FreelancerReviews 20,196

I was a happy user of vWorker website.
When freelancer.com acquired vWorker, I was obviously forced to use freelancer.com, but I was immediately disappointed by their poor UI and project management dashboard.
Anyway, I had some projects to be completed with buyers coming from vWorker.

In the meantime I started working on elance.com, a totally different world! I highly recommend it!

So, now I had 20€ still there in my freelancer.com account, and surprise! I can't withdraw them because the minimum withdrawal amount is of 30€.
I opend a support ticket to get this explained.
They apologyze and ask me to deposit 10€ more from my PayPal account, so they would allow me to withdraw my money as a "one time courtesy".
I did deposit 10€ and... wow! Now I have 30€ stuck in my freelancer.com account: they still don't allow me to withdraw them, because you "can only withdraw money you earned from work, not what you had deposited from paypal".

WHAT?!

In the meantime, they don't answer to my support tickets anymore.

And I can't find any such rule in their TOS.

Stay away from freelancer.com!

Sad to hear that they not only still exist, but haven't gotten any better.

We had a project running there (iOS app), which looked fine at the beginning as the developer sent a video as proof of his work, we paid the first milestone.

Since we never received the finished project we didn't pay the rest of the money (sounds logical).

We wanted to use the money already in our account to pay a second developer we hired, which freelancer didn't do, because they needed additional account information. After completing the informatinos they wanted nothing happened, excpet that they were threatening us to close our account.

Sending emails and support tickets did not change anything, they wanted us to grant them permission to pay the first job (which still is unfinished). We lost approx. US$ 800.- there, our account doesn't exist anymore.

They closed the case we opened, we had to remind them many time that the dispute is not solved.

A few investigations showed that several people use freelance.com to systematically rip off people that offer them work.
The way that freelancer.com functions perfectly protects fraudsters of any kind, once you got money in an account there you will never ever get it back.

What they do and how they do it is illegal in our country.

The purpose of a site like freelance is to protect people who make business using their site, but as it looks they only care about the money that flows through their site, and giving their best to restrict withdrawals.

In generally we don't work anymore with freelancer sites, we hire freelancers directly after having talked to them on skype and after having them finished a little project (something stupidly simple like a "hello world" without any value or use). Every serious developer is more than willing to invest 30 mins in order to get a job that pays well.

Stay far away from freelance.com, roasting marshmellows over burning dollar bills is much less frustrating.

I join freelancer.com just couple of days ago, thinking that I will make some extra money. I was asked to verify my account by adding a payment method which I did by adding my Paypal account.
I got my first project awarded today by some fake employer with no ratings. I don't know how he was allowed to award me the project because as per Freelancer policy, an unrated employer needs to deposit 20% of the project value before awarding it. They didn't collected this amount from him as they new he was fake but went ahead and charged my legitimate Paypal account with $12.59 CAD as their commission of the Project value which I didn't receive a single cent yet and will not receive as the employer is fake.
I immediately stopped further direct debit from my Paypal account to prevent Freelancer to extract more money from me. I don't understand whether their motto is to generate income for us or to rip us off.
Anyways, when I complained they say their project fee is non-refundable and whether the employer pays or not it is your problem not their. They got my money so they are enjoying. I have raised a dispute on the transaction with Paypal on the grounds that Freelancer should have collected 20% project value from the unrated employer. Lets see what happens.
I want to caution all of you to think twice before getting into this.
I am a seller on eBay and if for some reason the buyer doesn't pay then eBay reverts back the commission. I don't know what kind of site is this Freelancer.com, how can it take money when I never made anything from their site. This is very unethical way of doing business. I don't think they can continue for long this way.

It is some kind of trap website. Hidden fees everywhere.
Robot-like unfriendly support and even some bugs.

I created my first project. I made a mistake in creating a the project, no way to remove it. Or you have to pay them to remove it again!?
You create a project, send them money, they block your account because they need verification about the payment? I paid via Paypal. So what do they need to verify?
Directly after my payment I get phone calls from Russia. Paypal seem to have given them my phone number.
Support does not seem to even read what you wrote in your emails. They just get a few word and reply. So you have to keep your sentences really short, precise and still write it two or three times.
I send them my first payment, I get a "Plus Membership" for free. Until next months, then you have to pay each month.

Wow... I've register on this site like very long time ago, I would say 2008-2009 and I bid on several projects won few of them, finished job got some cash and I got regular job and never logged in back again. Few years passed, I forgot my password, obliviously my account was deleted. That's ok, I was inactive. Got back again, lot of changed. I mean a lot. Exams are ok thing to do, that way they are keeping scams away and earn some cash as well, these days pretty normal stuff.
What I don't like, every single step you got bunch of fees and you got impression that you came there to get a job, grab some money and move on and on, but I see it opposite, like u came there to pay them for the job, funny. Almost, after reading these negative reviews it's perfect system designed for scums, to take your hard work for nothing, and freelancer got their ''policies'' of defense. Sounds like very-well designed system to treat you like a modern computer slave.
Now, since a lot of time passed, I start reviewing other people and their opinions, I will step back and leave it to people who already place their effort there. But as for a newbie (not really, but on their site you are) I see no interest to spend valuable time there.

I had a client who just vanished owing a fair amount of money ($1.5k). Freelancer of course had taken their commission and refused to refund me until I had contacted my client. I tried to get my money back for six months before telling Freelancer that it was their system I was using, that had let me down so surely if that was the case they owe me the full amount for the job. They decided just to refund the commission in the end. I shouldn't have had to threaten them and I should have been given some sort of compensation as an apology for their poor service.
I won't be using them again (I made sure I withdrew all my money from my account before posting this as I just don't trust them).

First to be clear the only way to contact this hugely profitable company is with a support@ email address, thats it, no phone number.

I am trying to get someone at freelancer.com support to actually do something about one of thier members, who threatened and bullied me, hacked into my site, using the hack code HE had left in it, while do a project that he never completed. He then blackmailed me into payment and leaving a 5 star review or he would delte my whole website. He much glee in this fact.

'you need to leave me review, i can't leave it like this.'
'i am following you on this. '
'you are gonna pay big for this. '
'i want it 100% positive or I will take all your stuff down '

I have now sent 7 separate emails to Freelancer support, where I am told '

'We recommend that you communicate with your freelancer to resolve any project-related issues amicably.'

Well I have tried and tried, begged infact for him to leave me alone, he had even called me 3 times to abuse me further. We have now had to block his number, his IP address in India.

I have even email him this morning to ask again for my money back, then told him I have notified them of the abuse, he has literally told me, that he isn't worried as Freelancer.com won't actually do anything. So clearly this has happened before.

To clarify he hacked into MY website and blackmailed me into payment and the review and they seem to be supporting this guy, I presume because they get more money from him than me, absolutely shocking.

Surely they cannot let this happen to someone else. Why don't you surprise us all Freelancer.com and actually do something about this?

Im a contracter on freelancer and have hired 2 people to work for me. Totalling £1200. One guy has done half the work and he cant get paid for it and the other has pulled out all because my account has been frozen for verification. I completed the required documantation the same day. All they do is ask for more ID. After 9 scanned documents uploaded on to the site, a dozen emails vis the help centre. All I recieved is a generic email referring me back to the verification back on the website. It told me my details didnt match my ID details. So I scanned screenshots and attached those for their reference too. 2 days later my account is still on hold and nothing from freelancer. My money is locked in with them. My freelancers cannt get paid and my deadline is approaching and have no work! What to do? Lucky i paid on credit card. Filling out mastercard fraud request as we speak.

Beware! This site is a scam!
They make you put money in escrow to use the site and hire programmers. Then once you have money in your account they freeze your account so you can't pay any of your programmers or transfer your money back out to your bank account.
Then they send you a message saying you need to "verify" your identity and that your money will be frozen until you do. I tried 10 times to do this. I uploaded my drivers license numerous times and other forms of governement id. But they kept saying they dont accept it for one reason or another and making up excuses.
So eventually they stole over $250 from my bank and I had to file a fraud alert with my bank to get the money back. And my programmers on Freelancer didnt get paid either. The only ones who got paid were the crooks at freelancer
I am filing a complaint with the BBB and hopefully my bank will decide in my favor.
WHAT A SCAM FREELANCER IS! BEWARE!

Freelancer is the worst website to start your freelancing career.

I say this because I got burned several times but everytime that happens, I went back hoping it would get better but it never did. My experience just got worser every time.

1. In the beginning, I accepted several projects, so I got deducted $5 each time. Even if you project is just for $30 or less, you still get $5 deduction. Even if the client does not communicate to you anymore, they still won't refund the fee to you

2. The first time you withdraw money from them, you will need to wait THREE WEEKS. This is an absolutely ridiculous rule.

3. I entered a 'guaranteed' contest worth $750 usd. Their guideline says that if the contest holder does not award a winner, the contest prize will be split among the contestants. Because the prize at stake was big, and because I knew I have a likely chance of winning, I decided to join the contest. It took me a week to prepare my entry since I had to research about the company, read their requirements, write a script, find a voice talent, hire a professional recording studio to do the job, find someone who knows how to edit an audio file and add sound clips to make a decent radio ad jingle, and finally, summon all my courage to submit. I was able to convince the voice talent as well as the audio editor that we would split equally if we win, but I already paid for the recording studio's fees. After more than a month, they credited my account $75 since the contest holder did not award any winner. BUT at the same time, they deducted 10% from the amount, which is $7.50 as prize fee. This was okay until Freelancer decided to reverse the payment and deduct me $75 without any notice! Yup, that's right, they can spam your email with daily notifications of projects but they never give you a notice for something as important as your money! I've since withdrawn the money to paypal and only left a few dollars so now it turns out I owe them $60! That's just absurd. Please note that I never even fully received $75 because they also deducted the prize fee of $7.50, but when they decide to reverse, they deduct me the full $75! So this basically means that I paid $7.50 as prize fee for a contest that I didn't even win in the first place!

4. They allow employers to post projects that have budgets which are way too low. Logo designs at $10 (of course, the freelancers actually only get $5, because the other $5 is for their non-refundable fee), and writing jobs at $0.5 per 500 words! I mean, how's that even fair?

5. Let me repeat, this is the worst website to start your freelancing career. I'm shifting to Odesk, Elance or People Per Hour.