Saturday, April 2, 2011

Avi Wald - Birthday and Tombstone

Avi Wald has passed away on September 27, 2010 following over two and a half years of battling Glioblastoma Multiform IV (GBM), the most common and violent form of brain cancer. Without him, Colnect would never have existed. You're welcome to read our previous post In Loving Memory of Avi Wald.



Avi Wald was born on the 2nd of April so today would be a good day to publish this post showing his tombstone with marble phone cards. Collecting phone cards and exchanging phone cards with collectors around the world has been a serious hobby for Avi for over a decade. He has always been fair and friendly as many positive ratings on Colnect prove. Avi made numerous friends through this fantastic hobby, some of whom he later met in their countries or his own.



To those of you less proficient in Hebrew the tombstone reads:

Avraham (Avi) Wald
Son of Gershon and Frida RIP
Brother to Raanan RIP

Dedicated to the family and a true friend
Book loving polymath
Honest, modest and loved
Forever carved in our hearts

May he rest in peace and may his legacy linger.

If you have no idea how Avi is connected to Colnect, you're welcome to read our previous post In Loving Memory of Avi Wald.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Tea Bag Catalog Surpassed 10,101 Tea Bags

Colnect's tea bag catalog is quickly growing and has passed an important milestone since our last announcement of its growth. Tea bag collectors can now enjoy a catalog featuring over 10,101 tea bags from 73 countries. Tea bag collectors have developed a significant community on Colnect that can be found nowhere else. Although it's not one of Colnect's biggest categories, it is definitely catching on and there are more tea bag collectors on Colnect to connect and swap with than ever before.



We would like to praise the hard work of our tea bags coordinator, Carine De Pauw, who is doing a fantastic job making our tea bag catalog the best in the world.


If you are a tea bag collector, you're most welcome to sign up to Colnect and upload tea bags from your collection to the site. The current success and future greatness of Colnect rests on the shoulders of devoted volunteers like Carine and YOU.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

oDesk Warning For Employers

Our blog for collectors rarely deals with issues that are not related to collecting and collections, but this is a special case. My apologies to collectors who may find it not interesting.


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.

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