Elance Complaints

• Elance gets a solid B rating from the Better Business Bureau; however, one finds grumblings against elance on the web. The main complaint seems to be regarding their escrow account service and the slowness of dispute resolution / customer service. Below is a sample of the complaints:
  • "Their escrow isn't a real escrow system, the website itself has errors all the time and if you are looking for any type of customer service or support you get a phone answering machine and an email support service that never returns emails. Elance is by far the worst freelancing site I have ever had the misfortune of working with." Link.
  • "I put a job out on Elance for workers to bid on. I awarded the job to someone I thought was a good bet. They had good feedback, had 4 of what Elance calls 'verified' credentials, and had good test scores. Well it was horrible. I notice on one test score they scored top 5% on English Spelling and also on vocabulary. Well, their bid was perfect English. After I gave them the job you could barely understand what they were saying. I put the $750 project cost into Elance Escrow because it said I would be protected. * * * They drug the whole thing out for like 3 weeks before they finally just said they didn't have the expertise to do it. So it takes me a week and a half to get ahold of Elance before they tell me I have to download this huge word document [to file a complaint] and fill it in and upload it to the system. Then the worker is supposed to fill out his portion and upload it. * * * I was originally told that if the worker agreed to a refund in his report that I would be refunded immediately. That was now 41 days ago. The money is still in Elance escrow and I have had to file a report with my credit card company for fraud." Link.
  • "Elance is the worst experience I have ever endured. * * * I have posted 4 jobs (1 reposted). I carefully reviewed and selected providers who had high Elance ratings and skill levels (according to their tests). 3 of the providers were complete flakes! Nothing but a lot of wasted time and wasted money. At least those were small jobs and I just paid them and moved on. The real problem was with one job which was for $1500. I even talked to the provider on the phone before putting money into an escrow account with Elance. After 3 weeks the provider still hadn't produced anything at all and two of what they call milestones had passed. I asked for some work product within 7 days or my money back. After 10 days I started calling and emailing Elance. I had to fill out this form and send it in. The provider sent one back saying they were working on it. Elance is IMPOSSIBLE to get ahold of. It takes a week and a half to get an email back and you can never get them on the phone. They never return messages you leave on their answering machine. They don't even have an 800 number. This was back in like late September of last year. So Elance has been keeping my Escrow for about 5 months." Link.
  • Another escrow account complaint.
  • "I have hired a programmers/web designers through Elance, online outsourcing company. I made my choice based on their rating system [but the project went bad]. Elance investigating team was contacted in order to arbitrate but they have no system of protection for the customers and are less than willing to argue with their 'select' providers who provide part of their online fees." Link.
  • "Elance, do you see yet how ridiculous your new bidding structure is and just how difficult it makes things not only for us service providers but also for the buyers who channel work through you. Something really needs to be done about this." Link.
  There appears to be some level of frustration out there against this company but one is unable to say if these are isolated incidents or if there is a more fundamental problem with elance. This web posts gives suggestions to those seeking to hire a freelancer through elance. If you go the freelance route, be careful.

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