Freelancer.com Review: A Digital Slave Ship
When I have decided that I want to search for remote work opportunities and perhaps start a freelancing career I came across Freelancer.com and I did not expect what was waiting for me. In summary freelancer.com offers a toxic work environment and does not provide any protection of any kind for the freelancers, instead freelancer.com perceive freelancers as no more than replaceable digital slaves.
1- Minimum price for projects in Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com does not talk much about the minimum price allowed for projects, and that is because in freelancer.com you can post a project for as little as $10 as a fixed price or $2/hour as hourly rate and you can set a maximum budget limit for hourly project as little as $3, still these payments will be subjected to fees by the platform that we will cover later. Now just imagine a platform where hiring a freelancer could be cheaper than buying a cup of coffee in many countries, unfortunately many freelancers will accept these projects to get a 5 starts rating by clients. But does that mean that freelancer.com is good for clients? well, you either get what you pay for or otherwise you have just scammed someone.
2- Milestones Are Not Always Milestones
Projects in freelancer.com consists of ‘milestones’ and these milestones should be agreed upon between both the freelancer and the client, with that said in freelaner.com the ‘client’ can start a project, choose a freelancer, and set a milestone. then suddenly they can simply change their mind and request to cancel the project or demand extra work. in this case it is a lose-lose situation for the freelancer and win-win situation for the client. Such projects will go into one of two directions:
A- Milestones Dispute:
In this case both the client and the freelancer will go to the freelancer.com support team to judge between them, and the freelancer has almost zero chance of winning a dispute. eventually the client gets his money back and perhaps the work that was already delivered then the client can leave a negative review and rating on the freelancer’s profile.
B- Milestones Canceling:
The client will ask the freelancer to cancel the milestone from their side, once that is done freelancer.com allows the client after receiving their money back to either cancel the project all together or to mark the project ‘incomplete’. For incomplete projects, the client has the exclusive right to leave a review at the freelancer’s profile and to leave a rating while the freelancer has no such right. in other words, the freelancer will be under the mercy of the client.
Non Refundable Freelancer.com Fees
In any case the freelancer is obligated to pay freelancer.com a fee/tax even if they haven’t received any payment. These fees are deduced from the freelancer’s account once they agree on a milestone and before the freelancer even got paid.
“The fee for fixed price projects is 10% or $5.00 USD, whichever is greater, and 10% for hourly projects”
.“project fees are non refundable no matter the project´s outcome.”
So, the freelancer will be obligated to pay fee/tax to freelancer.com even if the project is canceled.
Freelancer.com Secure-Payments is a Lie
The only advantage they claim to offer for freelancers and the main reason people would work there is that they provide freelancers with a “secure payments system”. But as I have personally experienced, that is simply a lie. The client can withdraw the money from his/her bank after the work is completed and delivered and freelancer.com will offer no protection whatsoever to the freelancers. When you contact their infamous ‘support’ they will offer giving you a mandatory ‘plus membership’ in exchange of your reversed payment!
Please revise this topic:
How does milestone reversal affect you and this site?
Freelancer.com Customer Support
If, God forbid a freelancer tried to contact the site’s support team then good luck with that, they will simply leave him/her hanging for days then simply reject the support ticket. The freelancer will just lose precious time sending emails back and forth and then gets nothing in return, the freelancer.com support service is simply a scam.
What a Career!
With such systematic and normalized biasing against freelancers There is no wonder that the clients can treat the freelancers with such contempt while feeling immune and protected by freelancer.com policies. You can just search the internet and see how many people are complaining about work conditions for freelancers in freelancer.com, Upwork, and similar platforms, note that I am taking freelancer.com here just as an example because my personal experience was related to that platform.
Conclusion
I understand now that freelancer.com policy is to be completely biased against freelancers and to offer them no rights or protection of any kind, As Uber drivers demand for their rights freelancers should also demand to be treated equally with the so-called clients and to receive a fair treatment and payment but unfortunately, I do not see that happening any time soon. as for me I have taking a decision to quit my freelancing career at freelancer.com as I refuse to be treated as a slave. I may write another blog with more details in what I have encountered in Freelancer.com.
Alternatives to Freelancer.com
As Aman Habib has suggested I find LinkedIn and Reddit great alternatives to Freelancer.com on landing gigs, Many other platforms such as: GitHub, GitLab, Behance and Theme Forest can be used to showcase your work and land gigs. If you have any experiences with these alternatives or others, please, share it with us.
