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Chase M.

Contributor Level

Total Points
86

1 Review by Chase

  • Freelancer

6/9/14

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 If I am clicking Submit on a form saying $25.00 will be withdrawn from my paypal account, it shouldn't be withdrawing $25.61.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 No warning is given that money is about to be withdrawn from my account.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

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Jielyn L. – Freelancer Rep

Hi there Chase, my name is Marcus and I'm from Freelancer.com. Thank you for utilizing our site to outsource your project; though, we regret to hear how you've felt about our services. We your feedback and thank you for bringing these issues to our attention. I have sent you an email to further explain our Milestone Payment and to further discuss the issues with our Live Chat support, Payment and Bidding system. I'd love to hear more about your experience and how we can improve our services to better support you and other users. I hope to hear from you.

Chase Has Earned 6 Votes

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Chase M.'s review of Freelancer earned 5 Very Helpful votes

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