Freelancer.com Reviews

I am not someone who likes to post reviews around, but freelancer.com did something that really upset me.

I signed up with freelancer.com long ago, back when they were still getafreelancer.com. For years things had been great, I am an employer who used the website to connect with freelancers. I had a 5-star profile, that is, all freelancers who worked with me in the past gave high remarks. I never leave anyone unpaid, whether the projects turned out to be good or bad.

It all started few months ago when I uploaded some funds to my account (via credit card), freelancer.com payment system charged me several times for that one deposit. I contacted their support and they kept escalating the issues without giving me a proper response. It seems like they are just not interested to solve it. After a while I got fed up with them and went to my bank to reverse the transactions.

I thought it all worked out. It is common sense that if I made a deposit of $30, and you ridiculously charged me several times up to $150, I would had to reverse the $120 transaction. But freelancer.com doesn't think so. Once the bank made the charge-backs, they limit my account and asked me for verification (i.e. sending personal documents).

I told them it wasn't my fault that they made several unauthorized charges on my card and the bank reversed the transactions for me. With an experience like that, can I still trust them with my personal info? Their accountants or finance staff should've liaised with me when I first contacted them, but no, I didn't receive any helpful response. I suggest they run through their accounting statement, by which they would find they had charged me for the same thing multiple times. But no, they refused to hear what I have to say, and they soon suspended my account, that means taking all the remaining money in it.

It doesn't matter that you took my money, I will forget it in a while. But I will post reviews on here and other websites so everyone can read it for a long time. If your company's credibility is affected, it is karma for what you did. I had been a good customer and never caused any problems for you all these years but then you brought this on me. Today you lost me forever, keep doing such business practices and tomorrow you may lose everyone else.

To everyone reading this, I do not recommend you use freelancer.com, they used to be good but this is no longer the case. Nowadays there are so many issues of financial dishonesty towards their users. Yes they may be a public listed company, but that doesn't matter if on the ground they treat people like you and me badly, and that somehow our money in their system may 'disappear'. Stay away, there are many better alternatives to go for.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

The support on this site is terrible. Automated response after automated response. Here's my story. Over two months ago I signed up to use this site as a freelancer, I've made decent clients and a decent amount of money, but they won't give me that money. I put in for my first withdrawal, for this they have a 15 day waiting period for new freelancers, I get that, whatever, I waited. All of a sudden 15 days later, without reason, that transaction fails.

Next I put in another withdrawal, still being patient. 15 days goes by, I'm looking in my account, nothing. Then I'm told I have to wait another 12 days for the withdrawal. If you're keeping count we're at 42 days of waiting to withdraw a small amount of money. All the while I'm trying to explain this to support, asking politely what I can do to expedite the process, receiving these B.S. copy/ paste responses.

Which brings us to this week, when suddenly on the day my withdrawal was supposed to come through I receive an email telling me that they've chosen to "limit" my account and I'm unable to make withdrawals. At that point I'm pissed, but they still have my money so I do what they say and send a scanned copy of my license, a scanned copy of proof of residency, a photograph of myself holding my ID. Then apparently they are trying to get in touch with my clients to see if I'm a real person. So my clients are getting these messages claiming the person they're working with may be, what, some kind of fake account? Tarnishing my reputation with the people paying me. Wish I had read some of these reviews before signing up.

Keep in mind I pay the subscription and they've made commission off every one of my projects. Leaving this review up unless all this crap gets resolved.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Freelancer.com gets worse and worse every year. I have been there since 2012 and now it's 2016 and still the milestone reversal is still a thing. The funny thing is, reversed payments should be returned to the employer and it looks like it's not because I talked to my employers if they got it back and they said they don't see it on their account. Here's the thing about freelancer.com, they put up a "terms and conditions" page and if you break any one of it, they will take your money, that's it. They won't refund fees, milestones, and any financial stuff. It's like their "terms and conditions" are a cheap way of getting money out of people. So now it's 2016, my biggest milestone reversal is $250 for all the hard work I did. The rest of the past years I got milestone reversals from $15 to $50. I guess it's time to jump to another platform. $250 might be small to some people, but think about this, it's not just me who experienced this, so you multiply this by the number of other people who experienced this and that's how huge Freelancer.com is making money out of that scheme.

Whenever you complain about this to their technical support, they will simply copy/paste a text from their terms and conditions to you and that's it. They don't care how hard you work for that money, they don't care about anything. The only thing they care is their terms and conditions which you will have to accept when you use their site so it's like you can't also sue them. What a shame.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I was looking for someone to professionally photoshop a photo for me and came across Freelancer. It seemed like an easy way to find the right person to do the job. I put in my budget of $25 and described what I wanted done. Right away I received many potential bidders that wanted to do the work. I chose one that had good reviews and would do the work for $20. He showed me a protocol of what he did, and I liked it. I had to pay through Freelancer, so I set up a "milestone" of $13.60. I have no idea why that amount was selected, but it seems like a fair price, so I gave my name and PayPal info.

Then he comes back and says now he wants $40 for the photo. I said to forget it and wanted a refund. Freelancer said they put the money in my "freelancer account," which I never requested, and to have the money put back in my PayPal account, I would have to make a special request that could take up to 45 days (now I am getting really super mad). Good thing I got notices from PayPal, after that they charged another $3.32 and then another $40.22 without my authorization all within about 15 minutes! All these were weird amounts, so I right away contacted PayPal and told them these charges were not authorized by me. I think PayPal knows about this scam company and has dealt with them before because they were blocked immediately and by the following morning I had all my money back.

Please do not use them; they are scammers of the worse kind!

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

This is true, as I have observed this myself. For almost every project I've made a bid on, the employers NEVER ACTUALLY HIRE ANYONE. That's right, this is at least 90% of the employers who seem to be in need of service, but then totally neglect it and let the projects rot forever.

All this time, I thought I just wasn't qualified. It turned out nobody was. Because the employers never hired anyone to begin with. I've wasted good money taking measures to stand out among the many other candidates; spotlighting my bid, highlighting my bid, providing what's equivalent to a cover letter in perfect English, all to no avail.

If you didn't need any help to begin with, then why the heck would you bother posting a job opening about it? Such perfect logic, no?

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

No care for security within marketplace, extorting sensitive private data and disseminating them if they just don't like you. Want to see tons of complaints? Google those: freelancer.com scam

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Worst customer experience of my life.

I did a purchase on behalf of a friend. The total amount was 15 euros. The following days Freelancer proceeded to charge me an additional 62.80 and then 62.81 euros and several other smaller amounts. I immediately contacted my bank, my friend also contacted Freelancer who didn't provide an answer as to why they charged my card, but did refund the money to my bank account.

A week passed and I realized that Freelancer was at it again, charging several amounts to my debit card. We contacted them again, they returned only part of the money and from that point we were unable to find a solution with their horrible customer care. No excuse as to why they continued to charge my card, although my friend has replaced it with her Paypal account and hasn't asked for their services anyway. They just decided to grab money from my account for no reason at all.

Three days in a row, after I contacted my bank and their Facebook page, sent them several emails, they are still keeping my money without being able to provide an excuse. They just charge you random sums, return part of it and then sent you to their very unhelpful customer care. I feel that their goal is to force you to eventually give up and allow them to keep your money. Stay away from this site, it's like a plague. No apology so far (although returning the money the first time is admission to their mistakes). They have caused me enormous stress and I will probably have to cancel my current card thanks to them. I would never go anywhere near that website again.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Freelancer.com seems to be a great idea but the way the system works might mislead people. The portal claims it is safe and offers money back guarantee, but is not true and the customer service really ignores people. They take several days to reply through a ticket base system, always with evasive answers that just protect their abusive policies, and the phone never answers.

Freelancer.com allows the possibility to offer services all over the world, as well as customers to receive service outside their country boundaries, they just forgot to follow other countries' laws and guidelines. Such company that claims to be the market leader should not mislead and ignore customers this way, and I am pretty sure America is no longer accepting this kind of treatment anymore.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I had tried Freelancer a few years ago and had not gone too far with it because they charge upfront for every project that you get awarded. I didn't get any projects then, so I decided to try Elance, which I was very successful with.

Elance shut down a couple of years ago, so I decided to try Freelancer again. I still don't have any jobs awarded, although I keep getting jobs awarded by scammers every day. I get at least 2 or 3 messages per day saying I have been awarded a $600 job and that once I accept it, I will be charged $60 by Freelancer. The "client" who has awarded the jobs tell me to contact them via email or hangouts. Anybody who has ever worked as a freelancer knows this is the oldest scam.

I keep on reporting them, and they continue posting the same job and awarding the same job on a daily basis. I am beginning to think that maybe someone or some people at Freelancer may be in cahoots with these scammers. The reason I say this, is that Freelancer charges the freelancer a 10% fee as soon as they accept the awarded job, and these scammers only target newbies?

How and why are they allowed to continue posting the same job although it is clear that this is a scammer? I cannot answer, but I have decided I am not paying Freelancer anything and will delete my account.

You also have to pay for their "tests." Every test (some of which you cannot even submit a bid without) costs $5.00. Why would I want to pay for an English test, and I passed with a 77% while someone with no English skills at all, gets a 90%?

Something smells real fishy at Freelancer!

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

It simply scams you and tricks you into paying fees. Small fees, hidden fees and unclear situations where you get tricked.

Just stay away from this site. There are many other useful sites that do a better job.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Their system is set up in a way that makes it vulnerable to scammers. Freelancers can bid for projects, win/accept, you pay, then they do not do anything and strong-arm money from you just to get your project freed up to assign to someone who really wants to work or get your money back. Otherwise, you have to set up another project, pay another set of fees/deposits. Then, if you're lucky enough to get anything back in the first, it's just a deposit. The worst part is that you can only review them if the project is completed, so people with good ratings may have only done a few projects to get a rating, then do this to scam.

For a first timer trying it out, I was NOT impressed.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I've been on the service for YEARS and my entire time with the service has taught me a valuable lesson. For starters, job posters are usually scammers, the people applying are also scammers, and Freelancer makes no attempt to deal with any of the issues. The next being that it constantly nickel and dimes you for even the smallest $5 charges, and when a mistake arises, which happens very often, the support is never helpful, and they are not responsible for any of their own actions. Make sure to review the terms here; you may be equally horrified:

https://www.freelancer.com/about/terms.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

They never responded to my emails and they blocked me from using their services. I advise no one to use this site.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

This company ripped me off by laying hold on more than $3,000 that I had earned, not paying out the money and ignoring all my e-mails. I worked with them for more than 3 months and decided not to withdraw the money I earned until it's substantially big enough. When I finally decided to withdraw, they sent me a crappy email and later refused to respond to any of my messages. I have verified my residency and sent them a copy of my ID and a picture of me holding the ID. This is money that I worked for, spent my time and they give me all these crappy excuses without send my money. I will NEVER recommend freelancer.com to anyone.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I recently had my account hacked and projects were accepted on my behalf. They take a 10% project fee from the amount. What? That's crazy that I have to pay to work! Anyway, I thought that because I was hacked that I would be refunded because I didn't accept the project. Boy was I wrong! I lost $120 because Freelancer.com won't refund me and PayPal didn't help either.

I'm letting everyone know that Freelancer is a scam website that has fake employers on there ready to use people and take their money. You have been warned! I'm in the process of shutting down my account, they cannot be trusted. They will not refund under any circumstances even when it's not your fault. Even if the employer backs out of the project you accepted, you lose the 10% you paid and don't get paid. Why are they still allowed to run their SCAM SITE?

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Freelancer.com doesn't respect freelancers. The fees are ridiculous, the processing times are ridiculous, and the restrictions they put on you make no sense. I've been a real life freelancer for ten years and will not use Freelancer.com again.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Freelancer.com support agent single-handedly ruined my life.

Freelancer.com is ruining my life, and the lives of thousands of contractors, it's not to be trusted nor used. My review is long but worth reading and will show you how no one in their right mind should use it.

I've been a member in this platform for over 5 years, I'm in the top 0.5% of contractors, I have 57 reviews, and 56 of them are perfect 5 stars. I only mentioned all of this to show you that if they're treating me this way, then imagine how they would treat other users.

I had an issue with the website a while back, which I'll spare you the details of, that lead me to escalate the matter to get it solved, which I did. Prior to that issue, the website was placing a two-month limitation on my account, which stopped me from being paid or getting work, and after I resolved that I issue, I must have stepped on a few toes, because the day after, my account was placed under limitation once again.

I contacted the website asking for an explanation, and the support agent rudely told me to stop asking questions and do my work, and they'll remove it when they feel like it. They didn't use these words, but it was the gest of it. I'm a proud person, and would never beg nor plead, but I was put in a corner.

A few months back my father passed away, and just a couple weeks later, I was in a bad car accident which left me in a bad shape and I had to use all my savings to pay my medical bills. Right after that, the account was limited for two months, as I mentioned earlier, and I was barely getting by. But once the issue was resolved and the new "open limitation" was placed, I was desperate and strapped for cash. I had $3600 in my account, which Freelancer refused to allow me to withdraw, and at the same time I had bills piling up, so I contacted them appealing to their humanity and explaining that I did absolutely nothing wrong to deserve such treatment. I'm a well-respected person in my industry, yet I was being treated like a criminal.

It became clear later on that this limitation was placed by a support agent, which I apparently angered during the first issue, and that the website had no basis nor reason to limit me. The first time I asked for the reason I was told that there's no reason and that I should keep working, then I was told that because a client complained, and in another occasion, I was told something else that I can't quite remember.

At the end, they stopped making excuses and told me that the limitation will be lifted on the 4th of November, the date in which I'm writing this review. And I was told so on five separate occasions, which I luckily have documented and asked for the Chat ID's (which is something you should always do when dealing with Freelancer). A one-month limitation was hard and I didn't know if I can make it, but I basically had no choice, and they knew it.

But a few days after this, the support agent that has something against me contacted me letting me know that she will only remove my limitation once I finish all my open projects. I tried to explain to her that this can't be and that as a contractor I have no authority over clients to close projects, they can take forever with edits and improvements and new features, or just leave, or any other scenario which I have no control over. I explained that my work is my life, that I will finish my work regardless because I have a responsibility toward my clients, and that how do they expect me to survive until then if my account is limited and I don't even have access to my money. And over our conversation that lasted a few weeks, I kept contacting Freelancer and asking about the limitation and all the support agents assured me that it will be removed on the 4th, but she insisted that it won't, and apparently she won, because today I woke up and indeed the limitation is still here.

A support agent that had something against me is ruining my life, is pushing me to depression, and shortly homelessness. Last year around this time I was a successful business owner, and due to a series of misfortunate events, I have been reduced to this. Being treated like a thief or something, and constantly being threatened and told that my account can be suspended and deleted at any time.

I gave five years to Freelancer, I wholeheartedly trusted them, and one of their support agents basically ruined my life because I stepped on her toes. I'm at a loss for words, I don't know how I should feel, what I should do, and the only clear thought in my mind is that I should warn people about this platform and tell them to stay the heck away. Whether you're a contractor or an employer, they will screw you mercilessly and you won't have a leg to stand on. If they did all of this to me, imagine what they would do to you.

P.S. I heard of many cases where users had their accounts suspended after complaining about this platform. I realize the risk, and I'm taking it for you good people, so you know who you're dealing. And if my account does get suspended, I'll update my review and let you know.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I have decided to pass a test in order to be legit to place a bid for one of their projects. If you actually read those questions in the test, you won't be able to answer even 70% of those questions within 5 minutes. It said I failed. I have lost my money.

On top of that, the statistics showed other people passing it within 45 seconds, which is clearly a fake because even if you press the button without reading the questions, there is no chance you will make it within 45 seconds.

I strongly recommend staying away from this website.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

My phone number was verified so many times in the past. They have taken my identity with all the details along with the copy of passport, and have verified it again. I had placed a request on November and they told me that on December 2013, they have transferred my hard earned $50 to my PayPal account. Unfortunately, that I never got it. I kept on writing them for many days and they said that I need to contact PayPal as they have already transfer the fund to PayPal and PayPal had eaten my money.

I left it there and forgot it as I came to know by searching in google.com that it was not only me but there were a lot of victims and that was how freelancer.com makes money.

A couple of days back I found that one of my friends is working for PayPal and I shared the story. He went through and found that freelancer.com never sent money to my PayPal account. (It's a disgrace on the face of Australia that this is a public company.)

He also gave me a couple of emails of PayPal people where I started copying all my emails. All of a sudden that amount was visible in my freelancer.com profile after almost 2 years.

Now again a same story repeated, I have been requesting a withdrawal and they are canceling it as they have just shown that number on my profile but money isn't there. (They have used it all.)

Never trust them, never deposit funds, never expect that you will receive payment from them, in short never use freelancer.com as they are a fraud company.

I am honest here and if anybody wants to contact me to know the truth, I am ready to share my phone, email and even address.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Very poor service, lots of fake projects just to attract new users and demand money for everything. They just want to leach money from hard working freelancers. The employer can make everyone's designs public, which may cause plagiarism.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I've been on Freelancer from 2006, from then until 2011 all was ok, but after that, all goes down. Bad clients, bad freelancers, and low projects rates. Now in 2017, the site looks like a circus; it's slow, hard for navigation and totally unusable.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Firstly we only hired the freelancers with the highest reputation in the website, however, they were total posers. We wasted thousands in useless code. One of the freelancers was logged with our company Google account while browsing and was searching things such as “How to get started with…” queries related to technologies in which he was a “senior” in. This was not the worse, some freelancers were scammers with complete fake info and asking money in advance via Western Union.

Secondly, freelancer applied several fees that were not announced, it also made unauthorized charges to our credit cards.

Lastly, our account was closed for inactivity and they kept hundreds of Euros.

When trying to log in they tell us to Contact support but there is no reply.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I was finally refunded my money. They emailed me about my review, hoping I would take it down. Honestly, I appreciate the refund, but I should never have been charged in the first place, and I did have to put in a lot of effort. I have not been compensated for this extra trouble. But, nonetheless, I'll upgrade this review to two stars.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Friends, I am here to tell a true story. If you want proof I will provide you with it.

First, my mistake is I post a project on Freelancer.com. They send some bidders, and one of them provided me a complete copy/paste work from the internet. I inform Freelancer.com, and they said I should only work with a person who has a green logo on his profile. I have no idea which logo.

My budget was US $750 and the freelancer stole it and never returned it. Now my job is I will start an anti-Freelancer.com campaign, which will help people save their money.

Never, never work or post on Freelancer.com. I will post a video on YouTube and Facebook and will start a campaign against Freelancer.com to tell the world a truth about Freelancer.com.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I ran a contest and awarded a winner $100.

Then I found out that the money I'd paid Freelancer.com to keep the contest off search engines hadn't done any such thing.

After a lot of obfuscating, they returned me the fees including the prize money and scrubbed the contest from their site.

Next thing, I hear from the winner telling me he'd had his prize money debited without any explanation.

After weeks and weeks of complaints that they'd taken an innocent third party's money, I've ended up returning the guy's money. Because Freelancer.com simply won't.

That's not a sign of a healthy company.

Firstly, they took my money, guaranteeing it would not be on search engines...and it was.

Then, instead of saying, "If you want a refund we'll take it from the hardworking winner," which I would never have agreed to as the guy deserved every penny, they just took the money from his account and won't return it.

It's unethical and pathetically unprofessional. I will never use them again. I simply cannot trust them.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I tried this as a freelancer and have a history of good work on other sites.

I had four people respond to bids, two were clear scams, and one was a condescending jerk who wanted the world for a few dollars and lectured me until I blocked him on loyalty (for $5.00) and how he knew how to weed out bad freelancers.

The one bid that I actually did work for seemed legit, a few minutes of work a day for a modest sum after a month. Ten days in, he says I am doing a good job and wants to give me two more projects. Sounds good, but it actually ends up that he expects me to do three times the work, longer than expected for the same price on the same bid. This was of course bait and switch and I did not do this.

At that point, I closed my account out. There are better sites than this scam factory out there if you need help getting freelance work.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I choose a Bidder who Freelancer presented as "reputable" in that community. This Bidder took my money and disappeared and I never provided me with the product that was promised. If you ever see a Bidder by the name PriceAction, Michael, or Dagmar Zobacova, STAY AWAY. He's a total con man and stay away from Freelancer.com because they will not support you in refunding stolen money from THEIR bidders.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend