Big Warning To Employers on oDesk
The short version: after working with oDesk for 6 months and hiring dozens of contractors and getting perfect feedback from them, oDesk suddenly suspended Colnect's account which had 26 active contracts WITHOUT even providing a reason. It took 5 days and many requests to realize that oDesk did it since bonus payment to one of the contractors was passed using PayPal and not oDesk. As I was unaware of this being a "serious violation" of oDesk's rules, I offered that contractor to get her bonus via oDesk or PayPal and she chose PayPal. About 2 months later, when we ended our contract, she decided to complain on oDesk since she didn't like the feedback she got. So basically, they lost less than $5 commission from that bonus not passing through their system and decided to suspend Colnect's account although thousands of $USD were passed on oDesk and got we got only excellent feedback from contractors.
After their support failed to answer my issues properly, I contacted oDesk's CEO Gary Swart with the story. Finally, after 2.5 weeks, oDesk resumed Colnect's account. They never apologized for the damage they've done to Colnect and 26 active contractors without a good reason and they refused to change their policies or consider any compensation to the contractors they hurt or Colnect.
This is the reason this post has been made - to warn employers relying on oDesk.
Why Should You Be VERY Careful Hiring on oDesk?
- SUSPENSION - oDesk may quickly suspend your account for any violation without consulting you thus rendering ALL your contracts inactive.
- PRIVACY - Much hiring information is publicly available and CANNOT be hidden. For example: every contractor can see how much you paid other contractors at all times and what their job description is. So if you want to raise the hourly salary of a good contractor, you risk losing all others who do similar jobs.
- PAY FOR NOTHING - When hiring people by the hour, it's a big problem if they report work time and have actually done nothing. The screen shots indicate they've done nothing but you're still supposed to spend much time trying to contact them and open a dispute if that fails. Many times, it's not worth your time and people get away with not doing the work they were assigned to do. Contractors may also add "offline time" without your pre-approval which means they can bill you as they like and you have to stay alert to prevent such billing from occurring.
- SPAM APPLICATIONS - Many applications are pure spam applications from people who have never read your posted job description. Many employers thus ask for some feedback in the actual application to know they're dealing with someone who has actually read the description. oDesk doesn't seem to handle these spam reports as I've seen the same contractors applying again and again.
- HIRED BUT NOT WORKING - Too often we've hired contractors for an hourly job and they worked just a bit and then stopped. There's no option to set minimum weekly hours but only maximum weekly hours. This is very problematic if you expect a job to be completed on a specific date.
- HARD TO FIND CONTRACTORS - in the few times I've tried to find contractors rather than wait for them to contact me, I had great difficulties finding the right candidates as many contractors post wrong details so they'd be ranked higher in the search results. Contacting oDesk support on these issues yielded no results.
If you wish to receive more details to make this more public or if you would like to know which alternative Colnect is using, you're welcome to comment here.
since you'd been a contractor for a long time before the issue came up, you were at fault. you were responsible for reading the TOS - not knowing what you did was against oDesk policy is not an excuse. ignorantia juris non excusat. ignorance of the law excuses no one.
ReplyDeletei can't see what's wrong about oDesk suspending your account if you violated the TOS.key word: "violated"
pay for nothing: this is why you can ask your providers to turn on the screenshot feature in oDesk Team.
with offline time, yes, they can add off-line time without pre-approval, but you can dispute it.
While the above anonymous comment seems sponsored in fiercely defending oDesk, I'll relate to it anyway.
ReplyDeleteHow many TOS of websites used is anyone really reading? "Ignorance of the law" - this is ridiculous as oDesk TOS is not a "law" in any sense. They've made a mistake and admitted it by resuming my account but never tried to rectify the damage they've done.
On "pay for nothing" - you're basically repeating what I wrote so my claim still stands: "Contractors may also add "offline time" without your pre-approval which means they can bill you as they like and you have to stay alert to prevent such billing from occurring."
You gotta love 'Anonymous's' reply. Doesn't that stink of "I work for oDesk?"
ReplyDeleteFrom my perspective your experience Colnector, simply highlights the horrendous dishonest nature of oDesk.
The rule of thumb is: Unless oDesk collects a percentage of your transaction, and every transaction, you've violated something somewhere somehow.
These guys are @ssholes to the extreme.
I'm happy to report that they were never able to recover the money from us that they claimed they were going to pursue after we disputed the transaction with VISA twice. They DID however attempt to coerce us by disabling the accounts of any other contractor we had ever used with the intention being that those contractors would in turn harass us to resolve the disputes.
I've been in business a long time, and I've seen some shady operators, but oDesk takes the cake.
The rule of thumb is: Unless oDesk collects a percentage of your transaction, and every transaction, you've violated something somewhere somehow.
ReplyDeleteThese guys are @ssholes to the extreme.
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Excuse me? You think they're assholes for charging for services rendered?
I've used oDesk for the past couple of months, and as an employee, I don't mind it. You complain about contractors also able to add 'offline time', but without oDesk that's how every contract works; you're effectively paying them for the time they say they've done without any verification.
In addition, the screenshot feature stops me doing things I normally do like browse facebook.. no bad thing in my opinion.
The onus, with odesk, is on the employer to monitor the output you get from an employee/contractor. The same as it is when you hire someone on an hourly basis OUTSIDE odesk.
With these sites, why not start them on a simple, 10 hour limit per week job, monitor how well they do with that and gradually expand the time they're allowed to log?
It's certainly the best of these sites i've used, and i've used a few.
I have worked 10 hours for an employer successfully with honestly installed Glassfish successfully and there JAVA environment was not set up. But they are telling me to refund otherwise they will give me bad feedback. How can I get my due amounts? Is there any way that I can't get my due amounts?
ReplyDeleteI have been working in ODESK for two years. I had the unfortunate mishap of complaining to their customer service and their Odesk Marketplace of my recent buyer (also known as my employer) and some of my co-workers making fun of my ethnicity and my being a disabled person other than having a hairlip.
ReplyDeleteIf I could draw your attention to their ODESK Marketplace regulations, it bespeaks of two things: GUARANTEED PROTECTION from work and harassment of any form.
When I complained about the buyer's behavior, what happened was that Customer Service referred my case to their Marketplace and I was asked to submit my evidences from pictures (JPEG/PNG) to chat transcripts of any form if available. I have done all of that.
While awaiting the result of the investigation, WITHOUT WARNING, ODESK SUDDENLY PERMANENTLY SUSPENDED MY ACCOUNT.
I was the victim and the complaining party and this is what they do to complainants.
This horrible story just tells you that ODESK is BIASED if you will complain about American Employers and Filipino Co-Workers. I am a Malasian Christian working from home because of my condition but this does not mean I am not useful nor am I a dependent.
ODESK TOLD ME THAT MY SUSPENSION WAS PERMANENT AND I CANNOT ANYMORE COMPLAIN AND THEY WOULD NOT RESPOND TO MY EMAILS ANYMORE.
They claim to have warned me but there was absolutely none and now my account has been permanently suspended and according to their email, it is their prerogative not to reply inspite of the fact that I have a pending complaint lodged against my buyer.
BEWARE! IF YOU ARE A DISABLED PERSON, NOT AN INDIAN, NOT A FILIPINO, THEN PLEASE DO NOT APPLY AT ODESK.
I HAVE LEARNED THAT THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE ARE MOSTLY FILIPINOS BUT THE WAY THEY SPEAK (NOTWITHSTANDING THE POOR GRAMMAR) COMES WITH A RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION OF SORTS AND IT IS AS IF THEY ARE AMERICANS AS WELL TOTALLY FORGETTING THEIR BEAUTIFUL CULTURE.
A very sad situation that ODESK refuses to rectify.
-ODESK PROVIDER VICTIM-
Message: Don't put too much of your life on ODESK, they will push you on the edge of the cliff whenever they want.
ReplyDeletehahahahaha
ReplyDeleteHI !!!!
ReplyDeleteVery glad to see am not the only one!
I had been on oDesk for almost 1 year and a half!!
I was both a contractor and employer with MORE THAN EXCELLENT feedbacks!
I paid out thousands of cash to my contractors and oDesk made big commissions out of me.
One day some racist contractors all came against me (some Scandinacians) and falsly accused me. I never got why. The other (Spanish, indians etc) who worked on the project never got why they did this. I didn't respond for weeks and stayed calme til the end of the project. I contacted oDesk several times about this issue but they did NOTHING. FINALLY...one of those mean contractors CONTACTED MY CLIENT'S CLIENT (which is forbidden on my NDA and I made all the contractors sing one) to complain that I didn't pay fast enough. If they had looked at my history...I DO PAY. Only this time these people complaining had done some horrible job and we worked endless nights to fix it so payment was delayed and I SPECIFIED that payment would be delayed if there was any problem with the work.
Still those few complainers went to me client client (one of the biggest internet companies)and I don't know how they found out who he was as I never disclosed it, they said that they did a google search with some of the articles that had been published by some others in the team which had been already paid but were still against me.
Long story short I lost that client and a 100,000$ contract.
It was the last straw and I got angry with the contractor and said something rude to which oDesk SUSPENDED MY ACCOUNT FOR GOOD. Had more than 30 contractors under me counting on me for more work that I could have supplied.
Don't go there. Go to Elance. They communicate with you if there are problems and never permanently suspend anything and communicate about problems.
A piece of advice: you'll work really hard to build your ratings and build a company and get it snatched away just like that.
I don't regret getting "angry". It was just too much. Sure I apologized to oDESK a zillion times and regretted the "firm" email I sent but looking back I'm not a doormat and oDesk never did anything. Bear in mind they will use personal emails and skype or anything else to come against you, doesn't even have to be inside the oDesk messaging system.
The spam is ATROCIOUS. Indians, Pakistanis, Algerians and Nigerians in particular (whom I have nothing against) are extremely aggressive, send recycled letters and the men can be very sexist when they know you're a female employer. I"ve had a lot of insulting messages from providers when I didn't hire them. Very rude. Insults like you wouldn't believe.
I AM HAPPY THEY SUSPENDED ME AS ELANCE IS THE BEST!!! ITS EASIER TO USE, FASTER, MORE ANONYMOUS, MORE MATURE and you don't get spam and loads of abusive messages. NEVER HAVE. Both parties can agree to terms and request things so as an employer you don't do all the work and are done at the click of a few buttons.