Jak J.

Here it comes, from a 4 year veteran at Freelancer.com! As every of these website Freelancer.com lives from fees taken from employers and employees. I never had anything against this as I understand how these sites work and I was very grateful that they exist. I've been freelancering on other sites as well and had very successful careers, on all of them. With over 400 projects completed (and 400 highly paid projects, not $30 projects with a team to pay) as an individual and a 5 star rating I had it all. Then, the greed started rolling in. Initially they started boosting up the prices and lowering what they offered in return. They started re-doing the website, for the worse, adding new unnecessary features just to attract people to bid on projects. They focused on QUANTITY over QUALITY. The Freelancer.com website turned in a market, a wild chaotic market where you just had to PAY in order to have greater chances to win a project. The prices of the packages rose incredibly fast and the changes from 2 months ago made me quit Freelancer.com, transfer all of my 40+ STANDARD CLIENTS that had opened jobs with me, that paid ~300-400$ per month, each to direct payment via PayPal or to other oursourcing websites. It's drastic how they want to enforce a "cleaner, professional, bla bla" website, and how they want to steal money off us like we're stupid and don't notice anything. First of all, if you had the notification e-mail off: YOU WERE NOT NOTIFIED ABOUT ANY CHANGES, so my membership price jumped from ~$50 -> $200 without me knowing. I had a lot of money on the account and didn't even notice at that time, it was just now when I emptied my account that I noticed it authorized PayPal to charge me $200. I was in shock and disbelief, angry and disappointed. I went and disputed, managing to take the last $200 back but not for the previous months that I unknowingly paid. They used to have people "check your projects" before they go live, but since they don't want to invest in a better community they're getting ~500 spam projects EVERY DAY and TONS of projects where the users are trying to scam you into paying them via PayPal/Moneybookers. I've been reporting these projects as crazy but they go out after a hour or so, so the scammers have enough time to scam innocent people. All of this could improve by hiring people to check the projects, after 1 month they'd have 50% less projects but they'd have a better community. Is this what they want? NO! They want numbers and numbers only. Well, good luck Freelancer.com, I know I earned a lot using your website and thank you for that, but never again will I or my clients give you money. Sincere regards and best of luck.