FreelancerReviews 5,586

I used their services to hire a "developer" based in Bangladesh and they charged me for the same milestone twice because they said that they couldn't charge the original CC I gave them. It has been 3 months and my CC hasn't been able to resolve this issue even though I have proof of the double charge and also I was able to make a screen grab from a page on their site where it clearly shows that they were applying a credit on my acct. Needless to say that they didn't and on top of that, they closed my acct. It looks like you can't file a legitimate claim against them or they will close your acct. As punishment.

On top of everything else, the so called "developer" did on my website was garbage. The site was down for a few hours and it became slower than molasses. There is a reason the developers on that site (mostly form third world countries) are able to be willing to work for less, THEY ARE NOT GOOD!

Again one more stupid reply from freelancer. Freelancer holds my bank payment transfer as they are saying my employer told them to hold money. My employer is asking me to complete and go on working without any deposit for milestone 2. So i raise complaint on freelancer regarding the same. See below the stupid reply. I don't know what they are managing for us, when they are not able to solve problem between freelancer and employer.

This is the freelancer reply:-
Thank you for getting back us.

We do not take any side with regard to the project issue. That is the reason why we contacted you for us to know your explanation on this. We understand that you disagree with some policies on the site, do note that every site has its differences when it comes to particular matter. The site charges project fees for both parties upon acceptance of a project and this has been implemented since the site has started. This is also stated in our Fees and Charges page to let the users aware of this. Indeed, your employer has the obligation to pay you, but as previously mentioned, the project that has been awarded to you is fixed-price; thus, we highly recommend the employers to release the payment after the project completion. If you want to be paid for every completed task, the type of the project should be Hourly and not fixed-price.

Let me know what should i do in this case.

I recommend anyone to STAY AWAY from Freelancer.com.
Just take a look at their web site and ask your self: How do I contact them? Is there a number to call?

NO. There isn't!

We are a US based company and had to request our old account to be closed after they associated us with the German flag, while being in the business trip to Germany... Now they keep making our life hard, blocking our account 2 weeks after we have verified it, sent all IDs and spoke over the phone. Now they block payments released to freelancers who are working for us, causing us damage. We have been their customers from the day VWorked was acquired by Freelancer.com. I know Matt, their CEO and he knows me, but their support system and 1st tier support are handled very bad..

I have read several reviews about a scam and such, but I had never experienced any billing/payment issues until yesterday. However, after a quick chat with a support team representative, I was refunded immediately. Additionally, my experience on the site has been quick job-finding and quick payments and it is definitely one of the best freelance sites out there.

They hold up my withdraw since 1 month and still pending, the scheduled date arrived and gone and payment is still pending. I asked why this happening they said once of employer need some pending formalities with accounts. I investigated and found that employer cnascidonascido has completed 5+ jobs since last 1 year and has 4.3 rating and 4 good review. They always have stupid reasons and stupid answers to hold Freelancers hard earned money. All support request just pending since last 1 week they even didn't get time to open and assign it to their staff. I am not sure whether they are real scammer and fruaders but what happening to me is bad, and I need to ask my employers to come to Elance if they want me to do their work, that's the only alternative best way I found. I am not sure when I will get my money, hope someday with kindness of Freelancer I'll recieve my hard earned funds.

Submitted many bids, every time freelancer is asking for $ to move your bid higher up. Now I finally got the first "Job", an impossible job to complete: Transcript of a miserable audio tape with an interpreter talking over it. After I tried I turned the job down, but my paypal account was already charged from freelancer w/o any notice or mail for what the charge is. I guess it's a rip off site, typical crook business. Lots of promises and lots of crap on this site.

I accepted a project worth $1250 on freelancer.com and $125 was deducted from my account to accept the project as per freelancer policy ( I am okay with this charge as I have been using freelancer for a long time now and I respect their policy.

The issue arise when the employer went unresponsive after me accepting the project and I contacted freelancer.com chat support to cancel the project and refund the $125 that they deducted for this project's fee. They simply denied to provide me a refund by saying that they will not refund as it was deducted as a fee to their that they provide to the employer and the freelancer.

I am shocked on hearing this and lost $125 just for accepting a project where the employer is not going to pay me anything as he is no more responding.

Now I am going to ask my bank for the chargeback.

I SIGNED UP ON THIS SITE COUPLE WEEKS AGO AND POSTED MY FIRST PROJECT AND ALSO ATTACHED DETAILED DOC FILE TO EXPLAIN WHAT I NEEDED. WITHIN FEW SECONDS OF MAKING THE PROJECT LIVE I HAD OVER 45 BIDS! NONE OF THE BIDDERS READ MY BRIEF OR CHECKED MY ATTACHMENTS. IT LOOKS LIKE SOME ROBOTIC BIDDING FEATURE OR AUTOMATED BIDDING FUNCTION! MY INBOX GOT SPAMMED WITH ENDLESS MESSAGES AND I DELETED THE PROJECT RIGHT AWAY! I WILL NOT BE RETURNING TO THIS SITE AGAIN!

Why do I receive 30 automated proposals within 20 seconds of posting a project! All the bids coming in are like robots! Please get rid of this and let each provider bid manually. I checked my project after 24 hours and I had over 150 proposals 95% of them were auto proposals without anyone reading my project brief. This is the reason most of the projects posted go unawarded. Please don't over whelm the client with 100's of AUTOMATED bids!

The following site is the definitive expose of the iWriter scam and the information there applies to many other freelance writing sites as well.

YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BELIEVE THE INFORMATION YOU FIND THERE.

http://the-giant-iwriter-scam.blogspot.ca/

One of the biggest online scams right now is in the "freelance writing" area.

The biggest company in this area is called iWriter and it is maybe the biggest online scam period.

Ignore all the fake positive reviews and fake websites recommending iWriter while pretending to be independent, they are all a part of the scam.

Iwriter is not just a huge scam, it is maybe the biggest of all the online scams.

There is an awesome website that uncovers the whole iWriter scam in great detail. The site is hilarious and extremely well-written.

It's also very thorough and comprehensive, maybe the best resource available yet on the iWriter scam.

That website shows clearly how fraud is not just peripheral to iWriter, but on the contrary, EVERYTHING at iWriter is fraud and scamming.

IWriter needs to be exposed to everyone until the iWriter scam is finally shut down.

Every single thing you are all complaining about is not "hidden" it is not "underhanded" it is plainly spelled out. By "plainly" I mean HUGE bullet points before you ever have to delve into the ToS. They take a %, from any and every project. It is clearly listed the amount and when they will take it.
It is also clearly stated that "people are bastards". There are scammers that will take your work and refuse to pay. There are contests, where they won't award a winner and take your idea anyway.
It is simple: Work with high rated employers or freelancers, bid on guaranteed contests/projects(the money is deposited already, it's not disappearing), set milestones(as an employer OR a freelancer) and don't budge until those milestones are completed,
It may be a hard concept to grasp, so after all that: Don't be stupid.
This is essentially "ebay" for freelance work. Same thing on ebay, you can buy something, get crap, be pissed and fight about it. I've had more issues with ebay and their resolution system, and shady dealers than I've had on freelancer. Is it perfect? No. The mobile site is worthless, and the app is just okay.

I participated in the contest for freelancer.com about six months ago and won it. For some reason, the customer's account, which organized the contest, has been blocked for violation of terms of use, and my reward (100USD) was returned back to the client is blocked, although I honestly transferred all rights to the logo.

3 days technical support tells me that the client sent a request to the fraud and he was silent. Then he said it was for security and the protection of freelancers. Now I have a debt of $ -99.

So, I did the work, the customer has paid it to me, I gave the right, and after half a year, the site freelancer.com stole my honestly earned me $ 100!

Freelancer.com is the best place on the internet to make real money, It provides you with tens of thousands of projects that needs to be done.
But freelancer is a risky place, you have to be aware of the scammers that will waste your time and money. But once you make the deal and take the money from the employer then you're safe. Freelancer WILL send you the money.
The first payment is a little hard, and as some of you said, They will take every chance to delay your payment. But if you did everything right they will pay you on time and with no delay.
I got my first payment a couple of days ago and I'm waiting for my second payment now, I made about 1000 USD this month and work requests are still coming. I'm seriously thinking about quitting my job and start to be a full time freelancer.
The customer service is good too, They are nice and helpful.
The only disadvantage is that dealing with the site is really hard, you can be scammed (by other users) easily, your first payment can be delayed easily. But this site is about making money and it's doing its job perfectly.
Good job Freelancer.com

In two chat sessions with support and more than 2 hours in chat time total we were still unable to come to a resolution of the issue at hand.
For some reason my credit card provider would not allow payment of services to Freelancer. I took the next step and attempted to get a Skrill account to handle the payment issue only to find out that because of where I live Skrill wont work with me.
Upon reporting this to the staff of Freelancer they stated perhaps I should try another payment gateway service. Now its clear I made multiple attempts to pay for services and they even attested to that, but they were not willing to do whatever it takes to fix the issue.
A freelancer had accepted my project and I had tried to pay this person only to fail because of some policy between my card provider and Freelancer. The only solid resolution I could see is that in order to maintain my professional reputation and ensure the freelancer is taken care of is to have bitten the bullet and credit the freelancer on my behalf for the project as it was accepted and they had already begun work on it.
Yes that would have cost them but now it will cost them more because I have closed my account and had another 4 to 6 projects with this specific freelancer in the pipeline.
I have had to bite the bullet a few times as a business owner myself, but by doing so I have made more money than I have ever lost, and its my belief the customer is always right even if they are wrong!

These guys are like those clowns that call from Jamaica claiming you won something.
And by by the prices I seen, there is no difference be freelancer. X ( don't want to give them back links)$100 was stolen from my account by sachinsam, I absolutely got nothing and felt like a donation or robbery, and I had to pay a fee to freelancer. $#*! for (1)$5 fee to add money (2) $5 fee to dispute(3) $5 fee to close account. Patricia was not caring and summarily gave sachinsam my hard earned $$. Sachinsam is in India. $100 in India is probably rent money. Unprofessionals gathered together. There are other website out ther. https://www.upwork.com

Not that it happened to me before but now i am done.
I have been active on the site, working hard for money, working for peanuts thinking it will all turn out to be good once i have the ratings and review to get big projects, turns out
The bigger the project, the chances are MY COMPLETED PROJECT PAYMENT gets reversed.
All i have many efforts, time and negative balance. Can anyone do that?
I challenge you.
Try Freelancer.com. You will definitely hail me.

The site is full of bugs when uploading samples. And slooowwww.I tried to upload bid specific samples on 3 different browsers (with brand new Mac & completely up to date software) and my uploads would disappear after an "invalid" notice. So many freelance sites are scams though, just praying on getting "bid money" from people who want work. This one offered a trial period so I thought I'd give it a shot, but if a site wants me to spend $5 to prove I can speak English well, and increase my bid odds of "370%" I'm suspicious.

Number one if they were catering to artists, there'd be an option to do a folder upload like Flicker or Facebook.