[lsmod]

Stay away from Freelancer.com

They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other.

I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they suddenly reversed both payments at the end of the last month.

They should validate/verify payments before accepting/processing them, not after a month after completing a project.

Basically, i just did a job for free. no one's going to pay for my time. they have 0 seller protection.

BTW, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect.

[0]https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png

[_wmd]

Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that would be worth you time.

In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt to you.

[vidarh]

Norwegian bankruptcy law also used to (probably still is, but I haven't worked in Norway for nearly 20 years) have a similar system where employees had that kind of protection at no cost for non-payment of wages.

All you need to do is to file and the company would need to show up in bankruptcy court and explain why they should be put under administration (and really the only valid reasons would be that they don't owe wages (any more)).

Very effective at ensuring companies protect wage payments - I repeatedly had it drilled into me from accountants when on the other side of the table how vital it was to ensure salaries payments went ahead no matter what other difficulties (the priority order was roughly taxes that it'd be an offense not to ring-fence, electricity/phone/internet because they could just shut down and wipe you out, and salaries - everything else was lower priority because it could be fought or negotiated over).

If you'd miss salary payments you had no recourse other than to beg and/or borrow or come to an understanding with employees.

The one thing giving you some flexibility was a government insurance pool for salary payments that'd cover up to 6 months, so if you treated people nice they'd be willing to give you some grace knowing their salaries would eventually get paid (though claiming back takes time).

It's a very useful way of leveling power in cases where managers might otherwise see employees as the easiest to push around.

[walshemj]

the op isn't an "employee" in this case probably not even a "worker"

[vidarh]

The point was not that it's exactly the same - I was responding to the comment above, not to the article.

But even so in many countries there is the concept of "deemed employment" that may or may not give rise to employment rights. Basically: if it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it may very well legally be a duck.

[literallycancer]

They presumably still have a contract where he does work for compensation.

[hedora]

I found their EULA, and it has some crazy stuff in it. For instance, they can terminate your account becase:

... 8) to manage any risk of loss to us, a User, or any other person; or

9) for other reasons.

And if they terminate the account they can keep all the money they owe you. Also, it claims contractor aren’t their employees. Instead they are “unsecured creditors”.

There’s also a bunch of stuff about how they can pass chargebacks through to sellers, and if you already withdrew the money, you have to deposit it back into your account.

It looks like the business model is to force skilled laborers to work under pseudonyms so that Freelancer has complete ownership of the contractor’s reputation and professional credentials. I’m shocked that this is a thing!

The Eula claims on one hand that they’re not a party to the contracts, but they go to great lengths to make sure the contractor and the employee don’t share their real world identities with each other (they even audit the contents of the files produced as part of the job, eavesdrop on audio/video/text chat/emails/etc).

I think this forces them to become a payment intermediary, which means they do have to deal with lots of thorny issues.

Welcome to the sharing economy, I guess.

Link: https://www.freelancer.com/info/plainterms.html

[xelxebar]

IANAL, but as far as I understand EULA don't have the last say on things like this. The courts decide if the terms are reasonable.

Apparently, there is no repercussion for putting non-enforcable conditions in an EULA, so companies are encouraged to throw as much self-serving protection language in there as possible in the off chance that it will stick.

[hedora]

I believe that is correct (I am also not a lawyer).

They are international, so I wonder if they can venue shop to some country where this is enforceable and first world courts don’t have much influence.

[fblp]

Freelancer is publicly listed on the Australian stock exhchange and they have a head office there. Hopefully the public attention this story is getting will push them to change and seek resolution with this person. But the Australian legal system would also be an option if the contract has been breached.

[twic]

A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon after that.

[TomMarius]

Can you share more? Sounds interesting, especially as I'm reading your comment inside a Tesco store.

[sgt101]

In big companies there are often things like this, if you have 5K people working in finance or procurement and 1 in 100.. and you run it for 10 years... well you can see where this goes with the tail cases. Things like the person handling the case has a break down, or someone didn't put a transaction lock in the workflow, or two accounts got set up because there was a delay and someone helpfully restarted the set up process.

[twic]

Not much, i'm afraid - i can't even remember who it was, it was a tale told in a pub, i think. They'd done some work for Tesco, sent an invoice, Tesco messed them around trying not to pay it, so they brought a case in court, Tesco didn't bother sending anyone to contest it, and this person got the winding-up order. When that is issued, official letters go to the directors, and apparently that got their attention.

[aidos]

I've twice been involved in sending winding-up orders, or at least sending a letter before action to say that a winding-up order comes next. They're an effective and cheap tool in the U.K. to shake dishonest companies looking to avoid/delay paying their bills.

[az123zaz]

I would love to know more details as well. I have a UK based client that has gone silent with significant unpaid invoices. Can you share details of how to file such an action?

[lsmod]

Thanks for the reply.

They have a registered office located in Australia.

It was a relatively easy job (took me about an hour and a half) and I only charge $75. So, not sure if it'll be worth the hassle.

[ensignavenger]

It may not be worth the hassle directly, but please consider the impact on the economy and society overall in your decision. Jerks like that do things like that because they get away with it.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

From my experience: First, set a date by email when you expect payment, if that doesn't happen, send registered mail to their office demanding in no unclear terms that they pay what they owe you plus the postage for the registered mail. Payment was prompt.

Oh, and don't do business with them.

[lsmod]

Thanks for the reply. I might give this a try.

[cgb223]

You should sue them

They owe you money, they didn’t pay. A lawyer would love this case

[joering2]

Sorry to hear you worked for free; noone likes that. I feel for you and had much more problems with freelancer than with upwork.

Anyways, depending of how much money they kept from you, you might want to seek a lawyer help or see if Australian Division of preventing Cyber Fraud will be willing to look into it. Freelancer is trading on the Australian Securities and is not some pops&moms Nigerian LTD corp.

Good luck to you.

[omegote]

I think Upwork is a little more protective in that aspect. You can clearly see from the beginning whether the client has a verified payment method.

[shock]

I didn't find Upwork's contract without signing up, but before Elance merged with oDesk to become Upwork they had pretty onerous terms in their services agreement⁰:

9.Indemnification Contractor will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Client against any damage, cost, loss or expense arising from a claim, suit or proceeding brought against Client (i) alleging that any Work Product infringes upon any Intellectual Property Rights, (ii) alleging that any Work Product misappropriates any trade secrets, of any third party, or (iii) arising from Contractor's breach of the terms of this Agreement.

I read that to mean that if a client I did work for is sued for IP infringement, even if no IP infringement occurs, I need to pay for the client's defense out of my own pocket.

⓪ - https://www.elance.com/p/legal/independent-contractor-servic...

[everdev]

Not a lawyer, but I think you're correct. I wouldn't sign this.

(iii) puts the burden on the client to prove that you breached the contract. So, that clause is reasonable even if it is burdensome.

For, (i) and (ii) the word "alleging" is problematic for me. Anyone can sue you alleging anything. Yes, you can recover court costs and lawyer fees if you win, but most patent trolls try to out-expense you and figure you'll settle at some point.

Either way, always do work and sign contracts as a legal entity, not an individual. Much better to lose your company than lose your house.

More detail: https://www.shouldisign.com/what-is-indemnification

[jtmb]

Thanks for this domain, very helpful.

[HaoZeke]

UpWork is completely biased towards their work force. They treat freelancers like shit and the client is always right. The rating system makes it impossible to have any benefit from conflict resolution.

Then again some of the people hiring there are really professional.

I was scammed by some guy who gave me a 1 star for overworking me and exploiting me, in spite of showing evidence that his work was completed (and much more) his rating was not even exempted from my total.

Suffice to say it makes it hard to work. Luckily it was my 6th job and I had other 5 stars.....

[paulie_a]

So basically they are paypal and ebay combined in business model and should have equally crappy reputations?

[muddi900]

And Amazon. And every other company that is dependent on the faith people put in their arbitrary ratings. I think we are near critical mass of people realizing that online reviews are bullshit.

[lsmod]

Same with Freelancer.com, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect.

[0]https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png

[anonymous5133]

Probably used fake credit card numbers or something. That's why these freelancing sites should always use cryptocurrency where the transaction can never be reversed.

[emotf]

Ismod, sorry to hear of your experience - but I have to say that your story is not the first I have heard.

Reading this thread and many others like it over the last years I have experienced the rise and decline of the marketplace platforms but I think I have the answer.

First I'll give you some background: I have been working with remote developers since before 2003 paying our first Russian developer using Western Union transfers via the post office. We have used and (mostly) enjoyed at different times freelancer sites like rent-a-coder, odesk, elance, over the years. Upwork upset a lot of people early last year when they killed off our beloved Elance and raised their fees, then started charging hirers as well. At this time I began to question what I was actually using these platforms for? I had over 20 developers all around the world, although I had originally sourced some developers on elance, I sourced most myself from AngelList jobs, LinkedIn, Facebook groups and other channels. I had been onboarding them on Upwork (and copping the increased rate!) so I could have all the jobs in one place and to simply pay them automatically. I liked the tracking features: as although I had huge chunks of money coming out my account each week, it gave peace of mind as at least my developers knew I could dispute charges if they spent too many hours on Facebook ;) Apart from fees I found the attempts to keep users on the platform annoying and childish. I just wanted to work with my devs on Skype, Slack, email not in their broken site (which was often down at in opportune times).

This got me thinking that the whole process around marketplaces was overdue for disruption. It served us well; however, as many of you pointed out you shouldn’t rely solely on these platforms.

So if you found a job yourself, you don’t need the marketplaces, plus you should be able to create the job yourself instead of waiting for your client.

And it came to me. Instead of marketplaces, we need a direct peer-to-peer platform to simply create a smart contact, with payment and send to the other party. Get all the security of a marketplace: i.e. escrow, tracking, proof of work but without the marketplace fees. This thread is timely as it explains the pain we are solving at http://payninja.co. We are in beta and rolling out new features over the coming weeks: cryptocurrency payments mean you will be able to pay or be paid anywhere in the world. Talking to developers in all counties we are getting excellent feedback, we are seeing that the unbundling of marketplaces back to realworld interactions is the way forward.

Just to clarify, in relation to your particular case, as we are not a marketplace the sources of trust are real, meaning: who referred the client to you, their LinkedIn profile or social network/community where you met them (as opposed to a subjective rating). You would be protected by secured funds in escrow managed for auto release by smart contract. The client would not be hidden behind an anonymous pseudonym that can vanish from the platform without warning and if they did vanish from the internet!.. the funds would be in your account. I hope this gives hope to anyone frustrated with the current state of the freelancing landscape.

[gitanovic]

this to mefeels like an unpaid advertisement from freelance.com

reason being that the report feels bogus, and is posted were lots of skilled labor can be found

[lsmod]

This is a legitimate claim. You might wanna take a look at this[0]. I've blocked out the project title and the buyer's name, becasue i don't want my real name associate with my HN handle.

Dark Red: Buyer's Name

Turquoise: Project Title

[0]https://i.imgur.com/LpTYbse.jpg

P.S.

Not sure how you got the "unpaid advertisement" idea from my original comment. That is a complete opposite of an advertisement. However, it advertises the fact that you can get work done for free. Maybe that's what you are trying to say :)