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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#301

Post by Torkgin »

swalsh wrote: post #76
featherverse wrote: post #51

All 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…

I was with you up until your $1 comment. There's a lot effective ways to "market" yourself that aren't free. Conferences, for example, are crazy expensive. Paid advertising, sponsored content etc.

If you market yourself by speaking at conferences you usually make money.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#303

Post by notatoad »

JamesBarney wrote: post #244
notatoad wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, it seems entirely likely that freelancer.com is awful and online marketplaces withholding payments for nebulous reasons is a real problem, but i have a hard time trusting this review. Specifically, this: "The first time I asked for the reason I was told that there's no reason and that I should keep working, then I was told that because a client complained, and in another occasion, i was told something else that…

As someone who has been bounced around customer support before I can testify that I have forgotten reasons they've given me for why they weren't able to help me.

when they don't want to refund me $50, sure. But if they're holding $3600, i think i could probably pay attention to what they're telling me.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#305

Post by zzzzzzzza »

freeflight wrote: post #287
nraynaud wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, because India's revenue is growing, that's how you get developing countries out of the mud. Look how China developed since they became the world's factory.

Revenue is of no use when nobody is being paid living wages anymore. As good as China is doing, it still hasn't solved the basic issues and a growing middle class in China (and India) is only gonna worsen the situation. I don't believe this planet can sustain billions of people living with the same standards/ways like Northern American or Western European people do, that's a pipe dream equal to "Everybody can be a mi…

just because people get richer doesn't mean they will or even could make the same unhealthy lifestyle choices as americans. There will never be huge suburbs of mcmansions outside of every indian city - there's simply not enough room, even if everyone had the purchasing power of an american. (I say this as american who lives in the suburbs). Not saying that all the growth will be environmentally sound growth, but perhaps not as bad as it was in the past.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#306

Post by rhizome »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #68
doppp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more apt idiom is "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." [0] [0] https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/if+you+pay+peanuts%2C+y...

another is "you get what you pay for" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_get_what_you_pay_for

Another is "you don't get what you don't pay for."

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#307

Post by anonymous5133 »

lsmod wrote: 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…

Probably used fake credit card numbers or something. That's why these freelancing sites should always use cryptocurrency where the transaction can never be reversed.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#308

Post by valuearb »

cachvico wrote: post #282
Denzel wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can help me understand something because I hear this a lot. You manually debug and run your code through "the happy path and edge cases", if I'm understanding you correctly... so, does it really take that much longer to write an automated test that does the same thing? What I'm saying is if we accept the company's viewpoint as truth -- I don't -- then you'd just be writing code and handing it over. No testi…

Having automated tests written mean that future changes that break the existing code will cause the test to fail - that's the advantage.

Having automated tests also means that future changes can break the existing tests and force you to rewrite them.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#309

Post by octaveguin »

opmac wrote: post #109
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 d…

In any set of events, the story is up to the interpreter. If you make your story that you were victimized, then you'll feel like there's little you can do yourself to change that. Claiming victimhood is not at all productive.

Instead, if you see those events as failings on your part, you are empowered to make the change required to have a better time in the future.

Victim mentality doesn't solve anything and goes further to make the interpreter of one's life a powerless pawn that will unavoidably be used in ways that person doesn't like.

Blame yourself and empower yourself.

Upwork is still awful. Avoid it.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#310

Post by hedora »

_wmd wrote: post #133
lsmod wrote: 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.

I found their EULA, and it has some crazy stuff in it. For instance, they can terminate your account becase:

... 8) to manage any risk of loss to us, a User, or any other person; or

9) for other reasons.

And if they terminate the account they can keep all the money they owe you. Also, it claims contractor aren’t their employees. Instead they are “unsecured creditors”.

There’s also a bunch of stuff about how they can pass chargebacks through to sellers, and if you already withdrew the money, you have to deposit it back into your account.

It looks like the business model is to force skilled laborers to work under pseudonyms so that Freelancer has complete ownership of the contractor’s reputation and professional credentials. I’m shocked that this is a thing!

The Eula claims on one hand that they’re not a party to the contracts, but they go to great lengths to make sure the contractor and the employee don’t share their real world identities with each other (they even audit the contents of the files produced as part of the job, eavesdrop on audio/video/text chat/emails/etc).

I think this forces them to become a payment intermediary, which means they do have to deal with lots of thorny issues.

Welcome to the sharing economy, I guess.

Link: https://www.freelancer.com/info/plainterms.html

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