FreelancerReviews 5,586

I recently opened an account on www.freelancer.com for expand my visibility. I was happy to had found a work provided from a user nearby my working place. I completed the the first milestone, the user unlocked the money and freelancer took their fee. When i tried to move the money in my bank account, they delayed the transfer of 20 days. At the end of the 20 days they blocked my account telling me i need to explain my situation. After 4 days of continuos questions they said: its better if you ask for the money directly to the user, outside freelancer.com. I lost 1 month working to the project, freelancer gave me no insurance to get paid and now i must go directly to the customer for get paid!

I was scammed by a freelancer hired on freelancer.com who did not provide me with original design work (they copied it from the net). Upon reporting this to their help desk, they encouraged me to try and sort of out with the freelancer. The freelancer refused to give the money back and closed their account. I then contacted the help desk asking what to do next. They again told me to try and contact the freelancer off site and that there's nothing they can do. An utter disgrace! Freelancer do not take responsibility for fraudulent activity or copyright infringement. The freelancer clearly breached the sites code of conduct and the site takes no accountability. Run a mile from these crooks!

Hi All,
I recently placed a review about Freelancer and not being paid for services; to date I have still not heard back from Freelancer staff (and Lara I immediately replied to both Miguel and Joe's emails regarding NON PAYMENT OF SERVICES) and of course have heard nothing back! I am still missing $1680 payment and the Freelance Employer who scammed me has a total of 9 active projects on the site and has 14 past projects under the name Kathleen Cloeffle! Although I have done several other projects on the site and been paid for all of them I cannot sit idly by while I know that this person is still thinking that "FREE" in FREElancer means they get people to work for them at no charge! ELANCE at least protects their users from scum like this! Truly annoyed!

Lara, by the way what the f** is tier 2 support. Just like people have lever 2 technicians in Bpo's wherein, another person will be sitting next to you of the same level still will say that we are level 2 technicians. Also I have one question is it only you which gives answers to all the questions of people facing issues with your website. Stop playing with people. Please do something in order to make this website more happening and trustworthy. Or else I might have to report this to Ombudsman.

Hello,

I've been working as a freelancer since 2011, and the first website I've used was VWorker (that was bought by Freelancer). VWorker was like 1000 times better. They would take care of their users by holding the money until the job was done, and if the freelancer delivered, and the employer was happy, the money was released.
But with Freelancer, that's another story. You don't have any kind of security that you will get paid for your job. I did a small project for 100$. Freelacer withdraw from my balance 25$, because I've accepted the project. I did the job, deliver it, but the employer did not paid me. In fact he just ignored me. I've tried to talk with someone from Freelancer, because I don't think it was normal for me to pay the acceptance fee, for a project I was not paid for. But nothing!

So bottom line is that I've PAID 254 do work for free!
Also, they have a habbit of withdrawing money from your paypal balance, and if you don't have money in your paypal balance, they will charge your credit card that is linked to your paypal accout, so you might want to cancel your Preapproved payments to Freelancer from your paypal account.

Later Edit: here is the username of the employer that scamed me: FoxScully

I decided to use freelancer for one project, during which went terribly the user was only able to complete one of the two tasks but insisted for the final milestone payout then got really annoyed he did not get the final payment.

I find the freelancers on the site are conners and beggers the task I gave was two very simple tasks all could be solved with CSS, not really worth the $30 work, many where asking for $50+ to do one line of CSS complaining that the work would be complex and hard, even though the solution was one line.

Freelancer them selves are theives, hidden fees everwhere, you award a freelancer for work, pay us. You release a milestone, pay us. You start challenge, pay us. You delete a project, pay us. all of this is without notice and automatic making you easily lose a lot of money on a single project.

Not worth a single penny and I can assure you after this I will never use my account again lets hope closing an account does not cost anything.

So if you are thinking of using freelancer my suggestion is DON'T you will not get the desired work, reliable freelancer at a cheap cost as promised, it will be undesireable incompleted work with an unreliable and untrustworthy freelancer and will cost you an arm and a leg.

Hope this helps you if you are thinking of using freelancer and it is not just me look at all the other one star reviews on here.

After opening a contest and awarding a designer, the designer then couldn't deliver my work and canceled the project. Freelancer.com said bad luck my money is gone, even though I don't have the design I paid for... I opened a paypal dispute regarding this since the designer did not want payment and freelancer.com then blocked a 2nd contest I had going on which resulted in me losing my money AGAIN! Their reason for this? "you did not choose a winning entry within 14 days from when your contest closed", my contest was open for 3 days and still had another 2 days to go before ending! See the screenshot attached. They've now stolen over $60 of my money in 2 days. Stay far far away!

We hired a logo designer to create a logo. Their website indicates that any material which is not original will be pulled off their website and within the actual handover agreement, it highlights that any IP associated to the concept, the designer forfeits ownership upon exchange of money for the design.

Designer has used many attributes of my logo design with many other logo designs subsequently, and when this issue has been presented to Freelancer.com, they have highlighted to address with designer. Then when questioned further, they have advised to again go back to the designer. Further questioning, they have indicated that they will investigate. Response was, yes its clear that the designer has used similar attributes of my design in other designs and can be found all over the internet... apparently, i then questioned why aren't they taking any responsibility in removing or taking greater action in protecting intellectual property.

DON'T TRUST THESE SCAMMERS, THE MONEY YOU ARE SPENDING IS A WASTE OF TIME FOR UNORIGINAL MATERIAL AND NO PROTECTION WHATSOEVER.

BUYER BEWARE.!

Their support is akin to robots. Incapable of answering simplest questions and simply blocking your account and taking all your funds.

Their complains department (Marcus or Lara or whatever names these Nepal/ India based support wishes to take) are as useless. Don't believe their answers like "Your issue has been addressed in ticket X*******"; all that happens is that they refer you back to your original ticket that was the problem in the first place.

The website stole over $1,300 from my account and blocked it with no reason whatsoever. I am lodging a complaign against them and will take them to court if required. Otherwise BEWARE.

They will not refund your cash, they will not accept any proof you can provide. They will just block and strip you dry of your funds.

The Freelancer.com has a very quick system for taking deposit from customers, but old dated boring lengthy system (3weeks) for customers to withdraw the money. In addition, the customers need to contact support desk every time they want to withdraw, but not when taking deposit. That is not customer friendly. I have waited over 3 weeks after making withdrawl request. Hope its should be upgraded.

Was a user of Vworker. It was superb, these guys acquired it and made it a worse site.
Took all the money which i had gain telling its the fee for not using freelacer regularly.
If they were gonna take my money they should have informed in prior to deduction.

Minimum payout has also been set which is crap. We might get paid only less amount for small work and minimum payout will kill it.

Hello Lara,

Greetings!

I am Ronak Jain and i am from company doomshell software pvt ltd. My company created account on freelancer before many year and we are continuously working on freelancer.

But 2 days before some one hacked my company account and created three projects all three projects warded to only one freelancer. Hacker also transferred $450 from my account to another freelancer account.

My company owner generate a ticket to related to this before 2 days, they asked 5 verification questions but the account created before many years so i am not sure they will be correct or not.

We are continuously trying to talk with online support desk but no one is available to chat with us.

Kindly suggest us how we can talk with freelancer to activate my company account. As my company has fully verified (phone, email, payment) on freelancer.

Username is doomshellsl.
Company belongs to jaipur, india.

Looking forward to your kind response.

Thanks,
Ronak Jain

I prefer Elance. I have all kinds of issues with nickle and dime charges with Freelancer. I can not get a hold of anyone at the company and they will not refund my money for the silly charges that their competitors do not charge for. I spend all of my money at Guru.com now.

Follow up - The response they posted below is false.

I worked for an employer last week. He provided the milestone payment (300$). I accepted the project and 30$ commission were deducted from my account.
I finished the project and money was released to me.
Everything seemed ok, but When trying to withdraw money I got this message:

Unfortunately we were unable to process your withdrawal request:
Decline reason: Funds originated from an account that is currently under review.

I could not believe it since money was deposited in "my" freelancer account and I thought that was a done deal.
I contacted customer support and:
Hello Boris,

Thank you for contacting us back.

We understand your concern about the payment released to you by your previous employer. However, this is part of the verification process and will help avoid issues once you have withdrawn the funds. Note that the employer always has the option to create and release the Milestone Payment. However, there are some instances where we need to make verification to make sure that the payment can be processed well.

As a recommendation for this, we still recommend waiting for them to complete the verification. Note that this is important so they can complete the requirements and for you to process the withdrawal.

If you have more questions, feel free to contact us back.

I mean this is horrible... And how can anyone work under these conditions.
Why don't they signal on employers profile that he is not verified?
I saw some employees from freelancer offering help in review comments, can anyone from freelancer help me resolve this issue?
I would like to continue to use freelancer.com, but if this does not resolve I will never use them again.

Avoid this site at all costs. I hired a freelancer who said they were scammed by not receiving money up front, so now they always ask for pre - payment. Turns out they're the scammer, no work done, and the company does not protect its customers at all.

RUN AWAY!

I have been got disappointed by freelancer.com. I would like to explain my complaint against freelancer.com and team.

Issue no. 1--- Ticket ID (BWG-596-*******) Since 2 month ago freelancer.com eaten my 995euro. Client paid me (995euro) for project "CHAT Script" (ID: *******). And project was completed. So there was no way to refund money back to client account untill he paid me to work but suddenly freelancer.com limited his account and they refunded 995 euro from my account without any notification. When i contacted with the support in this regards they advised me to contact with direct to client which was not required by me. Because we have been completed the project and we were not a part of this issues with employer account. If he was unable to verify his identity this is not my fault.

Well, they have been cut amount from profile and newer refunded to employer. I want to get back my fund. Its like a robbery:(

I have read about freelancer policy, there is no way to refund amount after project completed and freelancer.com does not include in any of matter.

Please refund my money back now.

$#*!ing Rubbish Freelancer is a junk recently i have face a problem. I done a project and client didn't pay me. I also contact freelancer support but they $#*!ing admins are sleeping... don't join freelancer. Its a fraud. Freelancer is a name of fraud

Freelancer has always had a problem with anyone I have talked to in regards to validating your account, bullying others and overcharging.

Here's a new low though, they TOOK over $500 for a project that was done over 4 months ago and never notified me! This is a very new low and we are now working on federal actions as we have heard this happening to 20 other freelancers.

Freelancer.com is 100% unethical and doing ILLEGAL actions. Why else would they do it in a sneaky way?

Again, we have had to use countless measures and assistance from my lawyer to deal with other issues but this issue right here is an all time low! If there was a problem with the employee's account and they tricked Freelancer.com in regards to money, freelancers should not have to carry the financial burden and loose the money 4 MONTHS LATER!