odesk odesk.com, odesk marketplace quality odesk killed the business of its contractor redwood city California

oDesk killed the business of its contractor (part 1)

I have been permanently suspended by oDesk!  I have been a trustworthy provider, who has relatively extensive working history and very good reputation both among the oDesk community and internationally .

However, I was permanently suspended by oDesk!! oDesk suspended my profile, account, job applications, job offers and contracts in order to force me to provide private details including date of birth, photo, address, government issued ID number etc., just to verify my NAME. Odesk simply cut off my livelihood, while I have a family to support.

I feel that this act of oDesk had crossed the line. A provider should also have certain amount of privacy. I asked around, but other buyers and providers did not have to provide with such information! The information they requested from me would endanger me to potential crimes like identity theft, and I am very worried my personal information will be used for illegal purposes. Instead, I suggested to oDesk other means of identity verification like video verification or submitting a credit card, but oDesk simply rejected any goodwill to solve this problem in other ways. I lost all my future income! I have been working hard to build good reputation as a provider, but now I am simply deprived of all my rights to work!

Odesk has also suspended my access to forums, so that they can bury this issue! Because I submitted many tickets to customer support, odesk even blocked me from their customer support! Now odesk permanently suspended me NO MATTER I provide my private details or not.

Some of my clients have contacted odesk in order to testify my reliability, but odesk simply ignored their requests and even compromised one of the buyers' ID. Coincidentally enough, another new provider emerged, using the same name as mine. This fact and others that I came across may imply that these acts are orchestrated by malicious groups that specialize in ID theft inside of the oDesk community.

Long time ago before this incident, my profile was secretly hidden by oDesk from “providers search”, without any warning or notice. I wasn't aware of it until someday a buyer told me he could not find me! These mysterious hidings occurred not only once but several times! Another mysterious incident was that many of my job interview invitations from buyers ended up in archives without any notifications sent to me at either oDesk or my email! Both cases were explained and solved by oDesk as "engineering problems" after I complained many times to oDesk. On the day I was suspended, I could still easily find several users who were using obvious fake names or photos from some famous singer or movie star, but they were still happily working at oDesk!

I have heard of a lot of cases where buyers were scammed by providers at odesk, while odesk did nothing to help . Even several of my friends had very bad experiences at oDesk too! I am an honest and reliable provider and I never scammed anyone, but my account is suspended! This is very unfair!

I filed a complaint at BBB. Since the end of the debate with oDesk at BBB, I have not heard from BBB for more than 20 days, after which I sent BBB specialist Elsie Thomas emails but got no replies. Then I called BBB, but did not get a clear answer for the case until a week later. Before I resorted to BBB, I contacted oDesk CEO, marketing director and press department, by email and phone calls, but was never able to talk to any human!