Odesk Scam - DON'T USE ODESK.com **Odesk Scam Warning**

Here is what happened, I hired someone on odesk for a 1 hour job, he logs about 25 hours of surfing the net, gaming, etc. And after disputing the hours odesk is asking me to pay for the hours anyways.


Read the full story here: http://www.odesk.com/community/node/9044

I plan on suing them in a small court case here, but any advice?

 

You are really going to sue them? Surely that will cost you a lot more than 10 hours. I feel your pain though I hired virtual assitance before and had to fire them all. I blam the book 4 hour working week, made it sounds so damm easy.

 

Well, suing them isn't that hard if you know the correct people. And if I do sue them they will have to fly someone down to the place I am suing them at. This would probably cause them much more then 10 hours.


But they gave me back the money, so that's the end of it.

 

lol, its some chinese guy that was trying to scam you outta money. Well good to hear you got your money back

 

ODesk is not a scam but there can definitely some misunderstanding between providers and buyers. I for one, don't use the hourly system because I don't want clients monitoring my every move and complaining that I wasn't working on their project for one minute.

 

I've been working through various buyers in oDesk for more than a year and now, I'm a buyer myself in oDesk. From my experience, I could see the new buyers do not take time to understand how oDesk works and hire a new provider who would not know the system either. So, ultimately, miscommunication happens and the result is a unsuccessful project.

 

Glad to hear your got your money back, next time just be more careful.

 

Better use rentacoder.com than oDesk.

 

dasar malingsia! ga mau rugi! Grow up!

 

Rentacoder don't have good jobs with good budget. While Odesk have a little of them.

Better to use Elance, that's it.

 

There is always good thing and bad things with "cheap" VA...

Find a good company and outsource it.. dont hire freelancers, it'll be always headache to deal with those people..

pay a penny extra and have fun

 

It ain't worth in my opinion. Everyone who does business online, looses some money at one point. It is inevitable. Use that as a learning experience and move on. It ain't worth the headache.

 

I like to always used fixed price after determining how much of a specific task they can do per hour, then just figure out how long a specific task will take. Takes off the mystery factor, I never liked the fact they can just mark up hours..

 

oDesk has scammed me too, the provider has charged me for an upfront, but he have not did the programming, and when i reported that to oDesk they told me that i cant dispute the flat fee jobs, after talking more than 2 weeks with them, they never refund my money.

Stay a way from them, they protect their Programmers only because they gain them the money.

 

Use scriptlance - you post a project, place money in escrow and pay when satisfied. Only once have I had an issue with someone on there, which was funny.

I placed a project for integrating a template I had into a script I had, told him which files needed changing, ftp etc. He showed me a demo and insisted I sent him the money for the files. when I received them it wss just one index.html fiel with the links from my existing site placed in it. He argued with me that integration was never asked for yet there it was in the project - I got refunded.

If you want a job doing well pay the right price, you go cheap you get cheap

 

it's a lesson learned. I am not a buyer at odesk but somehow as a person looking for a job, it helps me be reminded on what should and must learn in order to prevent such situation.

 

thanks for the info ... i was about to hire them

 

I was also scammed using odesk, although have found a few amazing providers on there.

although I now tend to avoid Indian and Pakistan service providers due to there ability to never get jobs done on time and for there amazing ability to turn a 2 hour job in to a 30 hour job.

Also link builders have a habbit of sending massive spreadsheets of supposed links they have added when in fact they have added very few links.

ways to avoid being scammed on odesk, is to pay a little extra and have employ someone with good documented feedback - as the old saying goes you buy cheap you buy twice...

if a provider asks you to employ their other less qualified profile for whatever reason - refuse at all costs

 

I am new to internet marketing, and read your comments with interest. I am from the UK and I have been reciving great advice from and a chap called Matt (an Australian but he can`t help that) his blog is mattmarketing.com and he sent this video on odeck called "Outsourcing Secrets Video"
Which shows you how to pick and test the people you hire from odeck before you take them on.

I have received a lot of help from other forums, so I thought I would do the same. And no I have no links to this matt except I receive his emails which so far proved very helpful. Hop this infor helps.

 

hmmmm..... interesting story.
If you want to sue them in the court, i think it will cost a lot of money and effort.
Just spread this rumor, and maybe they will apologize to you.