ODesk Review - from an Actual User

A scam artist devised as a service provider (Web programmer - Amju Verma - ThreeGInfo - puneet_lakhani@hotmail.com ) convinced me to change from ELance.com to ODesk - the reasoning for this is that with ODESK they charge your credit card and pay the scammer automatically without your consent, approval nor knowledge.

When you sign up with ODESK they require credit card information and when yor attempt to hire someone that person is then in charge of your money - they have the ability to put through charges and even when you complain to ODESK they ignore the issue and allow them to continue to process charges.

ODesk then closes out your complaint and will not allow you to contact ODESK nor the scammer any longer and you cannot rate the scammer.

It has taken me months to try to get my monies refunded and CHASE Credit cards have continually refused to refund my monies for services that I did not even get.

Odesk is set up to rip people off - they have no concern for the people hiring the talent and they have even less concerned with having a website that is condusive to resolving disputes and identifying scammers.

Are they working for these scammers - It really appears that they are - why would they close the dispute and refuse to allow any additional information? WHy would they allow scammers to charge without the customer approving it?

I would strongly suggest that everyone look elsewhere for contractual hiring of services.

I think i prefer using seoclerks.com instead of odesk. Seoclearks is much easier and better, and i love their services. Maybe you should try it out if and see the difference.

I wish I could say that my luck with oDesk was as good as yours.

I get contractors who want to get paid upfront, cuss at me when I won't and give me the bad review.

I get contractors who don't understand English--and then the problem is all with me.

Hours of work are put in and for garbage output.

oDesk can't even handle simple math.

Enjoyed reading this lens. Very resourceful.

@anonymous: I have had terrible service from the person I hired who barely speaks english and then terrible customer service to resolve all the mistakes she has made.

Site is good but I never got any luck from this site, I mostly met with fake people here :( I prefer SEOClerks.com, far better than oDesk.

BUYER BEWARE - AVOID ODESK

I would like to share my experience of hiring a developer through odesk. I needed a signin with LinkedIn button added to my site and posted a job. I received several replies and one programmer seemed well suited. He was more expensive than the average bids but claimed to have experience and contacted me repeatedly claiming he could complete the job within a specified time period. We agreed a price for the hours he quoted and started the job.

After the hours were complete the project was at best half finished ( and completely unsuable) I contacted him and he said he needed more time. I presumed this was at his expense and questioned him to double check but got no response.

next i received a notification that I had been billed for the extra hours (without ever agreeing them)

i contacted odesk and was told they would check the worklogs. They then did this merely confirming that the hours had been worked. They did not take into account that the developer repeatedly promised to deliver the whole project within the specified time or that I had not approved the extra work.

Apparently because I did not set a fixed price project at the start there is nothing they will do regarding misleading promises. My only option was to continue throwing money at an hourly rate at the developer in the hope that he migh feel like deliverign what he promised.

This is a ridiculous system and is clearly biased towards poor, shoddy work delivered as alte as possible.

Overall the service from odesk was cursory and totally useless.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS

@anonymous: I've worked with oDesk a bit and agree there are pitfalls. I think a bit of it is knowing what to expect, how to hire contractors and then how to set expectations with them. There are resources out there to help like this eBook on Amazon (currently free): The Unofficial Client Success Guide for oDesk - How to Create or Expand Your Business with Other People's Help. It is short and talks a bit about these points. At the end of the day there are people on the other end, some excellent, some less so. A thought.

I am a current Master's student looking for some freelance gigs for some extra cash so I figured I'd try odesk. Heck, if I can pass the GRE with flying colors, the tests on odesk are nothing, so I decided to bulk up and get as many certifications as I could. I should have checked the pay rates first, though. Who in their right mind works for $1 an hour? That's just plain insulting! I can get a minimum wage job and health benefits for 8 times as much so why bother with this joke of a website? Needless to say, I'm sorely disappointed. No one can make a living or even buy a cup of coffee for $1 an hour!

I think Odesk.com support team don't have ability to solve the issue, They are take too much time to solve the issue.............Other option is better...................

I worked 2 contracts when it was time to withdraw the money, The withdrawal button doesn't work! Can you believe that?! So I contacted support and told them. Their response? Did you PAY someone using paypal? Um yes, what does that have to do with withdrawing my earnings? Well we disabled your withdrawal ability because of that. Give us 24-48 hours to resolve it. 3 days later, the withdrawal button still doesn't work! Do not depend on Odesk to pay you for your hard earned work!

I have been ripped off twice in 7 days by odesk contractors, and the site admin refuses to do anything about it. Once by a contractor WHO DID NO WORK, used his timelog to check his emails, shop online, and browse the web. Odesks response?

"oDesk has reviewed the work diary for this contract and determined that all time was logged in accordance with the oDesk Payment Guarantee."

and once by one who just took the money and ran. BEWARE ODESK - there are a few good programmers there I am sure, but a lot more thieves.

I have an account in oDesk as a web developer not used much but am interested in participating actively. thanks for this great review of oDesk.

I started using oDesk this weekend, so I'm happy to hear I have good things to look forward to,great article!

I signed up for oDesk yesterday, and I got hired today! Great lens

I completed the job on odesk of $ 700 with 5star but its RIDICULOUSLY reverse by odesk and suspended my account. its better Elance that will more trustable site for work

What I've found from many people taking on jobs, is they often drop out of a job without a reason, mess up terribly and then abandon it, so the job is reduced to starting over again, get frustrated with having to provide progress reports so money can be transferred as milestones are met...

Often a person has taken on multiple jobs, so if one starts to get difficult, or a person realizes they didn't quite have the ability they thought they had or sold themselves on, they can abandon the job and work on the back-up one.

There are a few good developers on the site, and work does get done when you fine one, but you have to wade through mounds of garbage to find a guenuine professional. They are out there on ODesk, but they are getting harder to find.

I have worked for four different clients in oDesk and they seem to be satisfied with the work I've done.

There are lots of jobs being offered paying RIDICULOUSLY LOW rates, I just ignore them. :D

On the flip side as an oDesk worker, I have never had issues getting projects with a fair price. I use the site sparingly. But in the past it has led to some long term contracts.

I just started applying for jobs on odesk. What a nightmare! Every job wants content editors, grammarians, proofreaders, SEO specialists, and wants to pay $3 per hour? Is odesk a complete joke?

To those of you complaining about the service you received, when you are paying slave labor wages to non-English speaking contractors, halfway around the world, what the dickens did you expect??? You get what you pay for, and my skills have been honed with over 22 years as an English teacher, a Masters degree, and a great deal of freelance writing. I do not cost $3 per hour. Pay someone what he or she is worth, and you will get a job well-done. Be a cheapskate, and you are just wasting your money.

by the way u can try odesk for free but they send u ton of threaten email to shut down your account if you don't verify with credit card ....

and their coder is not much different with other site, most of them is lier with no responsibility ...

My experience is the opposite. The freelancer I engaged tried to defraud me by charging for work not done, and I refused to pay. But ODesk aren't interested and just keep sending demands for me to pay despite me explaining the situation to three separate people. I have concluded they are as much a fraud as the con - tractor I engaged. I've had no problem with Freelancer or Elance but would avoid ODesk as I would avoid a known carrier of Ebola.

Good review. I also use oDesk for outsourcing.

BEWARE! BEWARE! oDesk is a swamp of fraud.

I had no experience with Wordpress so thought some help would be useful. Posted a job on oDesk for a blog with mapping and calendar plugins. The initial estimate was 40 to 50 hours. This promptly changed when the contract was let to 80 to 90 hours. 90 hours later, no blog. When I complained, three days later a minimal blog was offered that met none of my requirements and had no plugins. As a test the spend one hour--one hour--creating my own blog with calendar and mapping plugins. The result had about 100 times the functionality of the blog I paid for. The whole thing was a complete fraud.

oDesk is a systematic party to this fraud. They have very limited dispute capacities and these are highly biased against customers. For example, on their site it is very easy to give a contractor a bonus but practically impossible to find how to dispute a bill. Negative contractor comments are not posted for at least 14 days, allowing known fraudsters to continue. Then, they can come back under new names. In any case oDesk gets their cut.

I have a long history with Odesk, over 30+ projects. Roughly, about 1/3 of my projects were done accurately. Even vetted, highly-rated contractors can be outright scammers. In one case a coder was "revamping" our framework over an extended period until we found he had been simply billing, but not actually working (despite the screenshots).

Lessons learned? Competent contractors are a small minority on Odesk. Scams are rife. Don't believe ratings or portfolios (I've had several coders/scammers offer me a refund only if I left no rating or feedback). You MUST stay on top of the work and be very clear about the work, few go the extra distance to provide quality. Odesk is incompetent about protecting employers.

Just started oDesk for like 2 months and I have recommended this site to my friends who are also seeking for online jobs. I am a mom and I stay at home all day to watch my baby so I told myself why not give a try. I registered, took several tests, each each is 40 items for 40 minutes. Applied, interviewed and was hired! That easy! I got a data entry job for a new website company, telemarketing for a beauty supply, transcription (Australian company) and typing (PDF to MS Word). All those jobs, I am working for the 4 of them now. And they paid me good. They pay me every week + bonus for doing a great job. I'm sooooo loving to be a part of this team! Good luck to all of you!!!

Learn oDesk And Enjoy The Freedom Of Freelancing!

Been on oDesk for 3 years it's a career move - I now work only there. Only pain is the escrow of earnings for over a week. If you need to know more go to www.whatisodesk.com

@anonymous: When you pay super-low rates, only desperate workers in third-world countries will respond. That's the other side of the supply-demand equation.

@anonymous: I guess my odesk/elance exp is nightmare...wont recommend that

@anonymous: Been there too. The found my private email address - gosh know how and seemed to add me to their spam list

I started using oDesk as a contractor at the start of May this year. I had recently moved to Sweden and do not speak the language that well. I was looking for an alternative means for employment but I too was skeptical.

I have now received 7 contracts since I started, some long term, some short term. Overall (5/7) I've had great experiences. I started with a low rate and in the three and a half months since I've started I've seen my accepted hourly rate grow by just over 148%.

The bad experiences you had with contractors also happens with employers. It is part and parcel of the oDesk community. With over 250,000 contractors you are bound to find some bad apples in the bunch.

One of the clients I work for told me they went on price instead of quality, a mistake they would not do again. For the employers who have had bad experiences, rest assured there are contractors on there who have pride in there work and treat it like their own business.

As a contractor I will continue to use oDesk as long as I see growth. There is a limit as to how much a contractor can earn on oDesk with the stupidly low rates some contractors a willing to work for.

Do you hire someone at a low rate with a high risk the work will not be completed, or completed in a poor fashion, then hire someone else to redo it? Or do you hire someone that can perform the job at a high level at a higher rate?

Thank you for sharing your review of odesk. I checked it out and thought it was pretty useful if you are looking to make a little extra income, but probably not going to be enough to quite your day job.

My oDesk experience has been terrible. Contractors missing a deadline by 4 months (and counting!!!! Still not delivered). I don't think they speak english. They add ugly design elements to my clean design when programming it in, and then take months to remove them with dozens of emails going un-read (or just uncomprehended). Don't know if i'd ever use it again.

@anonymous: I joined Elance and Odesk as a provider at the same time 2 years ago. While my earnings and jobs in Elance kept increasing although I was bidding for a job, at Odesk I was often frustrated because I am competing with contractors who are ready to work for ridicuously low rates. How can I compare my expenses in USA (in New York) with someone in Philippines who will do the same job for a fraction of my cost. So, I gracefully left Odesk some time ago, and continue to get jobs at Elance. There are bidders from other countries, but not for rates that you see at Odesk. Yes, it is not a ton of money at Odesk, but definitely supplemental income if you have the patience.

@Kailua-KonaGirl: Yes! A walking-through would be great: how to screen, hire and monitor Odesk freelancers. I'm especially curious about effective ways of choosing a good writer.

If you use Odesk, don't make your job public! That resulted in an inordinate amount of spam from applicants who clearly hadn't read the job posting - even to the point of some who began spamming my company's public contact forms and phones demanding work!

Thanks for sharing Lens! This lens was just what I was looking for

Odesk has a lot of competitive contractors globally. Unsurprisingly, that has it's pros and cons. Cheap prices for employers, but high signal to noise of potential hires. Intense competition for providers, but a variety of short projects to gain skills and portfolio entries at that wouldn't be available locally.

oDesk was one of the best freelancing sites I have been to. While competition among contractors is great, there is still high chance of getting hired unlike in elance were contractors get to bid. And most employers go for cheaper labour cost. It's great that you hired a perfect freelancer, but just so you are aware, there can be scammers in oDesk, too. You might want to check staff.com, too! It works the same as oDesk but jobs are not posted for public's view to prevent scammers from applying to the post. Instead, they have a recruiter who can shortlist applicants for you.

I registered for oDesk a few days ago and managed to be accepted for a simple job my first day. Simple research for less than two hours of work and $15. Not a ton of money, but for what I did, it's perfectly acceptable. I'm using this to supplement my regular job. My second job started last night, and will be about 20-30 hours of work.

So far the site has been easy to use, but be careful and read the directions and reviews of the employer carefully. There are many who want to pay 50 cents for an article, have no review, or do not have a verified payment method. I just avoid applying for those jobs. No, it's not going to make you rich, but if you need a bit of supplemental income, this seems to be a good way.

@siryellow1: As an employer who has used Odesk for the past three years, I would say there is good and bad. I've hired very good software developers globally at good rates. The bad side is the false rating system. I just finished a contract with an Asian developer and gave him a 3.5 rating. He demanded a 5. When I declined he threatened all types of bad exposure on facebook and Odesk. I think Odesk has to do a better job of policing their site.

I tried Odesk some months ago as a contractor. I think there are two parallel worlds on Odesk, the professional line and the poor line. I haven't been able to escape from the 'poor' side of the track. I even provided a lot of free programs with documented sources to employer when projects were very simple, to finally receive no reply. It is absolutely not convivial when it's time to bid and bargain. I decided to be the employer.

I have been working as a Unix software developer for 30+ years. The amount of money offered for these jobs are pittiful. A job at McDonalds as a french fry cooker pays about the same.

I should not complain about the service itself, since it was okay.. the issue here is with the Odesk process of filling for a dispute. It does not protect the interest of someone who is hiring the contractor... it seems like Odesk is interested in getting it's 10% share and hence has provided no tools to put a hold on or any mechanism to approve hours... If you don't closely monitor or your project does not fall in the paradigms of how Odesk wants you to monitor manually added hours.... You have to pay... no matter if the contractor has done the job or not... VERY Bad practice..... BY ODESK.... Will not be doing any business here

I have had 1 good contractor with ODesk who actually finished a project for me. The others disappear in the middle of working on my projects and take off with any money I've given them. Then I'm always told by the next contractor that the work the last person did was crap and it needs to be redone and fixed, of course costing more money. ODesk has horrible customer service, they don't care about employees at all and totally disregard any agreements that have been made between the contractor and the employer. I personally, will never be using ODesk ever again.

I just began to use http://www.odesk.com last week. I found an employer who wants to begin working with me. Then, suddenly, my network can no longer connect to the site.

I checked with a friend in Canada who can connect.

Has anyone ever experienced such technical difficulty with odesk? Has anyone lost any jobs because of technical problems with odesk?

@Kailua-KonaGirl: This person did not understand instructions and wanted to go on his own way with php and . when I hired him to do html. He charged me $89.91 to do my drop down work and put a picture in my header. He was great on the php but I won't hire him for any html. This place Odesk will not return any money either when your person over charges you for hours. It cost me over 65 dollars just to get a picture put in a banner and faded. I could have done the job myself in an hour but didn't have time, I do now. I would not hire this person again and I would not hire Odesk again unless it is by the job and that is a maybe after this experience. I am looking other places for a secure job and my money working for me not some person working for Odesk.

I have used Odesk as an Employer for the past 3 years but I am now departing the site. I have uncovered the fact that the rating system is being open to substantial abuse with Contractors putting Employers under undue pressure to leave good feedback for their work and if they don't they will leave negative feedback to the Employer instead.

I've had a few cases like this recently but the most blatant was where a Contractor (Agency in India) openly said on Skype chat to me that they based their feedback score for me (poor) solely on the fact that I had told them I would not be leaving good feedback for them (they really messed up a project and I had to not only pay them but also pay someone else to fix it). I showed this to Odesk and they were not interested saying the Contractor had done nothing wrong.

With the system thereby clearly allowing Employers to be pressurised to leave good feedback, I felt I couldn't trust any of the ratings I was reading so it sort of defeated the purpose of the whole system.

I'm going to try Elance and see how that goes.

@anonymous: I have to agree with Mita about oDesk (but not Elance). oDesk buyers expect people to work for free, or they wind up hiring the person with the cheapest rate, only to turn around and hire the second cheapest when that person flakes out before complaining that the site has crappy workers. There are plenty of good workers, with skills they don't have to lie about, on oDesk...employers just have to be willing to pay them a normal wage.

I was shocked at how many jobs there were that offered ridiculous rates of pay. I am a freelance editor and writer, so I need to live off what I earn. Asking for people to accept 50 cents per 100 words is abysmal. The worst thing is, there are people accepting these tasks, although I do wonder about the quality.

I am signed up with Elance, and I will be signing up with Guru soon. However, with the amount of low-paying jobs on oDesk, I think I will be very cautious about using the site.

More feedback on oDesk: Overall good, but beware of âmanualâ hours.

I read this review and the comments here before (reluctantly) outsourcing a small project through oDesk. Iâm offering some feedback to others who might be researching, as I did. Overall I was happy with the experience. HOWEVER; I caution anyone working with oDesk to make sure that you do not allow âmanualâ hours.

oDesk plasters the site with copy on how an employer can check on work throughout the process (as in the âtransparencyâ and âwork diaryâ examples in this review). I must confess I find the screenshot diary a bit Big Brotherish, but it did provide me with a measure of reassurance when making my decision to use the service. It is NOT at all obvious that those features are only available if you do not allow the freelancer to enter hours manually. This came as a shock to me when we hit a minor snag (not the freelancer's fault, by the way) and I tried to check on work in the middle of the project. I was not able to do so because the freelancer I'd hired had opted to enter hours manually rather than having work tracked. I wasnât even aware that there was a âmanualâ option. Iâm still not entirely clear on how I could have prevented this. Fortunately, it didnât become an issue.

Our programmer was great. He did what we hired him to do, and more. Because he completed our job well and within the allotted time frame, there was no need for me to verify how time was being spent. This could have definitely been a big problem on a larger project, if work was not progressing as expected, or if I'd hired a less than honest freelancer. So read the fine print. Thoroughly.

Well done lens. I am sure that your easy to follow review of Odesk will be very useful to many people that need to outsources business tasks. Squid Angel blessed and I've added your link to My Squid Angel Wings to be featured in your neighborhood. I would really like to see you create another lens walking people through the basic steps of hiring and monitoring an Odesk worker.

@anonymous: One of the greatest aspects of sites like oDesk and Elance is the ability to pass on jobs that don't suit your income requirements. I frequently contract my writing and editing services on both sites and would have to say that they are equally fair, in my experience. Sure, oDesk does seem to have a larger quantity of 'low pay' jobs...but I exercise my right to skip on past them. Slavery would imply that you're forced into work without pay...but on freelancing sites, you're not FORCED into anything. Low paying employers eventually learn that you get what you pay for. If they want to pay $1 for a 500 word article, they're going to get crap. It's as simple as that.

I couldn't agree more! I registered with Odesk on May 31st, and by June 4th I had work. Thanks for the post!

Sorry, could not agree. oDesk promotes slavery. Providers are asked to work for outrageous prices, as low as 50cents/hour. Any decent freelancing site has a minimum budget for any proposal and buyers requesting work for less than that amount have their accounts suspended. But oDesk does nothing of the sort. They have laid down no policy to help providers. It is "THE WORST" freelancing site. I am signed up on Elance, Guru and oDesk and I cannot wait to cancel my account on oDesk but they won't even do that. Buyers practically wants providers to work for free and unfortunately some providers are willing to do so.

Odesk is nice

In my opinion, ODesk is awesome! In less than 1 month, I have earned over $400 and would recommended this site to anyone looking to work from home and earn real money.

hello, im new to odesk.. but im learning fast.. its nice to know some odesk workers here..