. Its not that I wouldn't want to use the ecosystem provided its just that it suck and took too much. Upwork takes more, and really locks you in. I refused to scan my license to become authorized. Even if I used the platform, taxe…

Good to hear I'm not the only one who feels that leads from online marketplaces has dried up :/

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#132
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.

I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation.

For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through beforehand.

After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us are here for the pursuit of knowledge, my guess is that the community here represents more of the right side of the bell curve.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#133
post #73

Stay 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…

Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that would be worth you time.

In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt to you.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#134
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't the Chinese have a saying which means 'Pay low price, expect to get screwed over'? Bangladesh is even worse than India.

I've read an article about Chinese culture of "good enough". That many apartments fall apart right after they're built because if you do 80% of the job then that's pretty much considered "done". Doing it correctly or completely isn't part of the contract.

That was a great article: https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-a...

I don't know how true it is about China, but I certainly recognized that attitude.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#135

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…

Another one of those 'blame the victim' responses. I work in an SME with more than 100 employees and I outsource legal work, HR work, payroll, tax accounting, property maintenance, web design, recruitment, marketing and lots of IT. Outsourcing specialisms to third parties is as old a society. A fundamental feature of our western democracies is a secure legal framework that means that I can use an agent and I can hold…

If all a contractor focuses on is her day job how is that different from traditional employment? Being able to focus on your day job while leaving everything else to another party is what employment is for.

I'm all in favour of outsourcing the work that you're not good at or that's not part of your core business. However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your business. Nobody understands better what your services are or how exactly you can help your clients. It's ok to outsource some of that work like cold-calling (if that works for your business), newsletter management etc. but defining and communicating the core value you bring to the table should never be outsourced.

You specifically mentioned legal work and tax accounting. Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#136
post #82

Well, 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…

As I read through the comments I was composing in my head almost the identical response as yours. Thanks for saving me the time. My spidey sense started to tingle around "I'll spare you the details", then I was curious as to the other side of the story when I read "I must have stepped on a few toes". But once I got to the father dying and the bad car accident that caused all savings to be depleted by medical bills I suddenly felt like I was reading some phishing email scam, so I pretty much stopped there. I didn't get to anything regarding depression and I'm happy I didn't.

I agree, it's good to have experiences out there so that people can evaluate - it's just that this really poor execution.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#137
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.

It's probably simply to boost one's ego, every time one of these posts brings up how you should've been more 'responsible', it occurs to me that they're trying to shake their own failing of a similar nature from their past.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#138
post #111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> judge him negatively for speaking out Anything you put out on the internet can be a positive or a negative. This sort of post is not a positive. Part of the reason software buyers pay good rates (those who do) is because they need to know they are dealing with competent service providers. If the provider is offering services for less than that which would sustain a business (which many cash-strapped freelancers do)…

OK, sure. Charging more gives you access to the better class of clients. At age 23 I started out doing shitty freelance PHP work, included a bunch of fixed-price projects. Later on, at age 26/27, (I worked full-time in-between), I spent a year contracting for digital agencies at twice my 23-year-old rate, and had a much smoother time. So I know first-hand the benefits of "going up in the world" and getting into a hig…

Getting screwed occasionally is a cost of doing business. You price that in. If the business isn't worth it after pricing that in, then you look for another business. There are lots of businesses which have gone down from fraud and there are lots of businesses which eat those expenses and continue doing well. It's a fact of life as an entrepreneur and you deal with it.

That's not being a victim and certainly, you shouldn't play one on the internet in this type of case. If you are pitching a project or a service, you don't include as a footnote "I have been screwed over in the following cases". That's exactly what you are doing when your review comes up with the inevitable Google search (assuming he posted this under his real name).

We also don't know he really got shafted. If we were sitting in a court, there would be two sides presented. We are taking the reviewer's word and there are many details admittedly left out. The review would have been more effective if he were to zero in on one point and analyzed that point. We could then argue both sides of that point. Freelancer.com could potentially make changes on that one point. Then we could steer the conversation to one other point.

Instead, we have a blow-up with the passing of parents, a car wreck, stacked-up bills, depression, potential homelessness and all the times which customer service was "angry" with this person. If we're talking about potential issues, we could probably speculate about all the things which might happen to this person while living on the streets. Gosh, maybe he'll even get assaulted.

I feel for all the people in the world getting screwed over. But these sorts of blow-ups don't help. We should focus on ONE issue.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#139
post #42
post #12

I 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…

Am I the only one seeing the irony in this being posted on Trustpilot, a website letting contractors and other businesses pay hundreds of dollars not to destroy their reputation?

lol, I did not see that... does that mean the author would potentially get a cut of that? just thinking he sounds pretty desperate for cash.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#140
post #126
post #82

Well, 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…

After this review you are going to have a tougher time finding skilled resources on freelancer.com 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

I've used upwork too and had no problems there (it used to be called something else- elance maybe?). I use the sites for more than coding. I also get copywriters there.
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