Am I the only one having complains about this site? No: I personally know many who now Hate this Scam Site.
Few years back, Getafreelancer was one of my favorite freelance site. I used to work there every day for years, but then something happened to their Management: I think site was sold to some other company or the Management was given in hands of another company. Whatever, happened, I do know that the CEO was changed and the new guy is a Thief [his name: Matt Barrie aka Matt the Thief].
As this is a big company, therefore they are using complicated techniques to Rip-Off its users.
I will mentioned at least two Lies of this site:
Freelancer had an Affiliate Program from the very beginning. Years back, All the rules were clearly mentioned and there were no lies.
Then Mr. Matt took over, the first thing he did was that: he changed the rules about affiliate earnings without telling the users:
Instead of giving commissions [commission = a percentage of fee that freelancer.com earned from the users we refer] to affiliate partners for unlimited time period, they decided to limit it to the first 3 months only.
So Am I here just because of this change? No: This is just one issue of many...
I also know that they have the right to change their Affiliate Program rules. That is not the problem...
The problem starts when the Mr. CEO tries to hide this change from its users. He wants users to think that they will be getting the commissions for Ever but in reality, it has been limited to only 3 months.
The main Affiliate Program Page does not mention this change: it says that we will get the commission and it does not mention the real part.
There is a Terms of Service Page: Deep down in this page, they have added one line which mentions this change.
Why have they not mentioned this important part of their affiliate policy in the Main Affiliate Program Page?
Because They are thieves: that is why...
I personally had been sending users to their site for so many years. Everyday, I was sending 120 or so Verified/Registered users to their site via mine. If we talk about the total traffic going to their site, that is much higher.
Everything was ok till when I first noticed a drop in my affiliate earnings. I tried to find the reason but as Freelancer was hiding this info deep inside their TOS page, I failed to find the cause of my earnings drop.
But then later in my earnings dropped to almost Zero.
This is when I contacted the thieves and also tried to find the reason myself too.
Now Here is the most important part:
These thieves replied to me telling me that commissions are now given only for 3 months and this change was implemented in 2009.
But wait: after my earnings did decrease but I was still earning from the old users who I had referred. The thieves said that due to a Bug, I was still getting commissions???
The truth is that: they were giving little bit of the commissions to me so that I do not suspect anything and I fail to find their Big Stupid Change. Why did they worry about me? Because at that time, the total number of verified users in their site in 24 hours was around 1200.in this figure, my site was contributing 120 or so users.
But then in they had developed other Scam techniques. Now their site gets much more traffic: verified users everyday are around 2500 or so. SO now they do not need me or other affiliate partners.
But Wait: Freelancer is still lying. Their Affiliate Page still does not contain the 3 months limit info. They still want users to advertise their sites all over the internet so that they can get their pockets full of money and in return, they want to give nothing.
Why will they not include the 3 months limit info on the main affiliate page?
Because they want to rip-off users more and more.
Also note that: sometime in 2010 or for few days, they did add the 3 months limit rule in the affiliate page: but this info was removed after few days. When I contacted their support, their cleverly sugar coated the situation via saying that they have not made any changes in their program since 2009 and then they removed that 3 months limit part from the affiliate page.
Now if someone from Freelance reads this consumer complaints and decides to prove me wrong, by adding the 3 months limit info in the affiliate program page, this can happen. But for years, they had been hiding it from users:
This is just one scam going on at freelancer: they are using sophisticated techniques to scam users:
Like their CONTEST Sh*t
Thousands of users are working hard to advertise Freelancer all over the world: majority of these users will get NOTHING in the end: by the time they realize what Freelancer is doing, it would be too late. New victims replace the old ones.
They are using different kinds of Contests to scam in different ways.
But what, if we look at the Traffic Stats of all the freelance sites, then Freelancer stands at the Top? How is this possible?
Using their scam techniques, they are using victims to get more the more traffic and earn more for themselves.
But note one thing: the most number of Scam Projects are posted at Freelancer... I had been working there for years, I know what I am talking about.
There are all types of SCAM buyers at Freelancer.
Freelancer Management's obsession about getting more traffic and seeing more projects opened in their site is making this site a garbage freelance site.
For example: if there are 1500 projects opened in one day, then may be 1000 of these projects will never end successfully: some of them will be totally useless projects that are opened by scam buyers. They call them Trial Projects.
Anyway, anyone who wants to join a freelance site: My suggestion is to stay away from Freelancer.com
There are many other Professional sites out there, like Guru.com
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