hackerspytechReviews 137

As I am having problem with a project currently, I was investigating their review system and found something horrifying.

A freelancer has the option to remove up to 10% of the reviews he received, they call it 'blocking power'

That of course makes the whole review system totally useless. Not a lot of people leave bad feedback, they rather decide to not leave feedback at all (which already says that he wasn't extremely happy), if the freelancer has now the option to also remove the ones where really everything went wrong - You are left only with the most positive reviews - which is useless

Despite having lots of experience at elance/freelancer.com and similar sites, I am finding this deception currently out the hard way.

Stay away from them, you can't trust the reviews.

I have had many good experiences with Guru.com however with my current project I had to leave a review.

It is entirely too easy for your freelancer to lie to you. They can easily hide their location, as well as who will actually be doing your work. On top of that once you have released funds there is NO WAY you can retrieve them. Their arbitration is a joke. Guru.com's mentality when it comes to their free lancers tricking and ripping you off is simply "sucks to be you". They tell you to be more careful and have a nice day. I have been lied to outright by multiple freelancers.

I am months over the due date for my website and it still does not function as agreed and I have no recourse to get my money back. If this company was really interested in protecting you they would make it a violation of their terms of use to not accurately represent who and where the work is being done.

THIS SITE IS A DANGER TO ALL THOSE RUNNING THEIR OWN BUSINESS! DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY.

I've used guru.com for several years. As with all freelancers, it's hit & miss, always best to start with a small dollar amount and gauge the results.

However, I recently hired a freelancer using the SafePay option. I put 15 hours worth of $$ in SafePay and the next day my money was gone and so was the freelance. I never received and invoice or released the funds.

Guru.com is as equally responsive as the freelancer, no reply. I tried calling but that's just a voicemail brick wall with no reply as well.

I've had much better results on other sites and will take my business there.

Guru

KEEP AWAY FROM THIS PLATFORM!
If you are looking to hire a freelancer, this is not the right platform

Guru hides behind interpretations of their own wording and provide no help or support in case of dispute between vendor and employer.
They consider that they have no involvement with any of the transactions as they only provide the platform for both parties to meet.
Is the freelancer less than honest? Not Guru's problem.
Is the milestones a trick to get employer to pay freelancer even before the project is completed and with no guaranty that the project will be completed? Not Guru's problem.
Employer is unhappy with the freelancer and wants his/her money back? Not Guru's problem.
Is the freelancer less than qualified to do the job? No Guru's problem.
From our experience, it appears that Guru DOESNT SCREEN their vendors.
Anyone who claims to know how to do any work can join their platform and if these providers are unprofessional, crooks or just unethical then it appears that Guru does not care.
The Guru platform is the one of the worst of this type. All our projects with vendors we found on this platform have arrived to a dead end due the lack of knowledge and experience of the vendor, despite extensive conversation to ensure that the service provider understood the full scope of the work.
So our recommendation is to avoid Guru platform by all means.

I've been a Guru member since 2005, and have used their service getting great results until recently. Not long ago, I hired a contractor to do a writing project for me. It took a week before he informed me he was starting my project, which was supposed to be completed in two weeks or less. I contact Guru to see if I could cancel the award for the job and hire another contractor. This was in mid October and it is now the beginning of December and I have yet to hear from them. And my two week job, is now a two month and running job. The only reason I'm sticking with it is because I don't know how to get my money out of the escrow account. After this, I will never use this service again.

I was a big fan of guru.com until Jan 2014 when they made some changes into there website.
1. I was getting 1200 per year for $180 (top membership) but after Jan 2014 they made some changes like Freelancers will be getting 600 bids per year for $190 (average membership), though freelancers any bid into any category now. I don't know what the point of making this useless change. I am a web designer and there is no point for me to bid into business consulting or similar category. Though they reduced there fees but i don' mind paying 2-3% extra.

2. Previous Guru.com was flooded with jobs until last year, Jobs was being posted in every couple of minutes. But after making changes there are only around 2500 jobs in all the categories and now this year i can also see some dummy projects. Means guru.com may be posting some dummy projects as well.

3. Sending messages to employer was free until last year but now it costs some bids to send message to employer.

My new favorite is peopleperhour.com

I have been working with a "Guru" for over three months now with absolutely nothing to show for it. The level of incompetency I have witnessed from my Guru and the undeniably awful business policies of guru.com have combined to create one of the worst business experiences of my life. While I am sure it goes without saying that I will never use them again, I would like to go a step further and suggest that all guru.com users that feel the same way make sure to speak up ever more so that the site is eventually put out of business. I did my research before going with guru and wasn't able to find enough to dissuade me. I hope more people who feel the same will take a little extra time and speak up more about their experience.

I had a lot of difficulty setting up my account, especially the profile bits, probably due in part to my use of FireFox and Chrome. But, their tech support people responded and put the data in for me. For an electronics engineer, I'm not seeing a lot of activity so far, and the constant reminders of upgrading to a paid membership are the primary reasons for not giving them a higher rating. For Pete's sake guys, let me use the site and make some money, then ask me for some...

We did a project with a graphical designer for a shirt design, but the designer never delivered. However, guru.com assigned the escrow money to the designer. It is fatal for the trust of a website to touch the escrow money - we will NEVER use them again. We have using eLance for years with perfect results and the only two tries on guru.com were disastrous. It looks like the lousy freelancer work for guru.com. Just stay away from it.