Bryan L.

I've been a member of Groupon since they launched, and other than a few interesting offers here and there, it's pretty forgettable. The offers were so much the same that I stopped reading it altogether, so maybe it's changed in the past year? It was a great idea to start, but has declined to 'meh' status since then. Most of the offers they had were no better than the offers you could get on the advertising companies' own websites, so... what's the point?

What a great store! We took the kids there when we were in Idaho Falls, ID, and store was closing in 30 minutes. The workers that were there were super helpful, were joking with our kids, and even made a page to one of our daughters to embarrass her! It was so fun and worth the 60-minnute drive!

I'm not sure if FastCompany specifically goes after smutty advertisers, but there is enough nudity in that magazine to rival Maxim! I'm not sure what taking half your clothes off has to do with the articles and advertising in there, but as a father of three boys, I'd just as soon not have them browsing through porn in a business magazine I have delivered to my home... so I cancelled my subscription.

The title says it all. We own a few Apple products, but when we try to figure out why they don't work as expected, they won't tell you anything other than "I understand your concern. Send feedback regarding your problem to Apple and we'll review it." I have never talked to or chatted with Apple Customer Service and left feeling like I was anything more than a pimple on their behind. There's not another company that makes you feel less important to them.

I've been using freelancer for 5 months now, and have had a few minor difficulties along the way. The last one, however, was a doozy. After running a project through, my bank account was riddled with additional (unexplained) charges from Freelancer, coming from Switzerland, so my bank stopped future payments to them.

After trying to make a legitimate charge, my bank denied the charge due to the suspicious activity mentioned above. After calling my bank to approve the legitimate charge, they cautioned me to be careful and DO NOT GIVE THEM ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION. I was able to deposit money into my Freelancer account after that, but when I tried to release the money to an artist, I was informed I couldn't release the money because of a security reasons. The solution (after getting a robot email response from customer 'service' was that I needed to give them my telephone number to verify that the money they had put into my account was secure - even though I've spent $2000+ on 8 different projects already). They wanted my phone number, even though a financial institution told me not to give them any personal information. I told Freelancer I couldn't give them my phone number and their response? Nothing. They email that it is for security reasons, but the response is the exact same wording with no clarifications. I've tried to chat online, never gotten an agent to actually chat, I've sent multiple emails and gotten the same respnse without explanation, and (here's the ironic part) haven't been given a phone number to call them about this. Now I have an artist who has delivered her work, I have funds that Freelancer is holding, and they won't let me release them to the artist or return them to me until I give them information my bank told me not to give them. One frustrating thing is that if you do open a ticket, they will respond with a cookie-cutter respond and then mark the issue as resolved... even though it hasn't even been addressed!

Bottom line? It seemed like it had a few problems at first, but now they appear to be downright shady. The fact that banks and credit card companies flag their activity as suspicious should be a clue about the company's way of doing business. Upwork.com is light years ahead on service and security.

UPDATE: Freelancer responded, saying they needed my phone number for security, so thank you for responding! Unfortunately, I'm still not sure how you having my phone number assures security or why it is asked for 6 months after joining the site and $2000+ later, or why their patterns of billing activity threw off suspicious activity alerts at both my credit card company and my bank.

I also still find it curious that they need my phone number for security reasons, but they refuse to give out their own phone number to customers...