Yet another Freelancer.com scam

I am new to Sitepoint forums, although I do read a lot of the stuff posted here.

After getting scammed by Freelancer.com and their freelancer Monitrix, I sent numerous emails about a Wordpress programming job that their freelancer did and which was not done properly - errors in my Wordpress mean that I can no longer upgrade to the latest core Wordpress files (there is some error in a PHP file which their developer modified), duplicates of fields, images set as backgrounds, articles instead of pages, php errors on pages - the list goes on.

I posted this job a few weeks ago and just got countless headaches from work not being done properly. I got pressured by their freelancer to release 50% after I saw some work had been done, even though I was not completely happy with it, against my better judgement I did release it.

After a point I had had enough of the lies and incompetence (I am pretty tolerant, but enough is enough) and put in a dispute for the other 50% and stated I would pay $50 for the work done so far. BUT, I had not looked into the admin of Wordpress when I did that, because had I dont that, I would have disputed the 50% I already paid.

The following day I found the $50 had been paid to the freelancer, even though I had not released it and the freelancer would not respond to me.

This is the last email I sent the freelancer:
********************************************************
There is a major issue with my wordpress installation. It will no longer allow updates of the Wordpress core or plugins. What has your developer done?

This is the error message that comes up when I try to update the latest wordpress 3.6 - the exact same error occured when I tried to update a plugin:

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.6-new-bundled.zip…

Warning: touch() [function.touch]: Unable to create file /tmp/wordpress-3.tmp because No space left on device in/home/domain/public_html/wp-admin/includes/file.php on line 179

Warning: unlink(/tmp/wordpress-3.tmp) [function.unlink]: No such file or directory in /home/domain/public_html/wp-admin/includes/file.php on line 503
Download failed.: Could not open handle for fopen() to /tmp/wordpress-3.tmp
Installation Failed


This needs to be resolved before the project is finalised.
*********************************************************************
The freelancer kept asking me on Messenger - "What page is this on?" He has absolutely NO clue what is going on. And then didnt contact me after he got paid.

Not only the above issues, but the freelancer's developer also changed my cpanel and wordpress passwords (without my knowledge or permission), so when I tried to log in, I couldnt! I told the freelancer Monitrix and he denied it had been done. Then a few hours later told me that yes, it had been done and apologised providing the new passwords.

Unbelievable!

 

My email to support:
Why has this dispute been resolved? I havent cancelled the dispute yet.

There is still some issues with the developer's coding - there are PHP errors and they have LIED to you to say that I am now satisfied with their coding.

Their developer changed all my passwords without my permission or knowledge - it brought all my websites down!

Now I have to find someone else to resolve the issues this terrible person did.

I want my money back. I do not consent to give them any more money and I told them this in an instant message yesterday which I have a copy of to show and an email. I told them I would not consent to any more payments until the error issue was resolved.

I do NOT want to pay them the $50
********************************************************

Freelancer.com support response:
Hi,

Thank you for contacting Customer Support.

Our record shows that you have changed your offer in the dispute from $160 to $50. The freelancer accepted your offer that's why the dispute has been resolved. Since the freelancer accepted your offer, they received the $50.

We can no longer retrieve the funds that have been released, unless the freelancer is willing to return it. We suggest that you contact your freelancer and ask them to return the payment. If the freelancer agrees, kindly ask them to send a ticket at our Support Desk. Please ask them to mention your ticket ID for reference (CRG-856-34287).

If you need further assistance, please do not hesitate to email us back.

---
Sincerely,
Jude
Freelancer.com Support
********************************************************

My response:
This is not correct. You can refund the money.

Freelancer.com deleted my dispute without my agreement!

This guy is a scammer.

And why cant I give him a rating and comment about his shoddy work?

Do you people understand that he left my Wordpress installation in a shambles and that I now have to find someone else to resolve the issues his developer caused????????????????????????

But not only that, when I looked in the back end - I saw that so much of what was done was INCORRECT. Duplicated fields, inability to add anything, images set as backgrounds, none of the customisation I asked for.

WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS?

Why am I getting the standard response?

Do you really think a scammer like Monitrix is about to return my money?

He no longer responds to me.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!
********************************************************
Freelancer.com support response:
Hi James,

Thank you for writing back to us.

We can only reverse the $50 Milestone Payment to your account upon "monitrix's" confirmation. We encourage you to continue contacting them and use all means of communication available to both of you. Tell them to coordinate with us and reference your ticket ID CRG-856-34287.

It also shows that you have submitted multiple tickets. Please refrain from sending tickets with the same concern to prevent confusion on which ticket to refer to.

Moving on, the dispute was not deleted. It was closed due to the agreement of both parties. You have offered them to pay $50 and they have accepted your offer. Thus, the dispute closed with the agreement of both parties. Please read our FAQ page at the following link to guide you on how the Dispute Resolution Services work:

Dispute Resolution Services
http://www.freelancer.com/faq/topic.php?id=25

Note that our site merely acts as an online marketplace for users to offer, buy and sell professional services. If the project gets accepted by the chosen freelancer, we no longer intervene with the transactions and interactions of both parties. These are already beyond our scope of support since we only introduce the employer and the freelancer to collaborate for mutual benefit. The project’s success lies solely in the hands of both parties. Should problems arise, we always encourage our users to resolve these among themselves.

As for the feedback mechanism, it will only be activated if the bid amount of a project is paid in full. The project "Wordpress / Buddypress Review Theme Customisation" with ID 4703041 is partially-paid with $215 and the bid amount of the freelancer is $325.

The Feedback and Rating Board allows both parties the opportunity to build their reputation through performance. It also provides the entire Freelancer.com community with added protection against potential scams and unsatisfactory business transactions.

Let us know if you have further concerns or inquiries.

---
Sincerely,
Candice
Freelancer.com Support
********************************************************
My response:
It has not been addressed.

You abnegate all responsibility do you? No moral responsibility to ensure that work is done correctly and if it is not, then it gives the employer recourse to dispute it? No you dont.

The more your company allows this sort of unethical behaviour the more complaints you will get and the more people will post online the bad experiences they have with your company and less people will be using it.

Your company's reputation is supposed to be good - but I found it to be poor.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

I WANT RECOURSE!

This is not a resolution to the issue I am complaining about.

I want to speak to someone in authority, not your customer service staff who follow the processes they have been told to follow.

This is NOT A RESOLUTION!

***************************************************
My response:
" Moving on, the dispute was not deleted. It was closed due to the agreement of both parties. You have offered them to pay $50 and they have accepted your offer. Thus, the dispute closed with the agreement of both parties. Please read our FAQ page at the following link to guide you on how the Dispute Resolution Services work:

Dispute Resolution Services
http://www.freelancer.com/faq/topic.php?id=25 "

I did not ask for it to be closed.

I was told in an email how to release a partial payment - I DID NOT AUTHORISE ITS RELEASE:

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
You can release a partial amount of the Milestone Payment to the freelancer, as follows:
1. Log in to your Freelancer.com account.
2. Click Financial Dashboard from the Finances menu.
3. Under the Milestones tab in the Manage Payments section, ensure Outgoing is selected in the switcher to see the list of Milestone Payments you have created.
4. Click the Action drop down on the right of the Milestone Payment you wish to release.
5. Select Release from the menu. This will display a box where you can specify how much of the Milestone Payment you would like to release. You can release the entire Milestone Payment or only a portion.
6. Click the Release button.

/*/*/*/*/*/*/*//*/*/*/*/*

This is an email from your customer care on Sent: Friday, 2 August 2013 1:20 AM.

I DID NOT RELEASE IT, SO WHY WAS IT RELEASED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION??? I DID NOT DO THE ABOVE! THIS WAS RELEASED BY YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND I WANT THAT MONEY BACK.

SIMPLE.

I do not accept your excuses.

This was a crappy experience with a scammer of a freelancer.

And I will blog about this. And post it to social media, as I have already done.

This is not customer care and provides me absolutely NO RECOURSE to complain if something is done wrong!


********************************************************
Freelancer.com support response:

Hi James,

Thank you for getting back to us.

We have already forwarded your concern to the appropriate department. Kindly wait for their response on the matter.

In case you still have questions, feel free to contact us again.

---
Sincerely,
Victor C.
Freelancer.com Support

********************************************************
My response:

I want you to get all my money back from this dodgy freelancer. Not just the $50, but the whole $210. Monitrix has caused me no end of frustration with his developers messing up my Wordpress and getting so much wrong - THEY DID NOT DO THE WORK AS SPECIFIED.

I have contacted them and they wont respond any more.

They have done so many things wrong and now I have to delete everything they did and start again. Does that sound like a good experience to you?

I am posting about my awful experience on a number of forums and creating a blog just to write about this.

I am beyond incensed at this dodgy, unethical behaviour and being held at ransom by unethical freelancers. And by Freelancer.com allowing it to occur and having no recourse to recover the money from this dodgy person and not to be able to comment and review him for doing this.

 

As you can see from the above, I am getting so frustrated and annoyed with Freelancer.com customer care's non-responses.

This job was supposed to take 5 days to complete as it was not that hard to do.

Instead, it's taken weeks without the results I want. I created a several page wireframes with all the required layouts and functions (images, text, icons etc) as well as provide them a dot point specification and while I had several pages, the layout was the same for each page, with just content changed and most of that was provided in the template I purchased. I dont think I could have been clearer than that with the freelancer doing the work.

Yet after the first milestone payment nothing was done right.

I am not going to use that company again. They are scammers.

They dont have any moral obligation to anyone, they dont let unhappy employers post comments and reviews on half-assed jobs not done properly because if they allowed that, the freelancer scores would be so much lower and there would be so many more bad reviews shown on the freelancer profiles which would mean less people would use it. Unethical.

 

I have had a look at my Wordpress installation and the theme instructions and nothing in the theme documentation has been added or done to my site. So basically I have to delete everything and start again from scratch!

These incompetent developers hired by Monitrix were just not good at all. I would ask for one thing - they provided the opposite or something with php errors on the front end.

Freelancer.com wont do anything more, other than send the email to the developer to ask him to refund the $50 (and in a really conciliatory way, like I was in the wrong - FFS!!)

I have been posting on Twitter about my grievances, but Freelancer.com now ignores me. This just makes me more intent to keep on going until I get a full refund. I also sent an email to the developer who is also ignoring me.

Wouldnt Freelancer.com have some moral or other ethical obligation to make sure these types of dodgy dealings dont occur on their site, but they are obviously fine with it. As long as they get their money from the fees they charge everyone, they abnegate all responsibility. There has got to be some type of moral precedent where they have a duty of care, a responsibility in cases like this, where they need to provide recourse for me and a full refund?

 

I suggest you not to make modification of the WordPress site until the problem was resolved. Get various screenshots for both back-end and front-end.
If it is possible, backup any error logs in Cpanel. It will greatly help you when you create a complain like this.
Because it involve in WordPress, Coding and Hosting environment, You may need to consult it with experts in all those fields.
If the developer was creating the site locally and then move it to your host (I assume it different host) much problem will arise. Each environment need different setup.
Inability to update WordPress and plugin may happen due to some restriction. The function 'touch' already said it has not enough space to do the operation. 'Unlink' was failed because there is no specified file in 'Temp' folder. Check hosting environment for permission and more function to be enabled. I;m not an expert in this so you may need to confirm with OS (Win/Linux/Mac) experts.

To get the refund, you should get their attention first (both Developer and Freelancer). Don't just blame them but you should tell us the details from the start till the end. Sometimes the problems occurs due to other reasons. You can tell us:

1. What project it is?
2. Why do you choose 'Freelancer.com'?
3. How much do you willing to pay?
4. How do you met with the developer?
5. What kind of communication do you use?
6. Is there any log of communication (don't post it here because it may have 'some privacy concerns')?
7. Based on your judgement, do you think developer always respons really well to you while doing the contract?
8. Is there any conversation which make you really angry while the project was going on?
9. Did you increase or lower the price?
10. Why did you do that?
11. Do you remember what your developer said about the change of payment? Did they happy with it?
12. What abut the hosting do you use? Is it given to you by developer?
13. Have you consult the problem while updating WordPress with your host provider?
14. When the developer change the login credentials, did they still doing the contract (within the time frame to do the job) or you specially ask them to fix it?
15. If freelancer willing to help you by asking the developer to fix the problem, will you accept it?

Answering fifteen questions above may help other clearly understand your situation. Please understand you have the right to ignore suggested questions above. I may not able to help you solve the problem but I wish you to get what you do really want and both parties happily in the end.

 

Look up "Monitrix" on Twitter and you will see this guy bids on projects in Freelancer.com, then posts a job on Freelancer, as if it's his project with less of the particulars than the main project post to find someone (anyone) to work on the project if he is successful in his bid.

No wonder Freelancer.com is not going to force him to pay anything - they make a lot of money from him and from the developers he hires.

And no wonder this guy had no clue what his developers were doing with my site - he hires anyone from the site and pays them a pittance (about 1/6th of the total amount he bids) so no wonder he gets incompetent developers who dont do a good job on my site!

 

Hi Arick - thanks for your response.

There is ample disk space available - their developer was just incompetent. A number of times when things were changed, there were many php errors on the front end which had to be resolved. Plus the theme modification did not occur as per the theme developer's specification - for example, they didnt install Buddypress template pack, which is vital for the theme and if they read the documentation, they would have seen it was necessary. They didnt configure it the way it was supposed to be configured.

I sent the theme information to them and they didnt do anything right!

It needs to be deleted and started again. I know about about Wordpress to do it myself - plus I will get help online from the theme support site for anything complicated.

In regards to your other questions - the developer changed the login credentials as soon as they got my project - without my permission or knowledge. I had no idea.

The guy (or girl) Monitrix bid on my project on Freelancer.com and kept on harassing me to accept his bid.
We used Skype messenger and I have full log history.
There are many times where I was frustrated with Monitrix and his developers who did not do anything right. I provided wireframes (images and boxes with instructions about the layout elements) and they totally ignored it all. Plus I provided an 11 dot-point of instructions and again, they ignore almost all of it.

I wont let Monitrix or his developers get any more of my login credentials. I just want a full refund. It's simple and Freelancer.com should have more integrity than to allow this type of scam to continue to occur. I passed on the full Skype log history to them and the emails between us and they know full well this is a scam, but they continue to allow it, because this freelancer makes them money.

Basically Monitrix bids on all sorts of projects and then reposts the project, but in a more simpler way, to find a developer from Freelancer.com to work on it. He pays the developer about 1/6 of the total fees he charges the employer and Freelancer.com makes money out of it.

This is the scammer Monitrix profile on Freelancer.com:
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-**-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Digittrix
Simplifying Successful Results
Username: monitrix
VERIFIED
Location: New Delhi, India India
Member since: February 2013
We are having 6 successful years of Web Development , Designing, and Internet Marketing skills which includes various technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS, PHP, Wordpress, Photoshop, SEO and SEM. We have handled various projects in all of them and got great output. We have worked on more than 300 websites in last year which includes designing and development both. In field of SEO we have ranked many keywords on top of Google within limit of 90 days with only whit Hat Techniques.

Get your projects simplified by Digittrix
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-**-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

As you can see, he is positioning himself as a company of developers when that is definitely not the case.

I am so angry that someone can scam people (ie me) and Freelancer.com does nothing about it. They are unethical and dodgy and I will not deal with them again!

 

I could feel your pain. The guy was accepting all projects and passing it to 'another guys'. About Freelancer.com, I never use it and have no affiliation with them. I hope they would response to this thread. You should let them know by sending the link.
If they come here, We need to 'write and listen' which mean you can write your reason and they should read and listen to you. The same thing happen when they write their reason and you should read and listen to their reasons.

When I did business, I will look on the history first. I didn't blame your for choosing him/her. No, I would not blame you and others should not blame you too. It is the guy whom taking the project that should care with you and your project.

I wish you to be passion and think of it as 'new experience'. Don't let it make you down.
Hints: You may find staffs of freelancer.com in this forum. I'm not sure about it but you may wish to use the search function and talk nicely with them.

 

I think the freelancer don't have real experience of 6 years. He have 6 years scam experience.
I would have done better with only less than 2 years experience on WP.
First of all he should have worked on a WP Debug mode. Forget about error on front end or back end, he should have also taken care that there is no error when on WP Debug mode. After testing on local he should test the same thing on online with a live WP website.
I think he didn't use WordPress Guidelines to develop the theme.
It's sad to hear you are scammed at freelancer.com

 

An update.

After an email from the CEO of Freelancer.com asking what the issue was (as if I hadnt already told them numerous times), I responded to him letting him know all the particulars about the issue. That the Ajax Wordpress/Buddypress theme which I purchased wasnt configured in the way that the theme developer recommended, that there were duplicate fields on each page, incompleted work, images set as backgrounds for the main pages (not what I asked for and definitely not a good idea in terms of usability), php errors, didnt install the buddpress pack recommended by the theme developer, configuration of articles (ie posts) instead of pages (that was not the brief I provided), not using the Ajax search functionality.

I think I may have summarised a few of these points in the email, but basically they did not provide the service I paid for.

Today, on another site, one of the Freelancer.com staff told me that they would issue me with a refund - that is a refund of the milestone payment I paid Monitrix (http://www.freelancer.com/u/monitrix.html). When I checked the account this evening, the refund is there and I transferred it to Paypal.

My partner and I will not use them again. To have to jump up and down and basically have a public tantrum for them to listen and actually look into the situation and do something about it is poor service. They should have looked into it straight away, read the documentation and had a chat to the freelancer about his work.

Also having some processes in place where incomplete work can be reviewed and rated publicly on a freelancer's profile would be a start. Then if the freelancer is found to have many negative ratings, they are given a warning and told they should only bid on jobs they can genuinely complete in good faith within the budget and timeframe and provide the services as per the project details. If they continue to be disingenuous and continue to get say 3-4 more bad reviews then they should be told that if they have one more bad review, they will be banned (based on their IP). Some may say this is too tolerant...

I have read that some employers are also scammers - so same rule should apply to them (for different criteria).

It would save so many headaches!

As an aside, I got an email as soon as I posted this thread from someone on here telling me he could provide me the services I wanted. I said no politely. I then got two more emails telling me to go on Skype (giving me his Skype name) and to give him a chance so he could do the work for me. Again, I said no and ignored him. How many times do I have to say no?

Anyway, thanks guys for listening to my tale of woe with Freelancer.com - it is now resolved!

 

I'm glad your problem was solved. DP is good place to discuss many things. I hope you love this forum and make this your favorite forum.

About offer through PM. Many (if not some) peoples would try to offer you with their services. I'm forget to warn you about it earlier.
You can accept it but I recommend you not to accept it because it is somewhat hard to find great and skillful people.

If you have any other news regarding your problem, you are free to share with us in this thread. I see many problems got sorted fast after being published in DP.

 

Thanks Arick

Yes, people sending emails about whatever when you join a forum is one of the reasons I dont join many forums - unsolicited emails and I already get enough spam in my email

I am surprised Freelancer did give me a full refund! I have to spend the time now to start the site again - redo it all from scratch.

I had already seen this forum and read here previously, but hadnt joined. Now I shall try to be more active

 

Glad to know that your problem is solved and you got your money back after posting here. DP Forums have that reputation.
I hope you will enjoy using this forum.

 

I hate spam emails too. This is why I use several email with some 'level access'. Public would get my 'public email' while my friend get 'just for friend email'. For forum, I use separate email for each of them. I didn't join many forum, Only four forums. One is for forum about Admin/webmaster, another one for classic gaming site (teacher need refreshing too), another one again for emulation or compiler stuffs and the last is this lovely forum.
If i have to calculate, I spend more than 90% in this forum rather than the others. Other forums are great too but I feel DP is the only place I could find good friend which will say wrong when I did mistake and praise me when I help the others.

Hope your site finished soon.
Starting from the scratch is painful but when everything work fine and the job already done, We would be able to smile and proud of it.

Welcome to Digital Point. I hope we could be good friend in this forum. Whenever you have free time, Come to DP and talk with all of us.

By the way, hope you don't mind with my horrible grammar. English is not my native language.

 

Thank you Pupul

No problems with your English - I can understand you

I think we're going to leave the site for now and come back to it later.

 

I mean no disrespect when I say this, but did you attempt to read/understand the error message? This has nothing to do with the code, it a server issue. The same thing will occur on a fresh installation of wordpress on the same account.

 

No offence taken.

That wasnt the only issue, but it was kinda the last straw. There were a number of (fatal) php errors on the front end too and their manager would just keep saying, "all done, all finished", not looking at what was done to see that there were the errors there in a number of different parts of the pages. I had to keep showing the freelancer the pages with all the errors and he would have to ask his developers to fix them and this was not even done properly. Requirements done opposite to what was asked (or not done at all). Not implementing the theme specification configurations (despite the fact they had the theme information).

Not a PHP expert and didnt realise (until after seeing your post and looking it up) that there were a number of different php errors. But as you can see in my posts, it was exceedingly frustrating dealing with a freelancer who outsourced the work to someone else and had no clue what was going on.

 

Once the project has been awarded the site deducts 5 or 10% of the project fee from the provider, regardless of the buyer pays the amount or not. If you go through the projects listed, you can see a lot of new buyers with verified status posting projects with high budget projects. So the ultimate aim is to get the commission from the providers.

Once the project has been awarded and the commission has been taken, they dont take care of anything. They have to take the commission once the buyer has funded the project.

Or else there are lot of chances that the site may allow or hire people to create multiple fake IDs and projects and award it to random providers to get this 5 or 10% commission. Why not? Because who else get profit other than the site owners on this scenario?!

 

This does not sound good at all,i guess you should never trust indians to work on programming stuff.

 

@Anddos : Its not that fair to point out"Indians" just because you had bitter experiences with few. It might directly hurt anybody's feelings who are really genuine. It does not depend upon the country to which he belongs, but the character which is being possessed. We can not blindly say that people belong to certain continents are pious with no evil. Its everywhere. chill uh!!!

The fact is when you trust someone you should ensure that he/she is capable enough to perform a task. Normally techies call it as a POC- Proof of concept, where we can give a piece of work and test the ability before awarding the entire project.

Just got a flick on a Quote " look before you leap"