FreelancerReviews 20,188

Pure SCAM.

They deliberately told me over email that if I posted a full time job then it would be listed for as long as I wanted. It cost $200. So I agreed. Then the job was listed for only 7 days. When I asked why it was only listed for 7 days, they told me "Oh that's what we meant all along."

I quoted their previous email showing they told me something else, and then they stopped responding to my emails. How on earth this site hasn't been shut down to fraud is lost on me. Apparently Australia has no legal justice for fraud, I thought Australia was a first world country?'

You can file a complaint here: https://www.accc.gov.au/contact-us/contact-the-accc

As the star rating says - Doesn't get any worse than this. Stay away!
I have used odesk before and had little or no trouble but when i have i have been able to go via their dispute procedure and get a result.
Sadly this does not even exist within Freelancer.
They are simply a go-between and wash their hand completely of any involvement between you and the contractor.
My own stupid fault for not finding this site first.
I hope others can learn from this and take heed - stay clear!
It is open to fraud on the biggest scale.
I could open an account offer a load of false images as work done and get a few ratings from iffy friends. Then after taking a a dozen NON-REFUNDABLE down payments clear off with the funds.
I have lost... or should i say had stolen... nearly $200
Feel gutted and no way to get it back.

I hired a freelancer name aslanyanartak2 to build a website. I set of a milestone payment of $40 dollars to be release when half of site was completed and reviewed and I have yet to have that obligation met. The remainder would be paid upon site completion by aslanyanartak2 (The Freelancer) has failed to deliver completion of half of site for review and instead sent me to the following link: http://example223.16mb.com/ which only showed an basic word press theme that in no way reflects the requirements to receive milestone amount that he has the nerve to request to be released. Freelancer need to screen these fly by night Freelancers who represent their business in a negative light. I am very unhappy with this experience and most likely will never use Freelancer.com ever again.

Avoid Freelancer at ALL COSTS. This site will steal money from your paypal account. They do not disclose all fees and then take money from your account and refuse to return it. I have a dispute open with paypal right now and am leaving the site after being there 2 years. TOTAL FRAUD. Freelancer.com scam is Freelancer.com itself. IT'S SAD WHEN YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE PLATFORM MORE THAN THE EMPLOYEES. Hate to leave employees I enjoyed working with but you cannot trust the management here with your credit card info AT ALL!

Update: problem solved. Thanks to Marcus at Freelancer.com Support
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Hi, i started freelancing on freelancer.com a few months ago. At 1st i thought there system works like any other freelancing website. Where you charge monthly fees to bid and then they get a commission from the employer payments.

Recently, i have been scammed twice on the website by fake projects from fake clients that urge me to accept their project as soon as possible once i accept. freelancer.com charges me %10 fees on each project. This happen to me in 3 projects from 2 clients and i just discovered it yesterday when i found my balance with them $-564 instead of $0.00.

I contact them and they said that they charge the freelancers for getting them with the client even if the client did not go with the project, canceled it or closed it or render unresponsive to your messages.

I decided today to not use them again.

They are a SCAM.

I had an account at rentacoder, which later changed to vworker - recently vworker was transfered to Freelancer, including my account balance.

Rentacoder was quite good, vworker less, but Freelancer is as close to scam as i can be.

I have used an insanity of time in finding a skilled coder for a simple job in html and css - but bidders turn out to be middlemen, contractors, false bidders, or/and not what they claim to be.

Trying to find a freelancer and inviting to the project, after three attempts, where they all decline from the project, its clear something is going on - bit by bit Freelancer empties my account in fees - lately I found that I had a premium membership of 24.95 USD, even I havnt signed up for any membership - so I expect they will draw this amount any day now.

My account balance transfered from vworker, I dont expect to get my money back. I dont expect to get any work done.

Probably when Freelancer have emptied the account balances they got from vworker, they will start yet another company with new name, transfer the balances, empty the accounts into their own pocket - etc etc etc.

So freelancer.com, stay clear - they ARE a scam.

A few months ago I posted a couple of projects on freelancer.com associated with work I was doing for a client of mine. The first thing I didn't like is that I had to pay a $9 membership to be able to post projects, but when my client cancelled the work I went to the site and cancelled the project postings, and then, trying to have everything tidy, I deleted the projects associated with that work, unknowingly incurring in a $5.75 charge per posting FOR DELETING a posting.

It's an idiotic notion to charge money for something you're not going to use anymore. But the freelancer.com people didn't strike me as idiots but as thiefs, applying charges and telling you only after the moeny is in their pockets.

I recommend you use Elance.com. They are complete professionals, you can post for free and they won't charge a penny for deleting stuff. They will be completely honest and tell you what to expect, and you can believe them.

Stay away from freelancer.com, they're trash!

Here is my 2C about Freelancer.com

I have started using this website to outsource work back in 2007 when they were still getafreelancer.com

Things were ok for me at the time and I was happy with their fee and the way website functioned. I had posted and completed around 300 jobs on their website. As said, at the time I thought fees where fair and I was getting the job done. I even suggested two changes to the platform to them and both were implemented on the site.

This year I had bit of a break and did not use them for a while. Then I got some more work to do and naturally, I logged into my account to post the job. And got nasty surprise. Their fees have gone up by double and are now the most expensive fees in the freelancing. I have no idea how much of the cut are they taking from freelancers but me as an employeer was charged fee for posting (fair enough but still rates are stupidly expensive), then I was charge for transaction to pay them, charged fee for canceling one of the projects that did not go ahead and it just seemed that all of the sudden they are the greediest bunch in the industry. So I moved on to other platforms that are far better. I am not working for any of the competitors so I won't mention who am I using now but there are far better and choices out there for hiring freelancer.

Forgot to mention that some of the freelancer I met there and worked with (and still am but on the freelancer.com) have left as well as they told me horror abuse stories about percentage they were receiving from freelancer.com

It seems that slavery mentality is alive and prospering in Sydney HQ of Freelancer.com

Stay away from them. The only people win when you use freelancer.com is Freelancer International Pty Limited, Australian company (In this case I am ashamed to say I am Aussie too)

If your are thinking about using Freelancer.com to hire someone for your project, DO NOT DO IT!

I was just scammed out of $350 and their incompetent helpdesk can't do a darn thing about it. The freelancer talked me into releasing the payment to start the project which was estimated $1500 total, and then disappeared. I informed Freelancer.com immediately and told them exactly what happened and was told that they can't do anything.

WTF? I WAS JUST SCAMMED. I've now opened full paypal disputes and I'm even considering on starting my own freelance site that actually VERIFIES the freelancers BEFORE allowing them to accept bids and run away with the money.

I have had a vworker (rentacoder) account for 7 years now and completed over 200 projects. The service and support was brilliant and I was happy everytime. Then they sold it to freelancer and now the platform is awful, the service sux and they bill your account everytime you sneeze and they will push your account into negative balance. Absolute piece of rubbish. Message to Ian Ippollito (the CEO of Vworker) - Please launch another site and contact me when you have it up and running as the industry is now without a professional outsourcing platform and is just full of half-wits like freelancer.

This review is only obliquely about freelancer. I got an email invitation from them. It has to be because about three weeks ago I was told about elance.com and signed up there. I had completed 90% of their enrollment, all that was left was to send them a pic of my Driver's License and a Skype interview. So glad I didn't give them more sensitive info and I'm glad that I didn't get any jobs (headaches) from them either. All I lost was the time it took to enroll there and take some tests on video production. Then there was the daily looking and bidding for jobs... that never amounted to anything.

So back to Freelancer... I got an email invitation and it came in Italian (I sort of speak Italian, but in no way on a level to do business). Still, before even thinking of clicking on the "accept invitation" I wanted to see what others thought of them first, so I ended up here.

Funny, the exact same kind of complaints that can be found about elance.com are the ones I'm reading about Freelancer... No Thank You.

Caveat Emptor

Somehow my account (after not even using the site in several months) created a negative balance where they claim I owe THEM money. First of all, Im a developer... I get paid, not them. They just collect a fee when I do. Apparently they are now just randomly choosing to charge you some money and tell you that you can not do anything else until you pay it.

Curiously, I thought i would try to just create a new account. WOW... It worked. WHICH brings me to another thought. Couldn't people with really bad ratings and people who have been scamming people simply do the same thing? Is it possible that some people only have perfect ratings because they work with other people to create listings and pass each other good ratings for imaginary work? Turns out that this is entirely possible. And If I could create more than one account then so can the dead beats who are probably out there giving themselves great ratings.

I was compelled to create the following article...
http://www.versitek.info/freelancer-com-stupid-alert/

I believe with freelancer.com you must proceed with caution. What we've had happen to us is the freelancers will place a bid amount and once you award them the project often times they immediately will quote a different price and tell you that you have to repost the project. I hired a freelancer on the site to design a site for $5000 dollars,(he originally had placed a bid for $3000 dollars then right after said it will actually be $5000) after the freelancer took more than 50% of our money and we only had less than 10 percent of the site competed thus far, the freelancer asked for more money and upon further research we found that he had complaints under his real name for basically building a defective site that wont work. We also found reports from other sites that allegedly freelancer.com freelancers will hire each other for fake projects so they can leave each other fake feedback. I filed a claim with my bank and sent an email to freelancer customer service 5 days ago and have not received a reply back. Needless to say, we feel we have been scammed.

This company charged my Paypal account without any notification that my trial subscription has already expire. In fact, you will not even see on their offer that they will auto-charge you once it expire. I think it is a prudent business practice to notify customers when their subscription will be expiring soon like the other business out there that offers subscription.

Beware of availing their "trial" because you will never get your money back once they charged your account.

That web site is awful. Support is zero always changing the support person. For example you create a ticket and sent, next time new guy comes and respond you without reading previous subjects and they are generally copy-paste from text file. Because I am getting always same messages.

Weak of system. There are many bugs and they do not care about the bugs they are looking a way to add new features. For example you can write person X on chat window but your message shown on person Y, Z...
LoL it is so funy. I love to use their system when I want to laugh... :)) )

If you are looking really for a job please use more professional systems...

Thanks

They are stealing money in the name of account verification.
A week ago i requested some money for withdrawl while processing it they simply cancelled it and limit my account from withdrawls further they asked to submit documents like proof of name, address, photo i did submited all the documents they rejected all the documents for no reason. Now i dont know what to do. I spent day and night on this site to earn money now its all scammed.

I'm new to freelancer (I signed up 2 months ago) and I don't think this site is scam. Yes, there are a lot of scammers who use freelancer and post fake projects and things like that but has nothing to do with the site (perhaps the site could control them better and avoid that things to happen, that's my only complain).

Said that, I've taken some small projects and all went ok. I don't pretend to make a living from this, it's just an extra income so perhaps my view is more relaxed.
Up to now I like the site, you just have to learn to identify the scam projects and give it some time so you can find good people to work with.