oDeskReviews 140

Odesk is a huge waste of time. They froze my account because I photo shopped my profile picture to take out the person who was standing next to me. They don't re-start your account right away - customer support is terrible. Jobs are very hard to get because most clients are looking for people who have good skills and are willing to do the work for 2 bucks! There are also a lot of sleazy jobs, like altering legal documents. Don't waste your time.

I have been working on Odesk for 4 years, and they suspended my account suddenly without any reason saying it's their upper management decision. I have both freelancer and client acount with odesk. My client account have a balance of $39 and I told them to transfer that amount to my freelancer account, So I can withdraw that my hard earned money, and they are saying they can't transfer that money as they don't have provision for that and don't have any other solution. I am asking then again and agian, but their customer support not even replying my mails.

I transferred the money in my oDesk account a week ago and they never arrived in my PayPal account even if I used the correct email address. I cannot talk to anybody, they do not offer chat, or a valid phone number and I receive from time to time the same email promising to solve the problem.
I kept only one customer on this site, but I will completely avoid taking any jobs from now on! Every legitimate site has normal customer support.

FYI - per ODesk: If a contract is never finalized and thus no payment is ever made to the freelancer, no review can be given on the freelancer.

Case in point, I recently hired someone to do a job for me. Poor communication first couple days after award (great communication when trying to get the project!) and then it dwindled to zero communication at all. No response to ODesk messages, emails, or chat requests. I eventually had no choice but to cancel the contract after allowing this fool (O. Bouguima) to put me another week behind schedule based on promises he could do the work, etc. Rated him honestly based on my experience. However my rating does not show up on his profile since there was no value to the contract. WTF?!? Which means he could have pulled this with 20 other contracts and I would have had NO WAY OF KNOWING he was a total jerk. ODesk provided no reasoning for this policy even though it is me as the person with the job that ends up providing them income. Total scam and will NEVER use them again.

In these days, oDesk isn't a site that it was before. I believe it's now a heaven for scammers. Low paying jobs, poor client profiles, sample scams, and many other issues are now the...

In July 2011, I joined in oDesk as a freelance medical writer. From August 2011 to May 2012, I have worked around 194 hours in oDesk. Unfortunately, due to some serious personal problems, in 2012 I discontinued my ongoing contract and left oDesk. After nearly ten long months, in January 2013, I came back to oDesk to seek some job opportunities.

But what I found was the qualities of clients as well as the job offers decreased drastically. I saw too many spammy jobs in every category. I don't know where these clients came from, but surely they don't know how to post a job and what should be the budget of the job.

Interestingly, in the meantime, I was hired in a long-term project of writing 2000 words of articles on complementary and herbal medicines. According to my client's job description, I was hired to write articles in accordance with following potential parameters:

• Minimum 2000 words
• Perfect English
• Interesting writing style, the articles should attract the readers. Easy to understand (the articles are for patients, not for professionals) and Explain ALL medical terms
• Free of plagiarism
• The articles should contain a practical part in a way that it is helpful in daily life.

Moreover, he also suggested that each article should deal with following points:

1. What is it (Definition, where can you find it?)
2. Effects on the human body (effects on body systems, organs etc)
3. Usage in the treatment of diseases (which illnesses)
4. Practical recommendations (how to use it, dosages etc.)
5. Example text for correct quotation
6. Proper references (bulleting each paragraph with a study paper)

Do you have any idea what was the budget of writing each article?

Firstly, it was 10 $USD and after writing the first one, he increased the amount to 14 $USD. Actually, this is not the horrible thing I faced. The horrible thing was when I started writing the second article. I was writing an article on a synthetic drug that is still in the clinical trial phase. Unfortunately, there is not a single article written on this topic and even Wikipedia have very few sentences about the ingredient.

I was on my desk for more than 30 hours and I studied around 40 study papers related to the compound. After completing the article, just to save my profile from negative feedback, I submitted that as a final article and after that, I immediately ended the contract.

I believe that one was one of the horrible experiences in my lifetime. I don't know what action is right for this kind of clients, but they must be stopped. Because, they are still hiring someone fool like me...

I am professional web programmer with over several years experience and I have established career at freelancer.com with over 70 excellent reviews and I had nightmare working on odesk. First I spent too much time applying for jobs and explaining my expertise, I hardly got a reply, obviously because of the huge amount of spam bids with as low as $1 hourly rate or may be less.

And after getting hired on 3 jobs, it turned all of them got ended with a customer canceled the job with partial payment because he does not need the job anyway, other paid after many requests and waiting for 2 weeks, last one took the job and ran away without paying a single dim.

I hired a contractor from India. According to him he could do everything that I was asking for. But after he started working on the project is was a BIG LIE.

BEWARE of this site they have no control over any of the freelancers. And they all lie to get the job.
These people are committing fraud on a massive scale. We lost over $10,000 and when I complain which oDesk
That our freelance was a big fraud, they didn't do anything about it.

When I refused to pay the balance, because is was a very $#*!ty job, they send me this e-mail:

Your balance is more than 30 days past due and we have been unable to collect the amount owed to oDesk. Please pay your outstanding balance within 7 days of receiving this notice. If your balance is not paid, we will refer your debt to TrueAccord, a collections partner who helps oDesk users settle amounts that they owe.

NEVER AGAIN I WILL USE oDesk.

This freelance site is far better than most and had a few good jobs with no problems. I would never consider working by the hour since that is the typical slavery system that I left many years ago to become independent contractor. Besides, if they want to implement an hourly system, they should include a minimum hourly rate to get rid of the pathetic employers who post jobs at 1.00/hour. I even seen one job posting for. 20 cents an hour!

Pay for time doesn't work for either an honest worker or an honest client as you just can not sit on your computer for 8 hours continuously that is not how work is done in offices, people need some breaks & refreshments etc to keep going. When someone comes in an office he is not glued to the screen full 8 hours, he also takes tea, talks with his colleagues or may also play a ping pong game, all within the 9 to 6 time frame. This just doesn't work and an awful way to work, I started to hurt my back, hips due to contant siting without moving and then had to away from this hourly slavery.
While if you aren't an honest worker its just easy, keep the tracker open with some kid and let them click on many places to get the hours billed.
Also if you are not an honest client, its very easy for you to post a fixed price project and get the work for free without ever paying the freelancer...
So in essence, odesk is designed for cheats/frauds from both sides, if you want to have a smooth experience with your project, stay away!

I was told that it was guaranted satisfaction, now that I have an issue with Reetu Sharma making changes to my pages with out asing me she began being mean and calling me names like Half minded and insulting my intelligence. Then they said they were getting involved with the dispute and they have done nothing but take back what they said and displayed, Money back guarantee, now they are saying only if it were hourly is is guaranteed. I think that this site is not regulated in any way, I think they can get away with no customer satisfaction and I think they can absolutely steel your money if you go here.

I ordered a job on this website, freelancer took 50% and disappeared. When i applied to odesk help center, they told me that they are not responsible for my money and the only thing they can do is just contacting freelancer but they cannot guarantee anything.
Here is the answer i received from odesk:
"Though oDesk does not offer mediation or arbitration services and there is no guarantee that you will be paid back"
I don't suggest using this website.

This has to be the worst experience I have ever had with a website. I contacted the first "contractor" and got harassed with over 100 emails trying to get me to hire him. Then the next "contractor" did absolutely nothing so I fired her. Then odesk continued to take my money out of my account 3 weeks in a row out of my account even though the account was closed which caused me to get hundreds of dollars in fees. SO i reported them to my credit card company and got the charges reversed and now they have the nerve to send me a bill for the money they attempted to steal from me and threaten me with collection! Avoid them at all cost.

I hired a contractor to do some work on my website. I am the president of An internet company. I had additional work so I posted that on the website. The next day I find out my account has been suspended. This is the transcript of my conversation with customer service. Why in the world would they treat me as if I was a criminal?

Nancy Brown: Why was my account suspended
Robby A.: I am sorry to hear that your account has been suspended, Nancy. Rest assured that I am here to help.
Robby A.: Let me go ahead and check your account first. One moment please.
Robby A.: Thank you for waiting, Nancy.
Robby A.: It appears that it is our higher management who have suspended your account. Unfortunately, it has been decided that our working relationship must come to an end.
Nancy Brown: WHY?
Robby A.: As a private company, we have the right to determine who can engage on our platform, and at this time our Trust and Safety management team has come to the conclusion that your participation can no longer be supported.
Robby A.: Also, you are no longer allowed to create another account and future attempt to contact us will not be accommodated.
Robby A.: We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

This website is absolute CRAP.

A) Unprofessional support which takes ages to respond (I have a feeling that there are 2-3 people working and some of them are from India or whatever)
B) They can not form longer sentences and their requests are ridiculous.

Now the whole thing.

I joined odesk to HIRE (AND THUS GENERATE MONEY for odesk) a personal assistant. I also had a developer who wanted to start at odesk and asked to pay him through the platform. No problem, I register the account, and try to post a job (took me 2 days and 2 calls to customer support as the gigg was not generating) anyway after that everything was more or less OK.

I had an add where I was looking for a PA, another job with my developer and a bit later I hired a Social Media assistant.

And then boom. They suspend my account for no reason. "It states contact customer support" the support can not be reached on the phone, ah yes and while SUSPENDED they still took the money out of my account.

So the money is out, job is not done, 3 days for their first response, oh ye they only started acting on the issue once I blocked all money transfers.

So what I have a big "FINANCIAL ACCOUNT SUSPENDED " notice close to my name (while I pay everything, provide all documentation and stuff) for a month. My assistants are not working, job is not done, reputation... And this is going on for 2nd month now.

Thank you odesk for being absolute crap.

I joined ODesk in October seeking work. Only 3 offered to interview me. First interview the contractor took quite a while to answer my requests via chat invite. Second interview bailed out on me, then later request to interview me for a 2nd time. When she sent me an email, she asked that I contact her on a personal site and send her my personal information. I took screenshots and reported her to Odesk... they did nothing. Last interview was a pervert that I sent a voice sample to for customer service job. I took a break from ODesk to return desperately seeking legitimate work... to find no results.

I have no clue why ODesk claims they have US jobs when their contractors only want Indian accent speakers or workers out of the country.

If anyone can suggest another site that actually have contractors seeking virtual assistants, or customer service employees from the US that would be great.

Thanks