Working on freelancer warning

KingTomislav

One warning for freelancers out there working on Freelancer. As soon as you accept the job, freelancer fees percentage money is being deducted from your account automatically. So unlike on other sites where you pay after job is done, there they take the money from you as soon as you click accept. I had this misfortune client stopped responding me completely and now i'm in negative. So there is zero security for freelancers on that site, he is not communicating with me at all from the start. He obviously didn't even uploaded the money on balance like he would need to do on Upwork. Luckily i was smart enough to block them on my money transfer account, so they cant get the money, but now they suspended my account until i pay them. I contacted support, explained how client wont respond, they looked in to it, told me i should be careful before i click accept and they told me they wont refund me, "that is against policy of the company". So, clients can do what ever they wan and we even need to pay for them wasting our time.

coljwood

I've never had an issue with this but was always worried something like that will happen.

I always thought there were systems in place to prevent this. Doesn't the client release the milestone to Freelancer at the start of a project? I'm guessing they are being a bit sneaky at keeping unreleased milestones as their own.

I hate that they do it either way. I've had a couple of higher paid projects that have massively impacted my cashflow, to the point where I had to start asking for some to be prepaid which made me look very unprofessional and very untrustworthy.

Also, I set up a project myself once to get a logo designed. I picked what seemed like a solid Freelancer until I did some more investigating and found out not a single bit of their advertised work was their own. I had the project cancelled but never received my money back. I tracked down who some of the logos belonged to and sent some e-mails out, so at least that made me feel a little better.

It just shows the sort of people we're competing against there, and that are ultimately driving our value down with their low prices.

Eric Chadwick

Yuck, sorry to hear about these situations.

I guess this is where it makes sense to read all the legalese before signing up with these sites. Even though my eyes start to glaze over when reading, it's still essential to understand what's being charged and how.

They do explain it here fairly clearly FWIW
https://www.freelancer.com/feesandcharges/

For fixed price projects, if you are awarded a project, and you accept, we charge you a small project fee relative to the value of the selected bid, as an introduction fee. If you are subsequently paid more than the original bid amount, we will also charge the project fee on any overage payments.

For hourly projects, the fee is levied on each payment as it is made by the employer to you.

The fee for fixed price projects is 10% or $5.00 USD, whichever is greater, and 10% for hourly projects.

Ruz

wow they certainly know how to suck the artist dry.

nathdevlin

That's pretty bad form indeed. Freelancing is hard enough on artist's nevermind issues like this. As Eric said read the fine print.

kanga

Cash flow is important and freelancing is usually pretty good, but there are always companies or people that misuse the situation to their own advantage. All I can say is thanks for the headsup on that particular site.

cptSwing

Freelancer.com? Competing with low-low-low prices from India and other nations of the global south, impossible, imo. But I didn't stay there for long.

huffer

I tried once to get some work there...In 2 months all I had to show was a -9 USD balance and a second place "competition" type project, were client picks a winning design. Yeah, second place earns nothing.

Zack Maxwell

Eric Chadwick said:

Yuck, sorry to hear about these situations.

I guess this is where it makes sense to read all the legalese before signing up with these sites. Even though my eyes start to glaze over when reading, it's still essential to understand what's being charged and how.

They do explain it here fairly clearly FWIW
https://www.freelancer.com/feesandcharges/

For fixed price projects, if you are awarded a project, and you accept, we charge you a small project fee relative to the value of the selected bid, as an introduction fee. If you are subsequently paid more than the original bid amount, we will also charge the project fee on any overage payments.

For hourly projects, the fee is levied on each payment as it is made by the employer to you.

The fee for fixed price projects is 10% or $5.00 USD, whichever is greater, and 10% for hourly projects.

Sweet jesus, so not only do they keep the fee if you never get paid, but they charge you MORE if the client ends up paying more than originally bid.
So whatever benefits themselves the most, and f$#% everybody else, I guess. That means it's not a technical issue, they just want your money.

huffer said:

I tried once to get some work there...In 2 months all I had to show was a -9 USD balance and a second place "competition" type project, were client picks a winning design. Yeah, second place earns nothing.

So they also host crowd-sourcing scams. I'd avoid that place like a plague.