Freelancer

I appreciate that team was concerned for my response after their reply against my ticket.

I liked the support because it's really understanding, and it's quick to respond.
Thank you.

Donot use this as my 450$ the worked even dilevered after good feed back were revesed i think freelance.com is a scamming company they are scammer

In this project I work hard and gain great experience

Customer service is very good. While I haven't done any transaction yet.

I'm an employer and have contracted about $200,000 in projects over the last 5 years with several Freelance sites. For new users I'd suggest posting/bidding at both freelancer.com and elance.com instead of trying to read all the reviews of single user experiences... it's pretty obvious elance is better after a single bid or job posting in my opinion. If you want my single experience anyway, read on...

Problems with freelancer:
1. Poor escrow system. The majority of developers insist on cash up front ("Milestone Released"). I haven't had a dispute so far and don't know why this is the case.
2. Freelancer "live chat" is offline more than half the time. When talking with a live chat person, they have been proficient in English, but are limited in what they can do. When trying to resolve something that I thought would be simple, I asked to speak with a supervisor and was told he was too busy.
3. The Freelancer payment system is clunky and confusing. The submission page that gives permission to withdraw from paypal always asks for a lesser amount than what is actually taken (I assume due to fees, but so far I haven't been able to reconcile it). If I am clicking Submit on a form saying $25.00 will be withdrawn from my paypal account, it shouldn't be withdrawing $25.61. I've also had small charges pulled, without warning, from my Paypal account when releasing an escrow payment to the employee. No warning is given that money is about to be withdrawn from my account.
4. I don't know why this is exactly, but when posting a job on Freelancer I get many bids that are copy/paste blurbs of text and huge irrelevant portfolios from people who clearly haven't read the job description. On Elance I get very specific questions, often with relevant portfolio work. I have a large number of reviews and am rated 5.0/5.0 on both sites so am not sure why this is.
5. All of the help and form submission pages on Freelancer could be improved by having an editor or technical writer review them. It's frustrating to spend time trying to find an answer to basic question (like What is the Milestone payment system?), only to discover confusing explanations with poor and inconsistent prose across the site.

All that said, several reviewers on SiteJabber have claimed Freelancer.com is a complete scam. I don't think that is true - in my opinion the owners/management of Freelancer.com have good intentions. I'm writing a negative review, and have been in contact with the Freelancer staff regarding my review, and do not fear of account retribution or anything crazy like that. I've always been able to get any issue or confusion resolved, although so far it's generally been a slower and more annoying process with Freelancer.com versus eLance.

If you found this review helpful, please vote it so. You can also message me via sitejabber with any questions (site jabber will email me, even if this review is old).
-Updated June 9,2014

At first I thought this site would be a good try. It had a well-made, modern-looking, and well-designed website, and convincing stats in terms of number of buyers and sellers. I signed up for the low level free account, because well - why not? After I failed after THREE attempts at their ridiculous verification process, I smelled a rat. They wanted "clear, unaltered photos" (done), a government-issued ID (done), and a recent utility bill, phone bill etc. to show true residency (done). Fine. I did all that. After a week or so, they told me that they couldn't verify me, but I'd passed two of their three checks.

Once you're in, the fine print says you have the option of paying them an extra monthly fee (at various membership levels) to increase your visibility. Oh, and every bid will cost you 3% or $3 USD, whichever is greater, which is actually not bad. Some sites I've seen charge as much as 20% for each bid you deliver on.

Then the real smell of rat emerged when I saw them asking me to take a "mandatory choice" of numeracy, literacy, or logic, each costing $5 -- otherwise my "profile would be incomplete". So in other words, I need to pay them first in order for them to potentially pay me, *IF* I won a bid for a job (yes, like many other freelancing sites, it's bid-based, like an eBay for jobs.) No thank you. That's not how I do business, and I refuse to "pay to play".

Stay away from this company at all costs, seriously...

EDITED UPDATE (In response to the feedback below)
Hello Freelancer Rep, thank you for your response to my feedback. I found my overall experience (beyond the initial hopes that this would be a suitable source for legit freelance jobs, as indicated above) to be quite bad, I'm afraid. I'll accept that verification may be required for certain types of employers, for tax purposes or other business reasons, but as for "skill tests", I can only say that 1) your process needs vast efficiency improvements, and 2) freelancers should emphatically *NOT* be the ones paying for these proficiency tests. Their skills and abilities should be self-evident from both their profiles, as well as the bid proposals they submit. Please take a look at your competitors' websites to see how this works, in particular, eLance / Upwork. No verification process, no money required for a multitude of optional skills tests, and just as many projects to bid on as your site. Also, withholding funds from your freelancers, cancelling projects without payment, etc. hurts your business as well as your reputation. I hope you pass this information up the management chain, unless your company is OK with the majority of reviews on this site that are tainting your reputation. Best regards.

- Roger

He is very good and kind guy <3. He supports me a lot to ensure that they're all good.
Love him...

I am very pleased to talk with a humble guy. I can not explain in words how I thank for it

Now freelancer.com motive has been changed.

We have been using freelancer.com site for last 5 years (when they were calling it a getafreelancer.com). We are small company employing almost 100 people and catering to different groups of clients through our outsourcing services. As we have more candidates and therefore we are having five different marketing peoples using the site with different accounts.

The strange stuff starts from here;

#1 Recently, we noticed the most of the projects are being either canceled by Buyers or expired because of non activity. We have been awarded with some projects and as usual after accepting them, freelancer.com deducted fees (no issue with that).

#2 Second, those project's Buyers have requested us to stop working on projects because of change in mindset. They do not want to continue developing the project. So we mutually agreed to stop working and they deposited partial payment as we requested.

#3 Now, what freelancer did. They have deducted payments as Reversal milestone and make negative balance in one of our account. Next, to remove negative balance, they converted other currency payment. Done all within an hour and we lost our hard earned payment.

Now we have been trying to contact freelancer.com customer representative, but still did not get any response after 48 hours. Though, as a matter of fact, we posted general ticket and we got response within an hour. Should not we assume there is something wrong doing going on behind curtains?

SPECIAL NOTE TO EVERYONE: IF YOU HAVE PAYMENT IN FREELANCER.COM ACCOUNT, WITHDRAW IT IMMEDIATELY BEFORE YOU GOT PAYMENT DEDUCT WITHOUT ANY JUSTIFIABLE REASON.

Thanks
PS

Lost $1500. First programmer I awarded project didn't respond in 3 days. So i unawares him and awarded another the same project. They asked for "the usual 30% up front to get started ($1500) in this case and will finish all by Dec 12th. Nothing at all from freelancer. Minimal opening application long in screen NOTHING at all what i was asking for. Log in screen did not work. 2 days later i complained. All freelancer does is encourage you and freelancer to communicate, which is only messaging. But t seems Freelancer can not see any of the message chains nor "the work" submitted. Then when i deleted the other awarded same "make cell phone app" awarded to other guy that never respond - it also deleted current awarded freelancer that was paid $1500. Now case is closed and can't even rate the rip off freelancer! This is an excellent place to spend your time and money to get ripped off, pissed off, and waist a tonn of time trying - wishing to get resolution. - you'll never get your work done here! They have no way and no concern to get scammers off of their website. Their set up encourages and promotes them. No real resolution evaluation system. Only so long as freelancer is communication - sending ANY message to me and ANY..."Work"... (including a screen shot - i think "work is any picture file") then the freelancer is meeting criteria of "actively communicating with employer" - Regardless of what communications or "work" that is being done! Next websites you'll want to go to to file fraud reports against thins place is: "Fraudaid.com", "https :// www.econsumer. Gov/#crnt", interpol.int, http://www.stopfraud.gov/report.html, & https://www.ic3.gov/faq/default.aspx - federal bureau of internet crime complaint center!

Very fast and clear explanation And the information's helped me alot
Thank you so much, Jennifer
Kind regards
Rani k.

Long story short, Freelancer.com stole me $2000! I completed 2 big projects, one translation project worth $650 and a fully developed website worth $1350. When the funds were released, I decided to open up another account with freelancer.com, to bid on translation jobs only with one account and development jobs with the other account. 2 days later, freelancer.com closed both of my accounts, explaining me that I breached their Terms and Conditions by opening the other account. I apologized and requested the funds to be released to my paypal account. Below their answer:

"Hi,

Thanks for mailing us back.

Note that in the event of termination, Users found in violation of the User Agreement will not receive any credit or payment from Freelancer.com. Without limiting Freelancer.com's other remedies, to the extent you are in violation of this User Agreement, you must pay Freelancer.com for all fees owed to us and reimburse us for all losses and costs (including any and all Freelancer.com employee time) and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) related to investigating such breach and collecting such fees. You agree that Freelancer.com is entitled to deduct such charges directly from any existing balance in the offending Account, or any other Freelancer.com Account owned by you. Kindly review our Terms & Conditions for additional information.

We hope for your understanding.

---
Sincerely,
Chase
Freelancer.com Support"

They are not only stealing my money, but also send threatening emails. If you read between the lines, they are telling me: "Stop bothering us, or we will send you an invoice even higher than your account balance".

I filed a legal complaint against them.

Folks, do yourself a favor, and never ever use this scam.

UPDATE 20 MAR 2014:
The below response from Marcus (Freelancer.com Staff) is nothing else than a standard canned response by freelancer.com. With this kind of response, they want to make the reader of the reviews believe that they actually care, which they don't. After having received this response, I have contacted freelancer.com support (not Marcus, but the normal support mail), where I have been told that Freelancer.com Staff is no longer available for discussions with me. Again, nice one guys! I filed an official complaint today with the official government driven complaint institute ACCC. For all of you guys interested in filing a complaint, please visit www.scamwatch.gov.au

This is only the first step I am undertaking, I am also in contact with an Australian attorney and will go the hard way and sue the company. Hopefully we can get enough complaints to get this scam closed down by the Australian government.

I have got a message from a person to mail an email so I did
Later I have recieved mail asking to pay for which I doubted and contacted the support

Thanks to Kayla B to Support me and clear my All Doubts.

She Solve my All Issue and doubts and help me with future not issue occur.

Thanks Kayle B

This site takes money from job seekers as a subscription and also has audacity to take fees per job.

In less than 1 month on two occassions they have taken fees for jobs that do not exist and on one occassion they simply look the other way and make excuses and transfer funds out of my account to places unknown.

They cannot explain their invoicing or charging system and when i was told of a refund recently for one of 7 odd charges, i asked for a credit note to show what a refund was for,

I was appaled when after 1 hour of chat the operative did not know what a credit note was and could not understand that if freelancer can raise an invoice for $15 and take money from my bank account or paypal and the invoice is found to be bogus either for a non existent job or some system glitch which happens often on their system then the remedy is to raise a credit note for the equivalent amount and refund the amount and the credit note should read taht it is credit note ******* for a reversal of xyz fee of $15 against invoive ******* of whatever date and this is the right way, any other way is tantamount to shady accounting and loopholes for theft.

I am also well informed that others use the site to sweep unsuspecting prospectors into pyramid job schemes, or job owners into paypal scams and much more.

Its a bizaare thing and the only reason I am staying on freelancer is because i believe that by the smallest of follies doth a giant fall and i have become rather determined to take them to the cleaners.

Its the only way they will learn that job hunting is not a brownie point scheme where you rob folk that are seeking work for any reason and expect them to work like slaves under any circumstance and fiddle accounts in exceedingly vast ways.

I have used people per hour for years., i have never once been charged a penny by them... same with guru and many others.

A massive lesson needs to be taught to these folk and I welcome anyone who has been scammed financially on this site to contact me for their details to be added to my shortlist.

England has a launderette, its called the county court.

What a horrid way to treat people.

I spoke with Chelsea V to get my Freelancer account verified, and it was very quick and painless.

THANK YOU FOR CHANGING MY NAME GREAT I LIKE HIS WORK GRAFZY SOLUTIONS PRIVATE LIMITED I THINK I LOST MY MONEY BUT HI HELP ME

Janella L, give me a great support with about a contest, really satisfied about their site and support, Thank you again Janella L.

Me retienen fondos de un proyecto que me pagaron porque el cliente no había verificado su cuenta, según tenía de plazo un mes, no se de que servía el conteo un mes, ya que al llegar la fecha no se resolvió nada, posteriormente, el cliente verifica su cuenta y al paso de unos días logran liberar mi dinero, pero quitándome 20%

HE WAS AVAILABLE FOR MY MANY/mUCH NEEDS WITH PATIENCE. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Best support team. Thanks for your patience once again

Had a great conversation with Carmen A. He helped me in what i need. He answered to all my question

Alexa was a nice person who guide me very well and, I was so satisfy about it^^ Thank you alexa