Why Im planning to leave Elance after 1 month nightmare?

The terms you should come up with to be safe is 50% upfront and 50% upon completion.
You only give the final design once you get the full payment. You let him see the design
with watermark to convince him that it is completed. It is important to be safe.

 

Consul, things like this aren't rare unfortunately. I hear horror stories from Elance users all the time -- some similar to this, some getting screwed over by buyers and Elance won't intervene, and that's just the tip of the iceberg (don't even get me started on the potential problems with their Work View tool helping clients cross legal lines they shouldn't be able to). Elance has never been a good place for serious freelancers. You can do much better without them, so if you can build your freelance career without getting sucked into those kinds of "race to the bottom" marketplaces, all the better for you.

 

Lol.. 50% is a guarantee to me because if they don't pay at the end you don't give over the files. If they steal the source code than you release it to the public as a free theme or report it to the dmca. Not to mention all my business comes off a business forum and a post on it would shatter their companies reputation. Scamming is usually aimed more at the cheap / new freelancers because any scumbag who is a scammer probably doesn't have $750 for a 50% deposit.

Plus on elance 80% of the people there work for peanuts and their work is absolute garbage and thats what people are after because its cheap.

 

I am actually a buyer and as one of the previous contributors has said, its getting as cheap as Fiverr. I am now using it for my arbitrage business.

 

I wouldn't pay a freelancer until the job is completed. I would also check the freelancer's feedback before awarding any job.

 

Similar attempts of Elance confiscating thousands of dollars have been reported by many other reputed freelancers, including (very recently) myself.

We are working with a highly reputed attorney and initiating a class action lawsuit against Elance, Inc.

Submit your case here: http://www.elanceclassaction.com/

 

The only problem I have so far with elance is there is too much downplaying. Even those who post for their project and ask for proposal are surprised of our quotes. They (well most of them) say that ours is almost 10x the normal rate. I say huh? Normal rate of people in Elance. Hahaha! No wonder there are lots of projects around. Sad to say, up to now, we haven't received any win for the proposal. Hahaha! That's fine.