Freelancer.com
reviews and complaints

Stay away from this scam outfit. First they are not based in australia. They are based in the land of scams... The philippines. All of their personnel are assigned fake western names. When a new provider signs up, they squat on the providers funds for 15 days. And then they play this game where they require you send them picture id, a photograph of you holding a validation number and utility bills and bank statements. They are selling the information people. Don't give it up. If you refuse to send them the information they "require" then they steal your money. They won't refund it. They won't give it to the provider. They steal it. We are out over 1, 000 usd and have had to file credit card chargebacks to get our money back. And we were successful. Us banks hate filipino scammers. Boa is considering putting them on a black list so that no payments will be allowed to clear from boa customers to these "people". They have over 600 complaints here, more than 120 on [redacted], and another 600+ on sitejabber. These people are thieves, scammers, and liars. Stay away from this cesspool. These pieces of garbage have no business being allowed to stay in business.

Out of no where my account was limited and I was required to submit identity documents. That was completed with no problem. On the website it says this is usually resolved within a 48 hour period, and in the email it says within 72 hours. That timing conflict needs to be resolved, but that's another story. During my submission of identity documents I was asked if I knew a particular person. I had to figure out who this person was because the given links did not work. Just so happen I was able to figure out the person because their username is the same as their email address. What's the biggest headache is that this is affecting the projects that I currently have in progress. Two developers I hired had issues with their accounts because of my account being limited, and I have this problem I guess because of someone else. Something needs to be done, because this is crazy. I submitted all required documentation. I felt like a fool taking a picture with my ID in one hand, the printed verification number taped to my chest because I had to use the other hand to snap the image.

Hello, my name is emraan and i have account on freelancer.com with username "rick47khan" and i have done one job with 659 USD for my bloody cheater client john morino (https://www.freelancer.in/u/iqsoftware.html?ref_project_id=8808434) after work done he request for refund of all money and my all money reverse without any notice any permission even without any notification about issue and i dont have any case or issue details yet. so our money is not secure on freelancer.com employer can reverse his money anytime that is the security of freelancer.com VERY POOR SERVICE dont go with this website they are fraud and when you ask for help to there support guy they said we dont have right to tell you what is that, its our policy, you all are fraud and dont have right to do like this. guys dont go with this site you will loose your money there

I have some talk with verification authorities of freelancer. I also successfully verify all documents but they suspend my account .they want me to choose one account but i only have one account which i use. I have $850 in my account with 8 ongoing projects on freelancer and 16 reviews feedback which i earn from my efforts and hasd working please let me know how you want to give me justice. i got the message ‘Your Freelancer.com account has been limited for account security reasons. Until we can verify your identity, we need to limit functionality of your account. You can continue to work and receive payments, but you won’t be able to transfer or withdraw funds.’ I provided them my scanned ID and a photographic proof that I was actually the owner of the ID .they found some other id and they believe that that account was mine but i only have one account! and i also tell they to close the other one if you think it was mine ! but they are saying talk with owner of that account which i dont know ! and they want me to do agreement with that owner accountthat i dont know ... I do not did any mistake according to me... please help me my user name is - ecurser1 mail address associated - [protected]@gmail.com the date you last used my freelancer - today at 1:00 IST

Hi, last time i enter all required information that Freelancer required for Account Completion like Bank statement Copy, NIC Copy, Self Photo and verification code. After success full submitted i received message "we will take 2/3 days for verification" After 2 days (today) i again login with my credential but Login fail and receive message "This account has been closed". I don't know what i will do? i am stuck.

Hello everyone...Same problem for me...I won a contest on Freelancer (30.10.2015-"tuving"employer from Germany), 906 euro, the employer made his payment ( the money gone into my freelancer account and stay there for 3 weeks ) but I can not withdraw on my paypal account because Freelancer blocked them...Freelancer said " employer account issue "- be patient until the problem is solved...and I was...but today my account is 0. The contest was "guaranteed" and this mean employer should pay...but they return the money to the source. My work gone, my time gone, my trust gone, my money gone...Why they did not verify the accounts before?...Why they allowed this?..Why they did not worn about the bad employers?In this moment they erased the employer account on Freelancer and everything is gone. In my opinion, Freelancer stolen my work and my money...or they help to this( all my work was uploaded on freelance site not to the employer, all the correspondence was on Freelancer not on employer e-mail).I think in this situation I am the only one who lose. I demand my money back...or my work back, but nothing... I have no data about the employer (everything remain to Freelancer), so I have no way to contact the employer...The employer take my work and I signed for the author rights because the money was in my account but few days later he received the money too...(Is this right or legal?)

Freelancer.com : This is all about freelancer.com they are really fraud guys I have lost a lots of dollars their. I work for a client in 3 projects.I have completed his work after some time I saw that all money reverse back for a project without any notice, I raise ticket for this they said that this is "Chargebacks" employer roll back money from his credit card and we refund him.My client didn't fill any chargeback, he give me the money via paypal for the first project. After 2-3 days, another chargeback related to these client. Isn't logical to fill a chargeback and then send the money to me using paypal . My client say the truth, freelancer.com lie and my account in -XXX $. I just close my account and hope they will don't do anything related to these. If they do something I will hire an lawyer. FREELANCER = SCAM SITE

Hello, I'm writing here because I had terrible experience with Freelancer.com It letterly stole my money, I get a job with 1250eur the first thing they did is deducting 125eur project fees after finishing the first milestone with 650eur the employer deleted the project two days latery my funds are gone! I contacted them and they said the employer account suspended. Now I loosed my money and paid a fee for that! Why they didn't verify users and payments? Why should I handle the fees of their bad system?

October 13, 2015 ticket = nfj-[protected] joined for the 1st time, wanted to simply see what it's all about. 1st impression was.. hey, you can get anything done without risk using our milestone deposit and get the money back if you decide not to hire the freelancer. = you made a hire me offer to xxxxxxxx but they are unable to accept your project: = oh they are slick, tried to withdraw funds of $150 and to cancel the project as a $5 fee. ok, so I loose $5 and get my $145 back - right? please verify your account, your 77% done. already had my cc verified and they wanted paypal and more.. I canceled the cc verification, reported the fraud to my cc and bank. nothing from them too, except they offered to send new cc card. interesting enough I checked my bank and no withdraw. I filed the ticket and guess what? no reply, but they tapped my bank for $153 so they can't count either. = thanks for getting in touch. just letting you know we have received your inquiry and our support team will get back to you in a few days. for your reference, here are the details of your ticket: ticket id: nfj-[protected] subject: withdraw funds department: general status: open = they are in australia - maybe, who knows the truth. stay away from them.. far away. you get what you pay for and in my case I ordered nothing and loss $153

I am not someone who like to post reviews around, but freelancer.com did something that really upset me. I signed up with freelancer.com long ago, back when they were still getafreelancer.com. For years things had been great, I am an employer who used the website to connect with freelancers. I had a 5-star profile, that is, all freelancers who worked with me in the past gave high remarks. I never leave anyone unpaid, whether the projects turn out to be good or bad. It all started few months ago when I uploaded some funds to my account (via credit card), freelancer.com payment system charged me several times for that one deposit. I contacted their support and they keep escalating the issues without giving me a proper response. It seems like they are just not interested to solve it. After a while I got fed up with them and went to my bank to reverse the transactions. I thought it all worked out. It is common sense that if I made a deposit of $30, and you ridiculously charged me several times up to $150, I would had to reverse the $120 transaction. But freelancer.com doesn't think so. Once the bank made the chargebacks they limit my account and asked me for verification (i.e. sending personal documents). I told them it wasn't my fault that they made several unauthorized charges on my card and the bank reversed the transactions for me. With an experience like that, can I still trust them with my personal info? Their accountants or finance staff should liaise with me when I first contacted them, but no, I didn't receive any helpful response.I suggest they run through their accounting statement, by which they would find they had charged me for the same thing multiple times. But no, they refused to hear what I have to say, and they soon suspended my account, that means taking all the remaining money in it. It doesn't matter that you took my money, I will forget it in a while. But I will post reviews on here and other websites so everyone can read it for a long time. If your company's credibility is affected, it is karma for what you did. I had been a good customer and never cause any problems for you all these years but then you brought this on me. Today you lost me forever, keep doing such business practices and tomorrow you may lose everyone else. To everyone reading this, I do not recommend you use freelancer.com, they used to be good but this is no longer the case. Nowadays there are so many issues of financial dishonesty towards their users. Yes they may be a public listed company, but that doesn't matter if on the ground they treat people like you and me badly, and that somehow our money in their system may 'disappear'. Stay away, there are many better alternatives to go for.

Freelancer.com :

This is all about freelancer.com they are really fraud guys i have lost a lots of dollars their.

I work for a client for 20 EURO i have completed his work after some time i saw that all money reverse back without any notice, i raise ticket for this they said that this is "Chargebacks" employer roll back money from his credit card and we rufund him.

## what is this means first freelancer.com deduct his fee then after project completed employer took all money without any dispute file.
in this way we freelancers who work hard and hard can never earn, but inspite of earning we loss our more money in paying fee to freelance.com .

2) They forcily charge me for membership that i told them not to continue.

3) They charge fee for every project but they dont care that employer is paying or not.

The summary is they are fraud and having all fraud policies and all the terms are there to hard hard working freelancers only.

I want to claim on these guys, please help me out.

- Freelancer.com - the BIG SCAM - This video shows how Freelancer.com will smoke away your money - be careful with this site -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eESrvA6daG8

i will try to explain briefly what happened to me, and 3 simple reasons why freelancer is scam

what happened to me was that my account was in good standing, i had 13 projects with different clients and my rating was 5 stars, i didn't do anything wrong, i didn't breach any freelancer policy in any way, but one of my previous clients did, i don't know what he did, but his account was closed, and Freelancer ended up taking all the money i eraned from that client, they waited till i got paid for a different work to take away my money, the total amount the closed account client paid me, it was $220 USD this money was gone

do you think that's fair?
even if did nothing wrong

even if Freelancer manage to get that money back to the client, which is stupid and unfair for freelancers, THE REAL SCAM IS Freelancer already took 15% of that transactions, in the fees, that's 22 dollars, for a total of $242 USD plus the 5% of the client, i guess Freelancer make a lot of money that way that's reason #1 freelancer is a scam,

then what happens if Freelancer cant return the money to the client, do they give it to charity? i am pretty sure they may keep it

#2 tons of stories you can read on the web of people getting their accounts closed without notice, accounts even with thousands of dollars, all that money gone, their account verification is extremely hard to pass, and this triggers after you have serious cash from a recent payment

#3 Freelancer claims to have almost 17 million users now, but with only 13 works i was rated 3681, even after months of not using the account i was rated on the top 5000, this means most of the accounts are from people that already left, or fake accounts do to freelancer being extremely flexible with scammers.
its insane, if i was rated in the top 3000 people, this means all the other accounts are just pure smokescreen, or people that leave very fast, that's really weird

they are also well know for manipulating currency conversion rates, and unexpected credit card charges, cause they force you to keep your card attached to have the verified payment method badge.

Be Really careful, use legit freelance marketplaces and stay away from !%#!@#$! Freelancer.com

Dear Sir/Madam,

We would like to file an official complaint against the following organisation:

Freelancer Limited
Registered office
Level 20, World Square
680 George Street
Sydney, New South Wales
Australia 2000
ACN [protected]
[protected]@freelancer.com

We paid money to them for a project but required the work to be done speedily. They failed to deliver in time and the people who were going to carry out the project also failed to communicate anything with us. This is why we eventually decided to request a refund of the money that was paid to Freelancer.

Their Terms and Conditions are published here https://www.freelancer.com/about/terms. We believe we have complied with all these conditions. They simply will not reply to any of our messages either via their website or email.

The amount we paid and which we ask to recover is USD113.85. We have initiated a request for a chargeback through our bank also.

I would be grateful if you could advise what recourse we have in Australia against this company and what kind of support and advice your organisation is able to provide us with.

Thanking you and looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Mike Acourt,
Dynasoft Ltd

My account also has been closed with $1900 USD worth of milestones from our clients.

Plus $500 worth of withdrawable funds... they closed our account without notifying us the reasons why.

this happened twice already. at first they froze $300 worth or funds from us, their reason is because, we are not verified. after we verified the account still our money was still frozen...

Now the second time, they scammed us again... I talked with the customer support but they said to make a ticket. I can't make a ticket since my account was closed.

We lost all our money, We lost all our clients, We lost our business, and we lost our means of earning for a living. Regretfully, Freelancer.com indeed changed our lives. for the worst...

For all freelancers out there. Be careful with your money... Don't use freelancer.com.. they are scammers.

I am a freelancer member since 2004(not here, on rentacoder/vworker). I have lots of reviews. Yet, my bid on the project shows me having 0 reviews and new member, placing my bid the last. This was a sure bid, I asked less than most(who asked too much for something simple) and I had by far the most ratings. Now, instead of waiting for the email telling me the client accepted my bid I can go watch Aston Villa - Man United and have some beers in peace...because my bid is gone.
I was a top rater on vworker.com. The site was bought by freelancer.com. So, I got from unlimited bids, no extra payments for anything(no cash2win or cash2earn), top 300 or 200 on a 300k users website(but active, not robots) with chances to work anytime I want, because I could bid to several projects at the same time -> to new member on a website with millions of members where I can bid 10 times per month, so virtually 0 chances to work. When I gave up my job and refused many others since I was counting on much better chances.
Not only that, they also removed me from the public directory because either they don't like my profile picture(same as fb, linkedin, skype, etc) or I didn't wanna play the monkey trick when they asked me to rerererevalidate my account and take a picture with my ID or driver license(the same one that me and some cops put our dirty hands on).
I don't think it's a fair thing to buy all the competition than do this...the websites they bought cared about their freelancers, because their only warning were the project fees, now with millions of users with very small chances to catch a project, the chances for them to pay to increase chances are high, giving them enough earnings not to care much about the project fees(which here you have to pay first, so you have to have money to be able to make some, sounds familiar), fees that are NON refundable, you pay the project fee they say so they will put you in touch with the client and that's all, they don't guarantee your earnings, like the websites they bought did, so you pay the fee and the client never responds, never pays. For me that's chance, you don't know the client, you can't be 100% that someone you chatted with about a project is serious.

Thank you

An employer made a payment of around $430. But the payment was reversed after a couple of hours. The project was closed and also the employer's account. I contacted the support line, but they are refusing to refund me the payment. The website is a cheat. Big Scam.

As I read about the so many complaints of people who had lost their earnings from using freelancer.com, I feel relieved and feel lucky because compared to most of them I didn't lost so much, just a significant amount of time and a few $ anyways i was hired for project.. i was not able to do what the employer said it was diffrent then he thought he asked for my modeling pictures for ad design but i was not a model i was a designer i refused he cancled the order then he deleted i did not got my project fee refund it was 500$ project and now i am in minus balance i made so many support tickets on freelancer no one responded they early said you will be taken to tier 2 ticket :#ULA-[protected] username : tanyawebdesinger project "add making" (ID: 8040838) with employer "saravanan3434." project fee refund request

Hello Complaint Board,

Since my account suspended due to some reasons. I just submit the ticket the first email was responded about 7 days and again when reply since I'm waiting 6 days they are not replying me
or giving me the reason. They just told due to some employer complain but where is the name of employer. The account was Limited Before but about an hour it got suspended all the clients are in skype list and I asked them that did you complained about me they said no then why the hell freelancer
in putting me in trouble with out any reason. Freelancer always have scams like reversal extra why they don't solve that matter instead of making fake money and putting person in trouble I do have proof for all. No 1 : Freelancer TIER-2 Department is the slowest service I have ever seen in my life
No 2 : They try to take money for the freelancer account to grow their market shares
No 3 : They don't let us know that account will be closed if you did this mistake again.
No 4 : Please check the proof attached below
No 5 : Account verification was giving error due to I can't login and they where asking for login

They play a game after suspending the account they give us the link to upload the document where they ask login and when you login you are shifted to suspended page if the person can't verify the document so how can they solve it. they play game like this please check the guys support me need your support.

Firstly:I recently did a project for the value of R444.00 for a client on Freelancer.com. After completing the the project the client released the milestone payment and my account was credited accordingly. The client then requested additional work and by mistake indicated the Budget amount as $150.00 instead of $15.00. Freelancer.com immediately deducted their 10% project fee ($15.00) from my Freelancer account, which I consider premature, unethical and unprofessional conduct as I haven't even started with the additional work, no milestone payment was yet in place and definitely no payment.
The premature deduction of the project fee for the additional work resulted that I do not have enough money in my Freelancer.com account to make a withdraw as there has to be a minimum of $30.00 in my account before I can make a withdraw.
Prematurely deducting project fees purely based on that the freelancer (me) simply accepted a project and before the client could even make a milestone payment and or a final payment, this action is a reflection of greediness on the part of Freelancer.com.

Secondly: Out of pure frustration I provided the client with my e-mail address. Since then the client cancelled the additional work / project. I then requested a refund of the project fee taken from my account. I suddenly received a formal warning that I violated their T & C's by providing my client with my e-mail address. I do not dispute this and I accept the formal warning. Here is the cherry on the cake, I received an e-mail from a person only known as Liz, informing me that I will not be refunded as Freelancer.com took the money as a penalty for violating their T & C"s. There were no mentioned made in the formal warning of any financial penalties. I never heard of a warning and a financial penalty been issued simultaneously for a first violation, how was the penalty amount calculated?