Imtiaz A.

In these days, oDesk isn't a site that it was before. I believe it's now a heaven for scammers. Low paying jobs, poor client profiles, sample scams, and many other issues are now the...

In July 2011, I joined in oDesk as a freelance medical writer. From August 2011 to May 2012, I have worked around 194 hours in oDesk. Unfortunately, due to some serious personal problems, in 2012 I discontinued my ongoing contract and left oDesk. After nearly ten long months, in January 2013, I came back to oDesk to seek some job opportunities.

But what I found was the qualities of clients as well as the job offers decreased drastically. I saw too many spammy jobs in every category. I don't know where these clients came from, but surely they don't know how to post a job and what should be the budget of the job.

Interestingly, in the meantime, I was hired in a long-term project of writing 2000 words of articles on complementary and herbal medicines. According to my client's job description, I was hired to write articles in accordance with following potential parameters:

• Minimum 2000 words
• Perfect English
• Interesting writing style, the articles should attract the readers. Easy to understand (the articles are for patients, not for professionals) and Explain ALL medical terms
• Free of plagiarism
• The articles should contain a practical part in a way that it is helpful in daily life.

Moreover, he also suggested that each article should deal with following points:

1. What is it (Definition, where can you find it?)
2. Effects on the human body (effects on body systems, organs etc)
3. Usage in the treatment of diseases (which illnesses)
4. Practical recommendations (how to use it, dosages etc.)
5. Example text for correct quotation
6. Proper references (bulleting each paragraph with a study paper)

Do you have any idea what was the budget of writing each article?

Firstly, it was 10 $USD and after writing the first one, he increased the amount to 14 $USD. Actually, this is not the horrible thing I faced. The horrible thing was when I started writing the second article. I was writing an article on a synthetic drug that is still in the clinical trial phase. Unfortunately, there is not a single article written on this topic and even Wikipedia have very few sentences about the ingredient.

I was on my desk for more than 30 hours and I studied around 40 study papers related to the compound. After completing the article, just to save my profile from negative feedback, I submitted that as a final article and after that, I immediately ended the contract.

I believe that one was one of the horrible experiences in my lifetime. I don't know what action is right for this kind of clients, but they must be stopped. Because, they are still hiring someone fool like me...

After reading all the reviews in here, now I'm over confirmed that Docstoc.com is a big scammer. I've been messaging after messaging its customer care since February 20,2014. But it's really weird that till now I've been getting the worst customer support from their part.

I had a docstore (a store for selling premium documents) account in that site. Last February, I decided not to sell any more documents via Docstoc and clear the amount. So, I messaged to *******@docstoc.com about my intention to close the account and release the fund. But after sending the first email, things just started getting more and more worse!

I don't know why, but the customer support just started (and till now) playing hide and seek with me. First, they just sent a generic email to me that they would take my issues seriously and solve those as soon as possible. But, five days over, no reply from their part. So I again sent them an email to inquiry about the progress.

They replied that I would get …. Amount from my docstore account. I quickly replied them what the ……. You're talking about! I should be getting ……. Amount from my account. For more than three days, there was no reply from the support. After sending four consecutive emails, they replied that their finance department assured that the amount is what I told them!

Well, things were not stopped there; they just came up with a new issue. This time they were asking about my mailing address. I was totally shocked with this new issue, because my store account was associated with my paypal email address and this information was there from the day one I created my account.

I emailed them to know why they're now asking about mailing address. I requested them to send the money in my paypal account and not to send any check in my local mailing address. Well, again no reply -- this time for more than days. After sending five consecutive emails, on March 07,2014, those ……… from the customer support replied: "Your payment is being processed, and the check in the amount of... will be sent out to you soon".

Today is 11th March 2014 and still no sign of any reply or payment.

Can you suggest what should I do now?

It's been nearly a month since I started communicating with the support, but it's now pretty clear to me that they're not going to gonna pay …………….

Stay away from sites like this. Don't do any business with Docstoc.