What happened, in short, is: I have accepted a project. The 10% commission was charged against my account straight away. The next day client fails to provide materials for me to work on and the following day he says that he needs to cancel the project. He cancels the project and here's a fragment of the discussion that followed with freelancer.com chat support:
[...]
05:18 Rose D: It shows that the project "Write a script for a live bettering website" has indeed been cancelled.
05:18 Rose D: What I can do for you is contact your employer ******** about this project if they are still interested in working with you. Would you like me to do so?
05:19 [user]: What?
05:20 [user]: Why would I want you to do that?
05:20 [user]: The client told me alredy he can not supply the materials required and is thus cancelling.
05:20 [user]: Have you seen my question? I have asked when are the $20 that were taken from my account when I accepted the project going to be refunded to me?
05:23 Rose D: Generally our project fees are non-refundable, regardless of the completion of the project.
[...]
What followed next is freelancer told me they would refund my $20 as an exception.
This is just one of my many disappointments with them regarding a lot of different issues.
Hello Slavic, Marcus of Freelancer.com here. I regret to hear about what has happened to the project that was awarded to you. Also, we(Freelancer.com) appreciate your feedback about how you've felt with our process and services. We are working on improving our customer experience and it would be great if you could send me an email so we can further discuss your experience on the site. My email address is marcusc@freelancer.com. I hope to hear from you, Slavic. Thank you.