Suryayogi (ranjeetbtp25/Soni Infotech) Suryayogi (ranjeetbtp25) - Scammer. Does not pay freelancers for delivered content. Bharatpur Internet

Suryyogi is an employer and freelancer on the site Freelancer.com. I am also a freelancer there, and I have translated for about four years without complaints on another site. I am a native swede and have had no other complaints ever.

On the 5^th of January, Suryayogi had listed a project about translating for a hair analysis machine. I applied to the project and he contacted me.

The (lack of) Payment

This was my second project on Freelancer. The first one went smoothly and I got paid. However, this one did not go as planned. It was clear that this person could not speak proper English, as he sent the same instructions over and over again and sometimes wrote entire sentences in caps (and he never wrote a single paragraph of text, just scattered sentences that sometimes did not make any sense). However, I have worked with these kinds of people before so I did not think that there would be anything wrong with him.

He also said he would pay through Paypal, which I did not accept as I needed this money to withdraw the money I already had on Freelancer. I also did not want to risk not getting paid, but I guess Freelancer is not capable of stopping that from happening. When I checked the project information, it said something along the lines of “this user is not authorized to pay through our automatic billing system, please discuss this with your employer and come to an agreement”. I did bring this up with him, but he said he was authorized and would pay. As I am new to Freelancer and have never had any problems like this before, I believed him.

He gave me his email address and said to send the final translation to that address. I first said okay, because I didn’t think anymore of it. However, I later changed my mind when I was ready with the translation, and as we were already chatting on Freelancer I sent it to him there. The rest is explained below:

The Document

Suryayogi gave me insufficient information from the start. First he sent me a PDF file, which I could not translate within as it was not open for changes. I then said that I would write my translation in a Word-file and thoroughly indicate which page it was etc. He said that was okay, so I started translating.

A while later he sent me a Word document of the PDF file. There was a mix of large and small letters, and the pictures of the menus for the machine were not visible (as they were in the PDF).  It was very confusing, but I started translating it. During my translation I used the Freelancer desktop app, which tracks the time I spend on the translation so that there is no foul play, as this is an hourly rated project (I charged $7 an hour).

I was done after about two hours, that is $14, and he then sent me an Excel file and said to put the translation in that instead. This means he sent me a total of three different documents, after he had agreed with my suggestion of translation. I informed him that this would add to the sum he would need to pay me as this required more work from me. He agreed. In the end he owed me $28.21 for all the work I had done.

On the 7^th of January I delivered the completely final document. He then informed that he would send this to his client for confirmation. I was not aware of this client, and I was surprised. He then messaged me on the 8^th and said I should wait 5-6 days for confirmation. I then explained that he is my client, and he owes me money for the impeccable work I had done. He answered that he would not pay until his client confirmed that the work was good.

I did not hear from him until on the 14^th, when I had written him messages for three days without any replies. After I had replied to his message, he did not answer me until the 20^th.

On the 21^st he wrote that his client did not approve the translation. I thought this was odd as it was a perfect translation and I had had three other native Swedes read it before I sent it in. I asked these three people to read it again, and I read it again as well to see if I actually had missed anything. I had not. All three of the other Swedes confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the document and it read as an actual Swedish manual would read. I explained this to Suryayogi.

After that he did not answer me until the 23^rd, after a message of calling him out as a scammer. I did this because:

• it is clearly obvious that this person nor his employer can read or understand Swedish
• it is clear that they have not hired a Swedish person to read this text, if they had anyone read it at all
• they have not explained to me what was wrong with the text so that I could change it
• they will not answer my messages
• they will not pay
• some digging by a friend of mine resulted in the finding that Suryayogi has never paid a bill on Freelancer, ever

Since then I have messaged him every day and he has not replied. I have contacted Freelancer support but they seem unwilling or unable to help me.