Scam Projects on freelancer.com

There has been a lot of projects on freelancer.com where freelancers got awarded, but the "customer" than never actually starts the projects and declines every communication. So what? The problem is: freelancers get charged their 10% fee on the projectvolume immediatly. Even if the "customer" obviously never intended to start a real project, the freelancer has to pay these 10% with no way of a refund.
You will now ask your self, why someone should do this, though the "customer" gets nothing from that? Good question. But there is someone owning money by that fraudulent projects: freelancer.com!
There are a bunch of indicators that freelancer.com itself is making up these fraudulent projects. For example there where cases, when such a fraudulent "employee-account" doining this not only once, not twice, but a few dozens of times for hours straight, posting all these "projects", awarding, declining communication and instead keep on posting. Of cause, those has been reported a few times, but freelancer.com-"support" neither reacted, nor refund the charged freelancers.

What for is that fee?

Well, a fair price for the provided work?
No, there has no work beeing provided. That's not the freelancers fault, he/she is not able to check an employee first, because the employee-profiles are invisible until they write to you or award you.
Maybe it's for the service to bring together employees and freelancers?
No, they aren't real customers, because they never start a project. A service would include either a check before they can post projects and award freelancers or at least a refund if the provided work turns out to be fake.
Okay, last guess: It's for using the platform?
No, for using the platform you have to make an account and to use it properly chose a paid plan.

In conclusion

They will take your money (as they are used to do) and leave you without any shelter and in the same time are the only one to profit from this fraud. This suggest that they are making them up theirselfes.

How to protect yourself

• Be careful if you see the very same project more than once.
• Be careful if the project description is very poor with informations about the actual task.
• Do not accept a project without talking to the customer. Real customers love to talk, will have questions and appreciate your questions.

Daylight robbery on dead accounts

Lets start with one of those nasty little things from the freelancer.com terms and conditions! It too explains, why the site is having so much "active" users, although their reputation can hardly get worse than it is.
If you are ever so pissed you just want to leave you will soon notice, that there is no option to delete your account. So, as usual when you don't want to use a site anymore, you will just not longer log-in to it. But be careful! At this point, freelancer.com has another filthy little trick to still take your money:

If you are not logged-in for six month, freelancer.com will take a fee of up to 10€ (about 13$, exchangerate calculated myself) per month(!) from your connected payment method until the account is reactivated or canceled.

Is this even legal?

This brings me to the following Questions:

1. The stated "services" freelancer.com is taking that fee for are wether not used (the HireMe-Service for an inactive account?!?) or not worth a fraction of this amount (storage? traffic? for 10€ per month? wtf?). Especially compared to the fact, that there are membershipplans for 0€, 0.99€, 3.95€ and 7.95€ this is a absurd high fee! Ist there no usury law in australia?
2. Where I come from there is a simple rule: making use of your right to cancel is not allowed to be any more complicate than the contracting (for example: if you make a contract per mail, you can cancel the contract per mail, they are not allowed to claim a handwritten, parfumed letter). This site offers me a registration in a few clicks, but nowhere it is offering a click to cancel. Blame yourself, freelancer.com! If you don't give me an appropriate way to cancel, then it's not my fault, when you need to spend such an high amount (I have to giggle)for the "services" to dead accounts. Talking to the morons from the so called "support" is by the way no appropriate option, it's more like a kind of torture.
3. This is a bit pointless to say, because that would be a customer friendly service and we all know freelancer.com treats customers like shit, but: a reliable company would send a mail, before they charge a fee from your account in silent, that is obviously a mistake. But well, this shady company freelancer.com constructed their terms to produce a lot of those "mistakes", so of course they will notice you about that.

How to get rid of the scammers

So, what should you do when you decide to leave the tricksters alone?

• To make sure they can't charge any further fees from you, block them from your account! Who knows, what comes else, there are other cases in wich they will charge you later, too. Revoke the direct debit mandat to your bank, go to the paypal site and block freelancer.com (Profile / My PreApproved Payments / select name of the merchant / view agreement / cancel / following the steps after that).
• Compared to the other option, it spares life-time and nerves just to log-in every 5 month for the rest of your life, but if you have balls of steel and plenty of time you can try to contact the "support" to cancel your account, but embrace yourself to get stuck in an endless loop.

The informations about the terms and services of freelancer.com and their fees are taken from their site on the 16.07.2014. If you are in need, please take a look by yourself to ensure the informations are right and up-to-date under:
freelancer.com/feesandcharges
freelancer.com/page.php?p=info/terms

By scratching your head at least once while you read this post, you agreed to convey me your firstborn-child.

As Lykke Li sings: I'm good, I'm gone

I had some really nice customers, interesting projects, and my customers all paid me fully satisfied immediatly and left 5-star-ratings only. But now the freelancer.com "support" got me down, too.
When you find this Blog you probably searched for "freelancer.com experience", "freelancer.com scam" or similar and found plenty complaints about their service, their mistreating their customers as well as their freelancers: and they all was right! I wish I had just searched and believed before I wasted so much time in work I didn't get paid for.
I am an honest freelancer, reliable and delivering just well done work. And therefore I refuse to work for that shady company anymore, leaving that site to the tricksters.

Freelancer.com stole my money and my time

Yes, this is another "I'm so mad"-Blog, but I promise I will try to be witty, not bitter, documenting, not ranting (haha, just kidding: I will rant!). I will tell my story part after part to sample the pleasure of every little detail – from the mug-shot to the analphabetic "support". Okay, analphabetic is a complaisant assumption, more likely they are just part of the criminal system, there to play along, demoralize, spam with unrelated text modules and auto-replys until you give up, but thing they will never do: give you support.

Make it public, file complaints to the officials!

All the Blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter and Youtube channels are important, although you probably searched for that when it was too late, so don't forget: make it not only public, make it offical! I know it's difficult to figure out where and how, mostly (like me) in a foreign language, under the law of a foreign country and all that effort for maybe only fifty dollars: but the question is not "how much", but "how many"!

Secret fees for services that are advertised as FREE, FREE, FREE*
*Oh, sorry, that was a typo! We wrote "free" six times by accident, we ment: it costs 5$!
And you all paid it, displeased for a moment, but then told yourself, "it's only 5$... maybe i overread something... lets move on". You are not the only one, you aren't inattentive, it's just the system to hide and deceive, greedy for every penny they could lay their filthy hands on.

So what is this going to be here?

Here comes you own watchblog, freelancer.com! I will not only tell my personal story here, I will document every filthy trick: those that are statet in the terms and conditions (like the snowball-system... you now what I'm talking about, aren't you?) and those, that are written down nowhere (Too embarrassing? Noooo! Can't be, you guys are normally shameless?)
If you want to participate, found that there is a link missing or just want to tell your own story please feel free to leave a comment and I will come back to you as soon as I find some time.