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December 11, 2009
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This entry has been moved to The Half-Hogger.
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Hey Spikester
Just popped in to wish to a merry whatever you celebrate or not
Thanks for a fine year of fine posts and laughs
As I so love to say – ‘Aaarl be baarck!’
Happy thoughts to you and all that you love…
Stephen G
VK was not scamming you
I think someone was trying to win their contest
If a in a contest someone is using a wrong method u cant call organizers the scammers
If you would have reported company about this scam they would have deleted him from your site
I have come by that scam more than a few times on the GAF site. It’s frustrating, and I really hope that the GAF team does something about it fairly soon!
Thanks for the heads up about it happening on Elance, too! I don’t use that site all that often, but I will keep a look out for them! =)
How’s it going?
I got cheated by this scammer for the same site. He goes with a screen name Omma.. something
How come no one mentions SEED.COM ? As an experienced writer l’ve had trouble getting ANYTHING approved by them even though l sent them 6 submissions. l wrote about subjects that SHOULD easily be accepted. They were well written . However each submission , according to them, never seemed to be good enough. lt was just a complete waste of time.
Khirad: You have a very good point – it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between a company and an individual using bad tactics to achieve their goal.
Jim: I suspect he creates a different username every time….
Bernice: Now that’s very interesting. I’ve never tried Seed, so I can’t comment on their procedures, but I have run into similar (equally strange) double-standards on other sites. You know, where you comply by their rules but aren’t accepted, while they’re happily publishing non-compliant material from other people.
There appears to be many scams on the web. Are there any websites that ANYONE would recommend as a good choice ?
Elance is nothing but a scam. They post false buyer jobs to improve their numbers. They do not adhere to any of their policies. They allow buyers to post multiple non-awarded jobs which service providers pay to bid on. They LIE and say buyers are automatically stopped from posting jobs if they award less than 20% of those jobs – however anyone can see that there are tons of buyers who’ve posted 10, 20 and more jobs that are never awarded.
Elance offers an escrow service but this is a scam as well. If you are a buyer who puts money into escrow it will ALWAYS be paid to the service provider NO MATTER WHAT. If you hire someone to setup a website and they upload a chicken soup recipe, Elance WILL release ALL of your Escrow money and say, “we can’t be responsible for the quality of work”.
Elance does not tolerate dissent. They never answer their phone, rarely return emails and their website is full of bugs. Many service providers and buyers who have complained on their forums have had their accounts banned.
I could write pages on the schenanigons going on over there. I learned my lesson the hard way (after they stole my money).
Elance has to be the worst scam out there.
I paid $350 into Escrow re a project for 60 SEO Links from a provider that failed to provide reports and project outcomes within specified period. Due to unforseen personal circumstances it was over the 6 month deadline period that I was able to pursue the provider further – unfortunately they no longer exist on Elance.
The project is not completed to satisfaction and a year later $350 sits in Escrow and I’m unable to return it to my paypal account.
I’ve tried on a couple of occasions to contact Elance – but all I receive is set of instructions including forms to fill in that specify a 6 month deadline less a set number of days – over which the Escrow money appears to roll up to the Bank of Elance.
As I say, project was not completed to time or satisfaction, I was over the 6 month deadline re claiming with supplier – but they no longer exist – and I seem unable to get my $350 back.
Please assist.
Bernice: It’s pretty much the luck of the draw. The sites themselves may be as secure as possible, but there’s nothing to stop scumbags finding ways to circumvent the system – as is the case with any “middle-man” situation. In general, the best advice is to be on your guard, get up-front payment (in part, at least) and “sign” your own digital contracts. The content mill days seem to be going now, too – see the recent post about Associated Content…
Hyter: I’ve heard that same accusation (about the creation of false projects) before, but haven’t seen any actual proof of it… which of course would be virtually impossible. I’ve also heard a lot of bad stuff about Elance – and a lot of good. I guess, like most things, it depends on your experience of it. I haven’t made an in-depth study or anything, so can’t really say – though I, too, have noticed the templated communications that are very limited.
Sarah: I don’t quite see how I can help… that kind of dispute is handled by whoever handles it and I’m just some blogger who happens to use Elance occasionally. All I can suggest is following the instructions they send.
http://www.hypeconcepts.com/experience-hypeconcept/
.We had to cancel the project with this developer because of continued mistakes. We made the decision anticipating that if we continued the project with them it would be significantly late. We tried several strategies for explaining the project but they never seemed to understand. These strategies included daily chat sessions, graphic organizers, and detailed explanations of features. Their grasp of design concepts was not good either
Got sammed with money and feedback as well!!
I think that freelancer. com is a scam… I’ve recently made an account, I was enthusiast, I bidded on projects, and now I m waiting the employers to award the winner. From about 23 projects, only 2 awarded… My personal experience it’s like hyter’s experience. I think they employ false bidders and users to post projects, to make traffic, and here and there it’s a real project… It’s a sad thing
Many of us have had a similar experience with all the freelancing sites, Eduard. Unfortunately, with so many sites active, the people placing the projects often put them on two or three different aggregators. I’m loathe to jump to conclusions about false bidding (although it could be happening, of course) especially realising that many of the sites are flooded by low-budget, scammy “jobs” that never happen. Like everything on the Internet, it takes patience to find the good stuff! That’s why it’s often best to only bid on projects proposed by establish vendors who have awarded consistently in the past.
What I understood is that buyers post their projects in different sites for freelancers. I explain: one buyer can have an account on oDesk, another account on Freelancer.com or at Elance. He awards the same project only on one of those sites. I often see the same project I applied for on other sites… I think there are no false buyers !!!
But in Freelancer.com, the website may scam freelancers like my case.
-I paid membership on this website
-I applied to some projects and I could get one
-Then the buyer paid me ($230)
-When I withdrew my money ($230 + balance of my own money) they asked for ID verification
-I sent my passport, they asked for my photo showing my passport.
-I sent all the documents to them, until here, I still don’t have permission to enter my account with all my money in. Sad situation. Scamming simple freelancer like me!!!
I work for oDesk for 1 year now, I don’t see any problems like this. Each time I need my money, I can withdraw without problem.
Now I work for Elance and I don’t what will happen. This “escrow” system worry me but I want to see first.
Be carefull, they are SCAM. I opened account for our legally registered company, hire one person for one work and put $150 in milestone. Day after this they immediately suspend our account with $200 in full balance, after I provide ID from me and they still refuse to reinstate account with our money in. They need to reply/if 2-3 days, before I upload funds in account they reply in less than 1hr always. They can not require any ID from own customers as they dont have this in terms of service and they are not any type of bank.
THEY JUST WANT THAT YOU UPLOAD FUNDS AND THEN YOU WILL NEVER SEE IT AGAIN, I already call my bank for Chargeback so I will not have loss, but il never again use it!!
FREELANCER.COM SCAM REVIEW
I keep hearing individual stories from people who believe they’ve been scammed by the big freelancing sites. If you have a story and are willing to be completely open about it (i.e. give me access to emails and solid proof, as well as your opinion, and tell the site’s staff that you’re happy to have me investigate with them), I’d love to hear from you. I’d treat all material in strict confidence (and change names/dates/figures if and when I published anything anywhere). Contact me.
i never won a bid on elance. there once was a client who expressed interest in hiring me, but after promising to pick my bid in a few days time, the project got canceled. if you need a highly-skilled and experienced coder / designer who will never scam you, check out my website. unfortunately, i cannot display most of my projects due to non-disclosure agreement from clients.
Ignoring the part of your comment that makes it sound like spam (the bit I’ve italicised), there are several things I can think of that might help. Firstly, don’t give up! It often takes more than a month of bidding on every decent project you see to land your first client. The first is the hardest because you have no feedback.
Secondly, if most of your work’s copyrights are owned by other people, ask their permission to use them in your portfolio. Alternatively, create new things based around random ideas and show those in your portfolio. And always attach examples to a bid – don’t tell people to check out your website (they won’t: they have too many bids to read through).
Finally, if you don’t win a bid and the reason given is vague (i.e. it’s not “too expensive” or something obvious), consider contacting the client and asking why you didn’t win. Ask politely if they can spare a minute to give you feedback. If you can find out WHY you’re being refused, you can fix it. Hope it helps.
Also, read this and this.