Elance.com, Great Concept, Terrible Experience
Call me lucky I guess, my record is 0-2 when playing the Elance.com project game. My very first project was blown up because the provider was an individual who encountered personal issues and had to stop midway through the process. Can’t tell you how frustrating it is to expect a deliverable from a provider and get nothing.
The worst part The worst part about not getting anything is the constant nagging you have to do to find out that you’re not going to anything.Constant streams of messages on what’s going on, how are you doing, what’s happening, how’s the weather. Nothing, no response, it is freaking annoying!
Okay,Now it’s time for round two because I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. This time around, I really deserve the Elance.com Idiot award because I was dumb enough to put a deposit down on the project. I guess I’m just naïve. I assume that people who go through all the trouble, to create a profile, get (or forge) positive comments and post examples of the work they’ve done, might actually do the work. It seems to me like these folks have put fourth enough effort that they might consider doing the job? Hell, after all that effort why not sub-contract?
The real icing on the cakeThe real icing on the cake is the painfully ineffective dispute process ! There’s just no chance your going to see any kind of real justice. Forget the freaking money! Ban these idiots from your service. Okay, don’t forget the money, get me my money back too. In fact, you (Elance.com) should be begging to pay it back to me because instead of ever using your service again, I’m going to broadcast how terrible the services is and tell everyone on the Internet to run like hell.
The dispute process sucks! You have to demonstrate, via the Private message board (PMB), that you’ve tried to communicate with the provider. Then you need to fill out a dispute resolution form that you then upload to the PMB. After the dispute form as been uploaded, you must wait 10 days (for elance.com to gain interest on your money). Then after that, the whole thing has to go to arbitration. I haven’t made it that far so I don’t know how painful that will be. Based on my experience so far, I imagine that it will be about as smooth as graded blacktop against my bare butt.
Odesk.com as an alternativeIf you are reading this article and you’ve had an experience similar to mine I BEG YOU to stumble, digg, or do whatever is necessary to get the word out .Also, I recommend that you look at Odesk.com as an alternative to elance.com. I signed up as a provider to seewhat type of screening process and requirements they would run. It’s a well thought out and thorough system. The Odesk system takes screenshots while the provider is working and provides a measurement and timing mechanism that makes it impossible for someone to charge you for more than the actual time worked.
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Comments
Yeah. I agree. it’s scary.. though I haven’t signed up as a provider at Elance or ODesk.
I think I have a new way that takes away the risk. You get to see and use your app the next day. and then request modifications right in place. This is it http://www.overnightapps.com. I’d love it if you could review it.
Hello,
I have joined http://www.savvylance.com and got paid, although i want reviews about the site any one can review it. it takes $5 or 5% whichever higher
Also it is much easier to find good providers in oDesk since oDesk shows you how many hours each have worked and what they were paid in the past. I’m a provider there for two years now and before that i was a provider on rent a coder which was a mess for both buyers and providers.
This new, kinda web 2.0 like platform is way better and very easy to use (compared to elance or guru):
http://www.jobloha.com
Elance – agreed, a great concept but it does leave much room for improvement.
My experience: Awarded a smallish project ($4000) for creation of a dynamic website, to be built in 4-weeks. I work in IT, as a project manager, so when the provider told me that he was delayed on another project I had some sympathy. After a month, still no work had been done and when I told the provider of my irritation, they said that they couldn’t work with someone as unreasonable as me! I had paid an initial award amount ($800) which they said they would not be able to refund due to work they had already done … but couldn’t demonstrate, offering $200 to settle with me.
I went to Elance for dispute resolution – as I had used their escrow protection process. However, because the situation had taken over a month to get to this point, they told me they couldn’t do anything and suggested I take the $200!
So, almost a month and a half lost now and no project and $800 down I am going via my Visa company to claim the money back from Elance. I will leave Elance to claim the money back from the provider as they are so awful at helping me out it will be interested to see how involved they get in dealing with the loss themselves.
Hello all,
My sympathies with all those who have had problems with elance. My experience has been entirely different recently (although I had tried elance in 2000/2001 and was sorely disappointed).
I have posted and awarded 8 projects in areas such as logo design, Internet research, data entry, executive assistant, remote bookkeepting, website development and usecase development and in all cases except one I have been very happy (and sometimes wildly happy:) with the quality of work and the value for money that I have received.
I have awarded a few projects in odesk as well – however, I am less comfortable with it because you have less control over your total project costs.
In elance, which are primarily fixed price projects, risk of underestimation is borne by the provider whereas in odesk, with hourly rates, the risk is borne by the buyer.
Just wanted to share my experiences.
Sudip
aha, maybe this is advertisement for oDesk? why you recommend anything when you criticize something? automatically you make your critics invalid. beside it, oDesk and Elance are good for employers who wants to misuse global market to give a lot of job for poor people and to pay 5x less money.
solution: don’t try to keep money for yourself, don’t misuse global job market, and you will find gooooood worker. you made a hole in front of yourself and you felt inside. I saw many employers who gives 7 things to do, for 200 dollars, but such work would cost him in western countries more than 2000 dollars. so: fall down in your hole, and cry.
I have had the same problem as Neil. I first tried oDesk.com and got burned for $700 but the development was done on my server, which I had control. After three months on no work, I cancel the project. Then I learned about Elance.com and figure it was different but this time allow the development to be done on there server. After weeks of delay and no deliverables, I stopped payments at which point I requested what I paid for. The vendor would not turn over the code unless I paid the remaining amount. I ask Elance for assistant and was denied because I didn’t use there escrow service. Now, I have nothing and I am out of $1,750. I don’t believe I will use any foreign companies any more, especially if it is from India. They are thiefs.
I got same bad experience on elance.com I was a buyer placing a SNS job. Awarded an Indian group called Agile Technosys. They agreed to complete my job for $2000 within 2 months. But after 2 months, they were still working with only low works, it was very far behind the schedule. They said it was due to my frequent changes, actually I changes things because of their poor work performances. Later, they requested $400 more to complete the job due to my additional works, I didn’t add anymore those works were included in the job. More, they requested me to rate them full marks in order to agree to build a main function for my site as this function is difficult to be completed, I rated because I had already paid $1600 and I didn’t want my job any further delayed, just wanted the job to be done ASAP. Lastly, 6 months later since the beginning, they said they completed the job, but in my view, the jobs were full of bugs & some main functions were not working. I didn’t want them to work on job anymore, I checked their works on my server, then I changed the password of my server. After that, I found my site was unable to be online, was it a big bug or their cheat? I didn’t know, I am not an IT professional. I requested them to fix it, but they told me to pay the rest in order to fix it, but how could I need to pay the rest? because they didn’t complete my job fully yet…Very ass hole… lastly I paid them the rest, but the header of them reqested me an additional $400 for fixing it!??? It shocked me!! After dispute with them & days gone, they fixed it, then I received no more contact from them, my job was not done completely & still bugs, a lot was left… :<
I burnt $2400 to learn an experience : Don’t hire Indian guys they just love your money, they are thefts!
I had a really lousy experience with GetAFreelancer. I put out a contract for someone to do an image map of all the countries– I supplied a list of countries, I supplied a blank map without names, a map with names for reference and I said that small countries (eg. Luxembourg) didn’t need to be mapped. When they got through half of the countries, they said they had no more room for countries. So countries like Nigeria and Vietnam were unfindable by them.
It moved me to make up a new site: http://www.someexperiencerequired.com – the idea is that people can gain experience that they reference in bids on these sites before they go looking for paying work. I’ve done charity work in the past; and I’ve done work for a share of the profits should it take off. Some Experience Required is an orderly way to do that.
I’m the biggest idiot out there! I am just closing out my FOURTH project that once again did not come to term! You don’t understand; I am practically begging to the providers to reply, to do their job, to answer my questions… WTF?!?!?
I will NEVER hire overseas again! And in reply to “Western”, Go “F” yourself. It’s a bid. If they want to be paid more, they should all bid more! They steal my money by offering to do something for lower cost – they’re scamming us and we’re the bad guys?!? “western”, you’re just an a-hole with a skewed sense of morality.
I’m not sure how to find ant programmers worth a damn, but it not through Elance – for sure! BTW in my last dispute process, I had all the evidence in the world that the guy hadn’t even started the project and elance simply replied with “he said he won’t refund you, so nothing we can do”.
Elance sucks and so do all the middle eastern providers. Trust me after four experiences and trying to improve the process each tim and filter better, it has still been a 100% scam.
scam. scam. scam
I have had an awful problem with a provider but found the elance process for disputes to be very helpful. I am following the credit card complaint route and suggest that anyone making payments uses this method of payment. That said Elance does recommend a way of paying for work and I should followed that process to the letter. Regrettably a client should NEVER trust a provider and that is an awful place to be but it is a good place to start. Pay for the work as it is completed. The first time a deadline is missed stop the work and do not make a payment. If you are doing a larger scale project and you are paying in stages make sure ALL code is transferred to you prior to releasing the ESCROW. I have learned the hard way. Now I have a great coder working with me and I am follwoing my own advice above. The work quality is excellent, on-time and well managed. I am happy to pay for what I am getting. I would love to name and shame and may do just that in the fullness of time. There are providers out there that should be allowed to provide anything.
I am very sorry that you didn’t have a positive experience on Elance. I use Elance all the time and I must say that I’ve had about 95% positive and the other 5% well not. The troublesome times were caused because I didn’t do a good job selecting my provider. I rushed through the process and wasn’t clear on my deliverables and expectations and as such, my project suffered. Since then I’ve learned that you have to be extremely clear about what you need and expect at the very beginning. You have to check feedback of your provider and you have to use the private message board to your benefit. Lastly, you have to follow up on your provider to make sure that he understands what is expected. By doing this, my experiences are mostly positive.
I do hope you will give Elance another shot because they do have a wealth of talent that you can choose for your next project.
Update:
I uploaded the dispute document and followed the stupid process. I haven’t even received an email confirmation that a complaint has been filed. Good stuff.