Broken A.

UPDATE (Dec 9,2015): Just received an email from them (and my response is that all of it is useless unless there is a legitimate way to avoid such mishaps);

Hi ***,

Thank you for emailing us back.

We completely understand the inconvenience this may have caused you. However, due to the employer's violation of our Terms and Conditions, we are unable to process their payment from the project through the site as it may cause potential liabilities for the site.

Due to the reversal of the project payment, your project fee has been refunded to your Freelancer.com account, and as a courtesy, we can give you two (2) months free Premium Membership Plan. This is the only compensation that we can offer you for now.

Please let us know if you want us to apply the two (2) months free membership subscription to your account.

We will wait for your response.

Kind Regards,

Kathie R
Freelancer.com Support
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Can anyone please suggest if I can forward this to the Department of Justice, Australia just to make sure none else is hurt?

UPDATE (Nov 12,2015): Freelancer.Com just reversed the payment made for a project that was COMPLETED & DELIVERED with the client's satisfactory acceptance and feedback! Freelancer also deleted (they say the user deleted it, why should a user be allowed to delete a project that was handed over!) the project that is a deliberate act to remove evidences of a misdeed. I immediately acted with the following support ticket;

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Subject: Do you mind clarifying your activities?

Summary:

I did a project over Freelancer.Com following all the rules and regulations. The project was completed successfully and the client also made feedback and payment.

Then all of a sudden Freelancer.Com decided to lock down the fund with some issues on the client's end. And finally I see (guess) Freelancer.Com just reversed the payment from the client while the job has already been done and delivered.

In simple sentence, Freelancer.Com decided not to pay me for my work.

(Please feel free to browse my earlier tickets to know the fact, I am not in a mood to type it down here all over again)

Documents: Attached are the proof that;

A. The client was handed over with the deliverables at his satisfaction.
B. Freelancer reversed the associated payments;

Misdeed by Freelancer.Com: The project was DELETED!

A. Why should a COMPLETED & DELIVERED project be deleted?
B. Why should a payment be reversed for a COMPLETED & DELIVERED project?
C. I was not notified of the payment reversal or of the project removal via email!

My requirements: I really need the URL/PDF of your policy in written format so I can forward the entire matter to the Department of Justice, Australia because it is very much clear that you are not at your intention to resolve the matter in an ethically correct way. I also need that policy document for a circulation over the social media available like Site Jabber and others.

Thank you very much for all your so called support and assistance. It is pretty eminent that my days over here has come to an end. I can well understand why people call you SCAM.
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The attached documents (proof images) can be found at (also attached here along with the support ticket reference XEB-569-*******);

A. Project delivered & accepted: http://postimg.org/image/smgkptsip/
B. Payment reversal: http://postimg.org/image/vnmort9nn/
C. Project deleted: http://postimg.org/image/paabslp5v/

And here goes their response!

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Hi there,

I understand that you have concerns about a reversed payment for a project that you have completed.

If you are referring to the project "Self-destruct private note php script" with project ID *******, the project was deleted and the employer's account was closed. The employer's account was closed because it was found that they violated the site's Terms and Conditions and the payments that they released to you have to be reversed to its original payment source. This was done as a security measure because we do not want you to be held liable on funds that came from a questionable source. Keeping those funds in your account might cause more issues on your end and, we dont want that to happen.

You can know more about the site's Terms and Conditions by going to this link. I suggest that you check sections 18-22: https://www.freelancer.com/about/terms

As an extension of our support, we can send an email to the employer and we can request them to communicate with you and settle the payment off-site. Let us know if you want to proceed with that by replying here.

We will be expecting your reply. Let us know if you other issues or concerns, thank you.

---
Regards,
Cyril C.
Freelancer.com Support
============================================================

What a caring system! Wow! They don't want me to fall under legal penalties for the money source of the employer! Someone please kill me!

And what is there in the sections 18-22? A bulletproof set of terms and conditions that Freelancer.Com can withheld (and cancel) your payment even if you deliver the project successfully. And the sole decisoin maker is the Freelancer.Com godly entity... lol

The support staff was prompt enough to show me the terms and conditions, but just forgot to mention their policy to secure the worker's intellectual property/labor!

UPDATE (Oct 27,2015): Today I received a comparatively acceptable response from "*******@freelancer.com" stating;

"We regret to learn about what happened and I completely understand your situation. However, your withdrawal has been put on hold due to the current account issues of your employer ********. Note that the proper department has notified your employer and mentioned the issues that have to be resolved through the Verification Center. We'll just have to wait for your employer's response to resolve this issue. As per our Privacy Policies, we cannot disclose any detailed information about the specific issues."

However, they still don't answer me what is the time period they want to wait for the client's response and what will happen afterwords if the client fails/doesn't respond to their verification request. I do have the right to know this information, don't I? And I believe I am asking for a policy clarification, nothing related to any private/personal information, isn't it?

UPDATE: Too bad! Just had a LIVE CHAT (after about a hundred attempts) with the support and the support personnel just left the chat without answering my questions! Below is the link to the transcript;

http://www.filedropper.com/freelancercom-livechaton22october2015

ORIGINAL REVIEW: A client awarded a project, Freelancer promptly deducted the commission, the job was completed, client accepted the deliverables, client made the payment, Original post: http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.freelancer.com#810

Freelancer.Com added the sum to my financial balance, client put a very positive review and NOW FREELANCER.COM WON'T LET ME WITHDRAW THE FUND because there are some issues with the client's account!

Wow! Freelancer.Com always seems to detect the fund was not eligible for withdrawal until it is the last moment on the pay day! A database driven online system cannot detect this when I requested the withdrawal? It had to wait for the pay day to come to see this?

The terrifying factor is, Freelancer.Com has grown a habit of keeping people in dark about what is really going on with simple phrases like "Account under review" and replying to support queries after 5/6 days and so on. And the online live chat service, let us not spoil our days!

Freelancer.Com, now where is my time & effort? Where is the commission you already deducted? What will happen if the client doesn't respond at all? How come a project gets the COMPLETE status if the client didn't pay Freelancer.Com?

What a logic, the freelancer is liable for the client's account issues! I was even asked to contact the client to resolve the issue, wow! Did I ask the client to come over Freelancer.Com and offer me the job? What is the reason we work through Freelancer.Com than handling clients directly?

At this point, Freelancer.Com, you just raised a question with online freelancing platform!

BOTTOM LINE: After a number of successful days with them, I AM FRUSTRATED WITH FREELANCER.COM now. Looking for a better platform who at least puts some logical explanation to facts.