oDesk

I'm a freelance illustrator and I find most of my clients completely clueless when it comes to labor and time. I have poured so much time to apply for jobs, I've applied for dozens during a day. I've put out my best work, links to all of my websites and my images. I understand that this is a free-range market, but I find it maddening that a lot of contractors don't want to pay for a decent wage. I see a lot of people complaining on here how they hired contractors and then got terrible work?

Well, there you go. This website is a prime example that you get what you paid for. I ask for a decent wage of 9-11 an hour, and I am overlooked. I've applied and applied, but most contractors are too cheap and go for cheaper individuals, most often, people well outside of my country and language. It's ridiculous. I've earned more through commissioned fanart than I have through oDesk. I would like every contractor that complains about hiring freelancers to consider actually forking over money for people who ask for a decent wage, because you just may end up with a decent result! Honestly, serves you right if you don't want to pay a good wage.

I had been signed up with ODesk for 2 weeks when I was scammed out of $3,100. I had applied for a database entry job and an assistant job. Both job postings were a scam. I am a single mother trying to get extra income and I am left with a huge debt due to my interacion on O"desk. I have filed a complained with O"desk 3 weeks ago and nobody has contacted me. This was the first time looking for work on the internet and it will be my last time. DO NOT TRUST THE "COMPANIES" on this site!

Pay for time doesn't work for either an honest worker or an honest client as you just can not sit on your computer for 8 hours continuously that is not how work is done in offices, people need some breaks & refreshments etc to keep going. When someone comes in an office he is not glued to the screen full 8 hours, he also takes tea, talks with his colleagues or may also play a ping pong game, all within the 9 to 6 time frame. This just doesn't work and an awful way to work, I started to hurt my back, hips due to contant siting without moving and then had to away from this hourly slavery.
While if you aren't an honest worker its just easy, keep the tracker open with some kid and let them click on many places to get the hours billed.
Also if you are not an honest client, its very easy for you to post a fixed price project and get the work for free without ever paying the freelancer...
So in essence, odesk is designed for cheats/frauds from both sides, if you want to have a smooth experience with your project, stay away!

I have used ODESK reasonably extensively and the system is really easy to use but their customer support are a nightmare. They just skid along the top, are robotic and must be really low paid as the dumbness or/and disinterest level is so high. They are high handed, ignorant, arrogant and endlessly threatening. Getting a basic understanding of a issue through to them is often just impossible.The management must be a bunch of mafia insecure thugs as that is reflecting in there so called 'customer support'.
They are fools to treat the public this way as there product/software how ever good is a dime a dozen.
They also care little for there freelancers. Dont give them credit card details as they cannot be trusted. Inmevitably you will have problems with them, I withdrew my credt card use authorisation and they kept using it. Now I I am referring the matter to the Police for Fraud.
II am a business man and dont need this crap that they dish out.
The problem is that the arrogant bums who run the business are doing it from their desks in between lunches.
They will inevitably get their just desserts.
I may have an opportunity to buy whats left of their business from the liquidators.

I hired a contractor to do some work on my website. I am the president of An internet company. I had additional work so I posted that on the website. The next day I find out my account has been suspended. This is the transcript of my conversation with customer service. Why in the world would they treat me as if I was a criminal?

Nancy Brown: Why was my account suspended
Robby A.: I am sorry to hear that your account has been suspended, Nancy. Rest assured that I am here to help.
Robby A.: Let me go ahead and check your account first. One moment please.
Robby A.: Thank you for waiting, Nancy.
Robby A.: It appears that it is our higher management who have suspended your account. Unfortunately, it has been decided that our working relationship must come to an end.
Nancy Brown: WHY?
Robby A.: As a private company, we have the right to determine who can engage on our platform, and at this time our Trust and Safety management team has come to the conclusion that your participation can no longer be supported.
Robby A.: Also, you are no longer allowed to create another account and future attempt to contact us will not be accommodated.
Robby A.: We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

STAY AWAY from odesk and their freelancers.
Most of the freelancers are liars, they say 100 things and can do maybe 1 if you have luck. They log in on odesk and do some things checking, and put all of this as debug. Even if we dont ask to debug the freelancers will do things, that will not help anything for your site, but the money is counting. This means that even if you are not agreed with the work the freelancer done, you have no other option to pay! Cause the money will be taken away from your paypal. Than if you try to tell this to odesk, they will say " You have to ask the freelancer for a refund" if they dont wanna, than contact us back again. This is very smart told from odesk, but just bunch of CRAP! Which freelancer will return the money from India or East Europe?

Trust me peeps stay away from odesk, and certainly DO NOT apply your paypal to them, you will be the biggest loser...
For us NEVER AGAIN odesk, we better pay $250 per hur to a normal company, than you will be sure that things will be fixed as it should be and you won't loose money than. Learned a very good lesson, hope others will read this before hiring some freelancer on odesk.

Horrible customers service - people who would rather talk back than actually work out a solution. I've been literally lied to on a number of occasions - and caught them. To make things worse, even showing them did not help. In one case a manager promised to take care of an issue personally - and quickly. Didn't hear from them for 2 weeks and only when I called back and screamed - turns out he was on a holiday and he emailed me and asked me to tell him the story all over again. In another case, I got scammed by a client and a supervisor told me I shouldn't complain because it gives her more work, and then said I was the only one complaining about the client - even though his feedback showed freelancers hired later on complaining about the same issues. The same supervisor admitted that oDesk won't take action because the client was paying some of the money.

They follow their own rules when they want to and don't follow when they don't want. When you ask questions, their answer is usually "we're a private company, we don't have to provide answers".

A company with a mentality of a shady taxi driver.

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.

FYI - per ODesk: If a contract is never finalized and thus no payment is ever made to the freelancer, no review can be given on the freelancer.

Case in point, I recently hired someone to do a job for me. Poor communication first couple days after award (great communication when trying to get the project!) and then it dwindled to zero communication at all. No response to ODesk messages, emails, or chat requests. I eventually had no choice but to cancel the contract after allowing this fool (O. Bouguima) to put me another week behind schedule based on promises he could do the work, etc. Rated him honestly based on my experience. However my rating does not show up on his profile since there was no value to the contract. WTF?!? Which means he could have pulled this with 20 other contracts and I would have had NO WAY OF KNOWING he was a total jerk. ODesk provided no reasoning for this policy even though it is me as the person with the job that ends up providing them income. Total scam and will NEVER use them again.

Good difference between oDesk and Elance is that oDesk doesnt have a paid membership option. But oDesk fees are 10% compared to Elance 8.75% fee. When you register you can submit 2 job applications at a time.

I found it tough to compare Elance vs oDesk, because they are owned by the same company and in overall oDesk or Elance – there is no big difference. The biggest oDesk competitor basically is Freelancer with PeoplePerHour being new disruptor in market.

Pros:

- Free registration, no paid membership ensuring you don't have to use limited version of website.
- Anybody can find work on Elance because of big user base.
- Secure place to get paid as Odesk takes part in money exchange, by asking client to put money on Escrow before project is started.

Cons:

- oDesk charges is 10% for every completed project. Fee on 4k/per month = $400 + 1.5% fee for withdrawal.
- Unreliable corporate support – reviews indicate people had very bad experience with support. People were suggesting not to waste time with support and that you will be better off by trying to solve issue on your own.
- Tough place for creative professionals, web developers and WordPress experts – usually lower bidders get the project and quality is not being appreciated. (Ok, quality is always appreciated, but price doesnt indicate that).

We did massive research about top 8 biggest freelance marketplaces out there, comparing their fees, pros, cons and how to make it out there.

Different marketplaces are for different people. You can read the research here - http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/best-freelance-websites/

Odesk is a Worst Freelancing Platfrom... You dont have a Secure Future on odesk. As a Freelancer I am saying this with responsiblity.
I have Started working on odesk in 2011 and I have worked 4000+ Hours. 30+ Successful Contracts
All feedbacks are excellent even one is not worst. Here are step by Step Details How odesk Ruined my life's 3 Years
1)At the Start if 2014 my Job Apllication start going in Hidden tab(The Worst Feature of Odesk Client Profile). If your Application start apprearing in this tab that mean you are not Going to be hired anymore.
2)I contacted Support Team, And They Said(We have some private Issues and We can not tell you about them.)
3)Second time I contacted them (They Said You are involved in a Dispute) I checked my Dispute section and there is not even single Threat.
4)Third time I contacted them They said Keep Applying you will get Hired. I was not hired Even after Six months.
5)And now my application are not Showing any where on odesk.

I prefer every one not to join Odesk, may be in start you will get Job and you think you can make a Successful Carrier on odesk. But after that there will be nothing for you.
Dont waste your time with odesk. It worst... truly worst.

Thanks
Unknown..

The worst thing with oDesk is that they don't care about quality of work done by freelancers, and even if a freelance did something you never asked him to do, you'll be made to pay. If you refuse to pay they will pass your debt to a Debt Collection Service. It is disgusting! I administer a website - svetoch.org, which is a simple site. It was time to update it and I went to oDesk. I found a guy from Pakistan who seemed to know the things required for updating. He did something and I paid the first invoice - about 42USD but when I saw the results I was really shocked because the guy from Pakistan did the things I never asked him to do, and for which I had to pay. I emailed him and canceled the contract. But it was too late the guy did some work for another 75USD. I thought that oDesk staff will review my correspondence and will protect me. But they took the side of a freelancer. Now I got an email from a Debt Collection Service called TrueAccord. I will never ever approach oDesk on any request and I really regret the day I hired a freelancer on their site, and I’m going to share my opinion with other people who may fall victims of their dishonest service not caring about customers.

This website is absolute CRAP.

A) Unprofessional support which takes ages to respond (I have a feeling that there are 2-3 people working and some of them are from India or whatever)
B) They can not form longer sentences and their requests are ridiculous.

Now the whole thing.

I joined odesk to HIRE (AND THUS GENERATE MONEY for odesk) a personal assistant. I also had a developer who wanted to start at odesk and asked to pay him through the platform. No problem, I register the account, and try to post a job (took me 2 days and 2 calls to customer support as the gigg was not generating) anyway after that everything was more or less OK.

I had an add where I was looking for a PA, another job with my developer and a bit later I hired a Social Media assistant.

And then boom. They suspend my account for no reason. "It states contact customer support" the support can not be reached on the phone, ah yes and while SUSPENDED they still took the money out of my account.

So the money is out, job is not done, 3 days for their first response, oh ye they only started acting on the issue once I blocked all money transfers.

So what I have a big "FINANCIAL ACCOUNT SUSPENDED " notice close to my name (while I pay everything, provide all documentation and stuff) for a month. My assistants are not working, job is not done, reputation... And this is going on for 2nd month now.

Thank you odesk for being absolute crap.

Nice site to seek for a job, personally I like Elance more but oDesk gives me very good contracts thus I'm working on both sites.

ODesk's advantages:

- Lot of clients, many clients who are willing to pay good money for very good service
- When you have a rating people keep inviting you to projects. Some invites are very lucrative!
- Overall experience is good, there is no catches on a site, it's fair, it's not overcharge you or take money for example if you just won a project, like freelancer.com does.

Odesk's disadvantage:

- Support answer tickets very slowly. I've written ticket 5 days ago still no reply. No urgent help expected.

- LOT of competition, some project may have 50-200 bidders, it's very pity when you see a project you may do better then anyone else but you understand that it pointless to bid - client most likely stop reading proposals after 30-40 bidders

- Much more then on Elance (but much less then on Freelancer.com) very cheap clients who seeking someone who will work for them for rate 1-3$ per hour and expect to do Google like projects.

- I find system for searching projects and overall experience too simple, it's not functional, for example I can't even sort project by amount of bidders to find projects where bidding is reasonable. Everything too big and contain just portion of information. Working area little more complicated then I would like to see it.

-HUGE waiting time before you may withdraw funds - 6 days. I then withdraw them to my bank account and from time to time it takes up to 12-14 calendar days before I can get funds I've earned.

- Too much attention to numbers, oDesk hours, tests, scores. Examples:
I am fluent in English but write with lot of errors, I have 3/5 points in English, while some guy from Asia had 4.5 point while he can't say a word on Skype and understand just small portion what is written to him (real story told by my client).
I'm Ruby and Rails expert, I may do and did almost anything on those languages but I'm unable to pass their test because they questions about how to make one thing in 10 different way while I know only 3 of them. What does this question tests? Memory? I'm able to achieve a goal and don't feel like I need to know all methods to do that.
Odesk hours - I'v been rejected on several very lucrative projects because client thinks that quality of product comes with 500-1000 oDesk hours, while I work always with fixed price and have no hours at all.

But despite of those disadvantages I'm still oDesk's client because they have I think the biggest market share and despite of everything it is possible to find very good contracts, but experience of finding one could be frustrating.