Freelancer.com Scam  Internet

 “Freelancer founder earns $235 million – while customers of the site are ripped off “

Freelancer, an Australian registered Internet company makes millions while abusing Australian consumer laws. Caution – use this site at your own risk as Freelancer takes no responsibility if you are unfortunate enough to use one of the many contractors that bid for projects on their site. Even when Freelancer become aware that they there is an unscrupulous contractor, they DO NOTHING – allowing them to continually scam unsuspecting users of the site. And to make matters worse – the contractors know this.

Freelancer takes it commission; charges Australians GST for the provision of services; but then takes no responsibility if the services are not delivered – or if you have been scammed.

We recently won a dispute with a Freelancer contractor that was arbitrated by Freelancer. We wanted our money back OR the website that we had paid for up to date and all unreleased funds to be returned.

What did we get? - Nothing - the $1950 that we had already paid to the contractor UKprosolutions was not refunded – neither were we provided the website that they created so that we could then engage someone else to actually build the website that actually required. After four months we have been left with nothing and are out of pocket $1950 plus all the GST paid to Freelancer.

The comment from UKprosolutions was “HaHa - you get nothing” and from Freelancer – absolute silence. Not even a response to our emails.

We have registered a complaint with the NSW Fair Trading as Freelancer is registered in NSW.

As Australians we complain about the lack of laws that prevent overseas web based companies being made accountable to protect Australians - Freelancer is an Australian company and therefore should be accountable to Australian consumer law.

This is Freelancer’s marketing

Hire online for a fraction of the cost!

Freelancer.com is the world's largest outsourcing marketplace, empowering entrepreneurs & small businesses worldwide.

Outsource anything you can think of!

Projects start at $30 and the average job is under $200

Programmers, designers, content writers are ready now!

Only pay freelancers once you are happy with their work

Go their site for more information at www.freelancer.com.au

What happened to us?

The site Freelancer is for contractors to get in contact with prospective clients for work.

This is a great concept but needs to be more regulated by Freelancer otherwise a lot more Australians and people worldwide are going to be ripped off by contractors. This is due to the site being a target of overseas contractors passing themselves as experienced contractors in their chosen fields and misleading people that hire them.

Freelancer has made its founder over $235 million but is not willing to spend any $$$ to protect its users against unscrupulous contractors by not checking the credentials of these contractors in anyway.

When we went on to Freelancer we expected the information on the site to be verified by Freelancer in regards to the claims made by the contractors. In fact, contractors proudly display all these badges that Freelancer grants them for their work.

We found the opposite, we took the testimonials on face value and it was only when we were into our project with UKprosolutions, who we choose to go with based on their testimonials, that we found this out.

1. We attempted to check the supposed testimonials - but no numbers were supplied to phone. Ukprosolutions claimed in their resume that they built Jamie Oliver’s website - we sent an email to Jamie Oliver buy received no reply from them – we should have probably been suspicious at this stage.
2. We skyped UkprosSolutions on a few occasions - they would not go on video only voice. [Reassured us it was only a technical issue]. This should have been another warning to us.
3. The date we awarded them the project [due to what said and testimonials viewed plus  that they had a large office in the UK employing up to 45 designers also that there credentials  would have been checked by Freelancer]   they asked for 50% of the fee upfront and the balance half way through the project. We settled on paying them in three payments 1/3 on start and 1/3 at half way point and 1/3 on completion.
4. From the beginning of the project they struggled to provide what was agreed and what was required – despite them being sent a management report prior to awarding them the project to ensure that they had the resources to do what was required.
5. During the first 6 week of a project that was supposed to be completed in that time, we spent many hours trying to explain what we needed and also sending them emails to show them what was not working.
6. We paid them another $950 in the hope that they would spend more time on our project and getting things right, but it did not make any difference.
7. Then came the stand offs - pay us the full amount or no more work will be done so we put the money in Milestone  on Freelancer as a sign of good intentions -, knowing it was still our money .
8. At this point we knew we were getting no whare as they were saying the project was finalised and for Freelancer to release the milestone payment.
9. At this stage we engaged a web designer here in Perth Web wizards to look over the site and they confirmed that things were nowhere near finished.

We are sending this to you for you to expose the above to the unexpecting people that  might use this site as Freelancer needs to do more to protect its users .We have sent Freelancer emails to address this see all details enclosed only to receive no reply’s.

They have a large legal disclaimer that they hide behind also they have told us on their site it takes up to two weeks for them to refund any of our monies in our accoutn - even the banks aren’t that bad.