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UpworkReviews 2,128

2.8

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Upwork Reviews Summary

Upwork has a rating of 2.8 stars from 2,128 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with Upwork most frequently mention customer service, credit card and job success. Upwork ranks 3rd among Freelancing sites.

service
538
value
521
shipping
285
returns
331
quality
509
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RU
1 review
7 helpful votes
Follow Antonio A.
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This very good portal with a lot of freelancers and employers!
You can find any job in any price. It's difficult for first time, but when you go deep -- it became easier.

Also, they have mobile application for Windows Phone (unofficial) and it was very useful for me.

Best regards,
Find your way to get jobs :)

Date of experience: July 22, 2014
Georgia
1 review
9 helpful votes
Follow rocky b.
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Do not use this company if you pay a freelancer and they do not deliver the product you will not get your money back without going though a ton of red tape and you money is lost. You could lose 10k faster in Vegas with better odds. Stay away. Its a scam...

Date of experience: July 16, 2014
India
1 review
13 helpful votes
Follow vicki v.
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This site spam, so plz don't use that site friends, No 1 cheaters, i have reached $******* But payout button is not visible. Our reply this only

{WELCOME!

After You collected minimum amount '20,000.00$ USD'
You must waiting 30 business days to active payout.
You can buy Premium Membership then You can make payouts without limits:

PerfectMoney - instant activ - cost 199$ USD --
Paypal - within 48 hours activ cost - 220$ USD
AlertPay/Payza - within 48 hours activ cost - 220$ USD

You get great gift's for free with it.
With Premium Membership You can payout all Yours earnings!}

So plz don't any pay oru sites friend

Date of experience: July 3, 2014
Spain
1 review
6 helpful votes
Follow Rosina P.
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My experience is that is a little reputable company that does not comply with the terms of service. I've earned $ 35,000 and paid for a gold membership. It's been at least 20 days and despite numerous complaints that I have presented to them, they only answered twice with the same text, a copy and paste and repeating what they say in terms of services that are precisely what they do not comply.
I'm trying to demand payment via AlertPay and hopefully get it back. That company also had the nerve to ask me the amount of $ 99 plus the $ 220 for upgrade. Something that does not appear on any site in its rules.
It has all the appearance of it is a scam in the making. They are informal and abuse people. Do not know how some people say yes have claimed, if so, why they do not all. I do not get it.

Date of experience: June 28, 2014
South Carolina
1 review
10 helpful votes
Follow Michael G.
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Terrible, I wanted someone to do some marketing for me, he sent me pictures of the Pakistan army with ak-47s and women with plates of money in their hand. I disputed and Elance claimed that I should pay him because he did the work in good faith. I even told him before we started the project that I did not want him to do anything for me and he still did it. He then called me a fraud. Wow, I guess I am naive to the real world for having faith in him. I have recently re-disputed the matter and is currently ongoing. Elance and all of those similar sites are too expensive and you have to compete with people who are willing to work for $5 per hour.

Date of experience: June 16, 2014
Sweden
2 reviews
6 helpful votes
Follow Kiran A.
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I think Elance is very good site to find jobs. It is hard to find jobs since there is lot of competition.

Date of experience: June 12, 2014
California
1 review
8 helpful votes
Follow Dale D.
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I have now spent well over a week in the process of finding a good writer for a $5000+ project, and I found one through Elance. I have absolutely no objection to compensating any intermediary that helped us find a way to work together. But with my brief experience with them there is no way I would enter a business relationship with Elance. After a series of baffling and maddening interactions with them over the past week, and twice waiting 15 to 20 minutes on hold, I now find: In addition to their bizarre "credit card authorization process" (unlike anything anywhere else in the use of a credit card), it is their actual policy to charge an amount to my credit card in excess of what I authorized! They actually think that's OK by condescendingly reassuring me after the fact that there will be a refund "in 10 days or so"! (The California BBB will be fascinated to learn about this, and there may even be a young Assistant DA in or around Mountain View looking for an interesting way to spend a month or two.) I know incompetence, arrogance, and an ethical tin ear when encounter them. When things start out rife with these "little early signs" it never gets better, only worse. I finally did last what I should have done first, which is to look up on the internet whatever reviews from Elance users I could find. Wow! I had to tell of a perfectly good writer I could not proceed, and apologize profusely for wasting his time. Back to Square One, and immensely grateful to be there.

Dale Delmege
760-4154-0128

Date of experience: May 29, 2014
Virginia
2 reviews
7 helpful votes
Follow jeff h.
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You can find some legit gigs on here, but you have to be careful because there are a lot of scams. I've started using prodigitalnetwork.com, which I like because it is solely based out of the US. You don't have to worry about being out bided by someone in a different country, plus it's just a clearer site. Less is more.

Date of experience: May 29, 2014
South Africa
1 review
12 helpful votes
Follow D P.
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I am waiting 2 years for any payouts from Upwork, My earnings standing at $269,920.
I communicated with them nearly every week but they do not even come back to you, stay away!

Dawie Pieterse.

Date of experience: May 27, 2014
India
2 reviews
4 helpful votes
Follow sonu j.
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Its safe working over here. Its much better then freelnacer.com because after project competition there is always a risk that money reversal can happen and because of that we are always at loss, we give all the work to them and in the end money belongs to you which seems unfair. Some change defiantly is required in your policy which is unfair towards freelancer who actually work on it. Because of your policy we have lost around 300$. This thing is never traced on elance. Good site to work :)

Date of experience: April 29, 2014
Poland
1 review
4 helpful votes
Follow Hektor B.
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Paid me!
March 22, 2014

Paid me!

Thx admin for it.
My payment details:

03/22/2014 10:54
From/To Account: U*******
Amount: 2300. 00
Batch: *******

Date of experience: March 22, 2014
New Zealand
2 reviews
6 helpful votes
Follow Rosemarie S.
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I paid to upgrade and never hear back. I made up the ******* but it says I haven't reached the limit. I have sent countless emails but nothing. Waste of my time and money.

Date of experience: March 20, 2014
Oklahoma
3 reviews
30 helpful votes
Follow Susan K.
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I recently reactived a long-dormant account, and now I remember why I never really did any work for them. After going through a lengthy proposal process for a job that pays way less than minimum wage, and then not landing a project, I'm disinclined to waste my time. Clients who want the absolute lowest price And Pulitzer Prize-winning content may need to rethink their priorities.

Date of experience: February 27, 2014
Poland
1 review
4 helpful votes
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Payout done today!
January 31, 2014

Payout done today!
Instant payout from premium area.
I get money with Perfect Money
01/31/2014 08:44
Currency: USD
Batch: *******

Date of experience: January 31, 2014
India
2 reviews
8 helpful votes
Follow Ravindra P.
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Recently my account was closed by elance saying that i am not getting any work from Elance clients recently. I argued with them on how i have qualified for many exams and their criteria of closing an account is just unfair. They need to check various parameters and not just one parameter of how much job someone has gained. Check how they are bidding, how they are interacting with the clients. Do they act professional and do the freelancer give more thoughts on their bids. When i argued with them that they need to re-think on their parameters on which they decide whose accounts should be closed, they simple said they cannot help. I found like i am dealing with some Freelancer.com representative, which i found to be so irrational that it was hard to deal with them.

Their linear way of closing down my account was just so stupid that i could not accept it and here i am to rant on that issue.

I am very disappointed as my profile has 2 client reviews with whom i worked 2 years ago. Simply closing an account without any advance notification that you account will be closed is so so bad. Did not expect this from Elance.

Date of experience: January 29, 2014
New Jersey
1 review
10 helpful votes
Follow Piercie S.
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As a freelancer, I have had no problem with this website before. I see many people complaining about safety concerns, but I've never even thought of relying on Elance to protect me. Elance is simply to get me in touch with prospective clients. You have to make sure to take steps necessary to protect your money and work on your own. They do have some useful services (such as Escrow and WorkView), and while they have their faults, a bit of caution will keep them from being abused. I never send full copies of my work until the Escrow is funded, but I also don't ask for it to be funded until it's completed on my end and give frequent notice of my progress; if your freelancer doesn't do this, then ask for them to do so through the job. If a job is cancelled, I also keep a copy of it and make regular checks (usually once a month) to see if anything I sent has been posted elsewhere; if it is, I just issue a DMCA take-down notice and harass them (without the help of Elance) until they take it down and stop using it online.

Most of the bad experiences listed here spawn from people putting way too much faith in a single website with their money. YOU need to learn to take the initiative necessary to keep your work and money as a freelancer safe. Elance is there to help you meet people and take some simple jobs - not to be your mother.

A lot of people also seem bitter about disputes not being in their favor when they very well should not be. If the client specifies you are to do something or use something specific, if you don't do this and don't warn them beforehand, then of course they're not going to pay you. If a professor tells you to type something and you hand it in written, of course he's just going to put it in the trash can next to his desk. You need to follow the directions of the clients to ensure nothing is against you.

You should also go through the ToS with a fine-tooth comb to avoid having your account closed. "But it should be clearer!" The ToS is fairly clear, but let me guess... you haven't read it? You oughta at least do that if you're putting your time and money into a website for freelancing, whether it's Elance or anything else.

Date of experience: January 28, 2014
India
27 reviews
78 helpful votes
Follow Nishant P.
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This site is a scam. Also working on this site may compromise your websites, hosting. Beware of phishing, virus attacks. Lots of complaints on the internet about elance.com.

Date of experience: January 28, 2014
California
3 reviews
14 helpful votes
Follow Free L.
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Let's see...
January 27, 2014

Let's see... I pay elance.com a monthly fee to apply for jobs, if I want to apply to more than 40 jobs a month... Hmm, I average 30 applications on oDesk to land one gig (now, oDesk was purchased by eLance...)... STOP! Paying a monthly fee as a poor freelancer to apply for jobs that take a % fee that were posted by multibillion $ corporations is just a way wrong business model. Period. STAY AWAY from pay-to-play.

Date of experience: January 25, 2014
Georgia
1 review
7 helpful votes
Follow Joe d.
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Don't waste your time with this. I had 2 "pros" accept my project. The last guy quit. Said it was to hard and had other jobs coming in. I'm very disappointed in eLance. Both said they could knock it out in a few days. The first guy was working on everything I had asked him not to mess with. The second guy kept wanting more money. Then he quit... I've wasted a month with those guys.

Date of experience: January 21, 2014
Japan
1 review
12 helpful votes
Follow Mark W.
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I was a paid eLance member for more than 6 years and then one day I received an email from eLance that they closed my account. It happened to me a few days ago. Elance will not explain *why* the account was closed. The email isn't specific. There was no warning. Elance did not alert me to any problems beforehand, did not give me the chance to correct whatever was wrong. Elance just closed the account.

Six years of membership fees and all the surcharge money eLance received from the jobs that were awarded to me, and then they close accounts without warning and without explanation.

Customer loyalty means nothing to eLance. Stay away from eLance!

Date of experience: December 19, 2013

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