oDesk

Hello!
If you use a laptop (like 99% of the freelancers do) and you don't want headaches I would recommend you stay away from the Odesk time tracking app.
It crashes A LOT and it will make you pull your hair out and work for free for your customers. It crashes and does not notify you, so you keep working and 3 hours later when you check - 0 time logged!
3 weeks later - still working with their support to find a solution - on my time! And money!
:( very disappointing

Adriana

I'm a independent contractor on Odesk, and it has both run me through the wringer and paid my bills for a year.

I've had employers not pay, bug off suddenly mid-job, and then not leave feedback at all!

Then again, I've had some great clients who pay well, are truly a pleasure to work with, and have all around helped beef up my income. It's a crapshoot, but it can be a good one. Odesk as a company just needs to better screen who is able to sign up. For every good job I get on there, I get ten offers I never even applied for, who have no proof of paying anyone ever. It's hit or miss, but when it hits for me, it hits really well, so hence my 4th star.

Anyone ever need a good contractor get in touch! I won't scam or screw you.

I'm new to oDesk and I have to say that it's a fairly demoralizing experience. It's impossible to get on the board with any jobs because there are 200 people from non-industrialized nations just dying to work for well below the North American minimum wage. When you look at the stats for some the employers, it seems just sick. There are American and British employers who are consistently paying people $2 an hour and less! It's a scream what some people want to get for $5.

All I can see are heinous examples of better slavery through technology. It's a step from things like MTurk but not by much.

I worked on Odesk from March 2014 to March 2015. In 3rd week of March, they suspended my profile without any notice.
It took one week to get a response from them. They started asking about people who I dont even know. After that again I had to wait for 1 week to get to know they are closing my account. Reason (no reason).

I am ready to provide screen shots of conversation to show expose their $#*!.

I have earned 14,000 dollars in a year on odesk. 93% success rate. 15 Successful Projects and I brought 5 people to work on Odesk, 3 employers to hire people from Odesk. The reward got is suspension without reason and then closing of my account.
Odesk Management is bunch of $#*! WHOLES.

These people are committing fraud on a massive scale. We lost over $50,000 and eventually our business was wiped out because of the so called SEO experts you hire on their site. ODesk does nothing to get your money back when you have been ripped off and it is because they make money on every hour you waste. Worse still are the tactics of their debt collection agency 'True Accord' who will send you endless emails when you refuse to pay.
I intend to lodge a complaint with the FBI and the local state police. ODesk know their contractors do not have the skills that ODesk represent and therefore they are knowingly engaged in fraud and blatantly misrepresent their contractors skills. Don't get sucked in - many of the contractors we used were just pure scammers. Don't think it won't happen to you. One of their contractors managed to upload a trojan to our server to send traffic to porn sites. What a joke!

Be warned, they will hold on to your earnings with no explanation and do not reply to your requests to have your funds released. They have essentially stole over $150 from me... and there are plenty of other freelancers that have reported this behaviour as well!

This is a great site too get help with any tasks that you can outsource online. I like it because there's a lot of talented people on there offering services at good prices so you can find people who are in your local neighborhood or abroad. You can also get a pretty good level of quality from them. It's always painful when the website takes a cut out of every payment on there; however, I just appreciate that everything it does and I think it's worth it.

There is a Work Diary in there with random screenshots of the person working for you so that does give you a level of confidence that you're not paying for work when somebody was just goofing off. So overall my experiences have been good and the site makes it very easy to hire somebody without having to do all the administrative tasks.

I wonder, is anybody even watching the customer reps do. I wonder even customer support is outsourced?

They recently suspended my account. When asked why they suspended, they send a link - https://www.odesk.com/info/terms, with no mention of where the breach happened and what happened. It seems they have a standard reply to all the queries - "We regularly review member accounts to ensure activity follows oDesk policies and guidelines."

Well, just take my skills on other portal.

I took one of the exams for translators, Italian-English. Although I scored 100% on five areas and 75% in two other areas, it listed me as "below average, although it showed the average as 2.45 and I scored 4.45 (score is given out of 5) It also showed a clock near the end that said I had less than a minute to complete the last 10 questions, so I rushed through them... NEVER a good thing to do when translating. When I looked at my score on my profile, it said I had finished the test in 20 minutes and that 40 minutes was allowed. Where did my other 20 minutes go? Im sure I would have done even better had the clock not rushed me.

This has to be the worst experience I have ever had with a website. I contacted the first "contractor" and got harassed with over 100 emails trying to get me to hire him. Then the next "contractor" did absolutely nothing so I fired her. Then odesk continued to take my money out of my account 3 weeks in a row out of my account even though the account was closed which caused me to get hundreds of dollars in fees. SO i reported them to my credit card company and got the charges reversed and now they have the nerve to send me a bill for the money they attempted to steal from me and threaten me with collection! Avoid them at all cost.

I sincerely advise any professional not to sign up for this service. Once you did, you should keep your expectations near to zero when it comes to customer service. The staff is group of young people who have no formal education beyond high school and who understandably work only to get a pay check. Instead of talking business, you will face a group of high school graduate who are trying to become your therapist. The one thing that you will hear is discussing your feelings, your projections and transferences and showing you understanding to how you feel like any therapist does. If you want free therapist, then odesk team is the place for that. If you are looking for a writing career and true customer service that knows the business, then they have no idea what you are talking about. You can try, but expect troubles with their lack of knowledge but plenty of free therapeutic emails that had nothing to do with your work.

Odesk is a great site if you are looking forwards to earning $1 per 400 word article. However, the issue is not entirely on the whole website but the who's and the how's on how everything is run. I mean, the whole bidding process is HELL. So you could be out there knowing the lowest payment you should get as a professional writer is $8 per 400 word article but... I dare you to say it on this site, you are definitely the most fussy/fussiest and too expensive for some easy task type of bidder. So I say "so long brother!"

I transferred the money in my oDesk account a week ago and they never arrived in my PayPal account even if I used the correct email address. I cannot talk to anybody, they do not offer chat, or a valid phone number and I receive from time to time the same email promising to solve the problem.
I kept only one customer on this site, but I will completely avoid taking any jobs from now on! Every legitimate site has normal customer support.

I joined ODesk in October seeking work. Only 3 offered to interview me. First interview the contractor took quite a while to answer my requests via chat invite. Second interview bailed out on me, then later request to interview me for a 2nd time. When she sent me an email, she asked that I contact her on a personal site and send her my personal information. I took screenshots and reported her to Odesk... they did nothing. Last interview was a pervert that I sent a voice sample to for customer service job. I took a break from ODesk to return desperately seeking legitimate work... to find no results.

I have no clue why ODesk claims they have US jobs when their contractors only want Indian accent speakers or workers out of the country.

If anyone can suggest another site that actually have contractors seeking virtual assistants, or customer service employees from the US that would be great.

Thanks