FreelancerReviews 5,586

Hello my account name is ImmortalProducts and I got scammed by prashanthundre with a project. I bidded something about 555$ he accepted and I was about to do the work, but he didnt communicate at all until this date. I want my money back that I had to pay for the Fee! I payed over 55$ for the fee's so I am not willing to pay it because of scam. I hope I can prevent you guys from working on the site to get money, because all they do is getting money from you! I'll share this on different sites so less people get scammed since the support doesn't change anything. I'll let you guys know if my experience with this website changes.

I've made a project and it was my first time in freelancer.
My project was to ask someone to recover my account on Instagram.
Someone has bid with 5/5 reputation and good feedbacks.
So I accepted him and as it was my first time, i didn't know what was a milestone was. Then, the freelancer asked me to release the milestone which i thought just to pay him. After that moment, we went to Skype to discuss the project. Blablabla, he said he will do it tommorow, but until now he has not been replying my messages. I though he was a honest guy because he has positive reviews! I WANT MY MONEY BACK! PLEASE ITS ALL MY HARD WORK MONEY. I paid him $150 just to recover my instagram account back from a hacker. Please freelancer support help me.

Freelancer.com is not a scam. But their service is TERRIBLE. I was a first time user and put up a project for about 550 US$. I actually found quite a good designer who did a decent job, but the website itself caused me a lot of trouble (not the working with the designer). They are totally intransparent on what they charge. They upgrade your profile automatically to one where you have to pay if you don't notice it yourself and downgrade manually (they don't ask). They renewed my project automatically, and then wanted to charge me 5 bucks to close the renewed project I never wanted in the first place. I had trouble paying my designer because my credit card didn't go through. From my end everything was ok, but they just didn't claim the money from visa so it left my designer hanging for a long time. Their payment system was really bad. It never told me whether my card was accepted and whether payments went through. That made me really nervous because I didn't want to pay twice. So I always had to phone up my credit card company to check what was going on.
Overall, I got the freelancer I wanted and the work done. But boy, was it a lot of trouble with freelancer.com. I wouldn't be surprised if they go out of business.

The last thing that really annoyed me about the site is that it's so unclear what's going on. The site itself has a terrible design. It's not intuitive. Too many options. I would never recommend it!

I've been working on freelancer for 2 years now! As I am cautious regarding my money online, i always played safe with freelancers! And actually never had a serious issue with any of them! But i am now having the most ridiculous problem with their un-supportive support!

I tried to withdraw some money from my account and they said it takes 2 weeks to do that! So i canceled the withdrawal based on their directions!

3 days later, my balance goes to 0 USD saying that they did the refund! And this is not the worst part,,, so obviously even though i canceled the withdrawal, the "proper department" decided to cancel my cancellation and proceed with the refund!

Guess what? They refunded a paypal account that is no longer verified on my account! They are refunding the wrong account!

Customer support? They're sending me sh*t loads of emails to my account regarding the subject of the email which changes after each 2 emails, and no one answering any question directly at all!

I have screen shots and full emails if you don't believe me! I'm really considering a lawsuit! They're refunding wrong accounts! No one answers properly! It's a huge mess!

PS: honestly speaking i had no problems for 2 years with them! Ive finished 30 projects as an employer their, always fearing a scam from a freelancer, huh,, fate it seems not without a sense of irony!

STAY AWAY! The "Dispute" section will not protect you from scammers.

They let scam artists get away with the worst acts. I was lured to Freelancer.com by a guy I found on odesk. It turned out (and I found out later on) that odesk banned him several times over, and that's why he brings clients over to Freelancer. At first I felt comforted by the fact that Freelancer had this "DISPUTE" section complete with the ability to present evidence and an arbitration process, it seemed like I could have that assurance that if this guy pulled something shady, I could always turn to it. This freelancer turned out to be bad news. I wanted to dispute the last few payments for fraud on his part. I had a SIGNED agreement with that freelancer, in which he even signed his own name, address AND his FREELANCER.COM NAME! Not only did I think that Freelancer.com would be accommodating, given their dispute section, but I would have thought that freelancer.com would have been happy to get a scammer off their site.

Freelancer.com responded to me saying that they weren't going to do anything because the work was not processed within their "milestones framework" Can you believe this. I paid over $10,000, and all I kept getting from Freelancer was a mechanical response, with a "tip" for the future of using the milestones. Yeah thanks...

I wanted the last 3 payments sent to a scammer reversed, and rather than getting a helping hand I was given the blow off saying it's none of their business. Hey, If you're going to publish a "dispute" section, you're representing and advertising your platform in that way. People feel comfortable working with your platform because of that assurance. You can't just hide behind some buried technicality after the fact. Shameful.

It is some kind of trap website. Hidden fees everywhere.
Robot-like unfriendly support and even some bugs.

I created my first project. I made a mistake in creating a the project, no way to remove it. Or you have to pay them to remove it again!?
You create a project, send them money, they block your account because they need verification about the payment? I paid via Paypal. So what do they need to verify?
Directly after my payment I get phone calls from Russia. Paypal seem to have given them my phone number.
Support does not seem to even read what you wrote in your emails. They just get a few word and reply. So you have to keep your sentences really short, precise and still write it two or three times.
I send them my first payment, I get a "Plus Membership" for free. Until next months, then you have to pay each month.

Wow... I've register on this site like very long time ago, I would say 2008-2009 and I bid on several projects won few of them, finished job got some cash and I got regular job and never logged in back again. Few years passed, I forgot my password, obliviously my account was deleted. That's ok, I was inactive. Got back again, lot of changed. I mean a lot. Exams are ok thing to do, that way they are keeping scams away and earn some cash as well, these days pretty normal stuff.
What I don't like, every single step you got bunch of fees and you got impression that you came there to get a job, grab some money and move on and on, but I see it opposite, like u came there to pay them for the job, funny. Almost, after reading these negative reviews it's perfect system designed for scums, to take your hard work for nothing, and freelancer got their ''policies'' of defense. Sounds like very-well designed system to treat you like a modern computer slave.
Now, since a lot of time passed, I start reviewing other people and their opinions, I will step back and leave it to people who already place their effort there. But as for a newbie (not really, but on their site you are) I see no interest to spend valuable time there.

I had a client who just vanished owing a fair amount of money ($1.5k). Freelancer of course had taken their commission and refused to refund me until I had contacted my client. I tried to get my money back for six months before telling Freelancer that it was their system I was using, that had let me down so surely if that was the case they owe me the full amount for the job. They decided just to refund the commission in the end. I shouldn't have had to threaten them and I should have been given some sort of compensation as an apology for their poor service.
I won't be using them again (I made sure I withdrew all my money from my account before posting this as I just don't trust them).

I don't really think anything about Freelancer is a scam. I have used them to complete many projects online successfully. I originally came from vWorker, and while the Freelancer site looks way nicer then the old vWorker site the functionality from Freelancer is terrible. VWorker required all communication was kept in the site (in case of arbitration), and all of the tools of the site were provided at no additional charge. That being said, other then paying the agreed cost of the project to the programmer, all back-end costs we the programmers responsibility. In my opinion this improved the quality and reliability of the programmer since they had to bear that burden.

Like I said, I use Freelancer daily, successfully. I miss vWorker very much and you do need to spend more time to find a quality resource on Freelancer - but it works.

Seriously the scammiest website i have ever tried. The freelancers that approached me where a plethora of "google how to do it and steal stock images" individuals. Which is fine, i guess. But when i went to withdraw my deposit after 2 weeks of really weird interactions and not being happy at all i found out that not only do you have to "negotiate" with the freelancers about how much money they get from the agreed terms (all got 0 - sorry jerks) which can take upto 4 days, I also found that you need to wait 3 weeks to get your money back?! What the hell!
What is the problem with them refunding your credit card? They are pooling money and using funds for something else, there is no WAY it takes 3 weeks for a withdrawal.
Someone should make a site like this, without all the scam and stupid waiting. Its the reason why real freelancers and employers aren't working for it.

I tried this site for about 2 weeks. I only tried out doing graphic design contest. A majority of the designers there are unprofessional and unimaginative. Most designers at freelancer.com copy others work, steel images of the internet, use stock clip art, and can not come up with original ideas. For example, if you ask for a logo for a real estate company expect to see the same image of the same house from 100 different people. And designing for someone is a guessing game. You will hardly ever get any feedback on your designs. And most clients give very vague statement about what they want.

This Website lures you in by claiming everything is free, but one or two wrong clicks and violá - you just spent 10$ on some language test.

I actually complained about this and they were nice enough to refund the Money to my Freelancer account. Since withdrawal is only Possible with 40$ or more, I deposited another 30$. However they refused to pay out 40$ and instead paid only the 30$ while also just removing the remaining 10$ from my account.

Like, I know it's "just 10$" but seriously now - where's my Money?

UPDATE Oct 3rd, 2013: Apparently, the wording in the automated e-mails I received was just a Little misleading. What they tried to tell me is that the 30$ were refunded to PayPal but the 10$ were refunded to my credit Card where they came from. This seems to be some technical Limitation.

Bottom line, I'd say this site is OK as Long as you're really careful about where you click. In my opinion, the big downside of this (and similar) Website is that there are many developers and companies from India who offer extremely low Prices and are hard to undercut. But this may also depend on which Kind of work you're looking for (I was looking for PHP related projects).

I with i had known these reviews before I registered with Freelancer.com! That would have saved me much trouble, and I could have found a site that actually offered som service! I registered to ave some work done, easily found someone to do, that part went all well. But once I paid the freelancer, my account was suspended! I wrote dusins of email asking why, but no one bothered to tell me. I was requested to first send in very sensitive information, only then would they tell me what crime I had committed! Finally succumbing to this, my account was reopened - only to be suspended again the next day, again with no explanation.

All I can say is DO NOT USE THIS SITE!