Freelancer is a "global crowd sourcing marketplace, which allows potential employers to post jobs that freelancers can then bid to complete." (Wikipedia.)

The company has been characterized by negative reviews and there are many complaints about the company including several blogs that have detailed horrendous stories involving the company. The online consensus is that this is a site to be avoided.

NASA on the other hand, has a history of excellence and is something that Americans should be proud of. They should NOT link themselves with a company as bad as Freelancer.com. NASA has done two projects with Freelancer.com.

Freelancer has even broken the law in it's attempts to cover up the scams it is involved in. As detailed on Wikipedia:

"In December 2015 the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) found Freelancer at fault for breaching the Privacy Act by violating the privacy rights of a former user and awarded that individual $20,000 in aggravated damages when Freelancer employees publicly exposed on Wikipedia and elsewhere the individual's private information, IP addresses, pseudonyms and other details after the individual wrote several critical comments and personal blog posts about the company. OAIC further ordered Freelancer to issue a written apology to the individual and for staff to undergo additional training on the handling of sensitive personally identifiable information. Spokespersons speaking on behalf of the company expressed their intent to appeal the ruling."

This case, gives an idea of what to expect from Freelancer.com. But it does not stop there. The online reviews offer nothing but scathing attacks on the site with an average rating of 2/10 across the board.(Based on aggregation from 7 different websites.)

After reading the online reviews, the top ten complaints about Freelancer.com could be summarized as:

1. Being ripped off by employers. So employers ask you do a job, you accept the work, you do the work, you submit the work to the employer, and then the employer disappears and doesn't pay you.

2. Being charged for projects that are not paid for. So whenever you accept a job, you pay Freelancer.com 10% of the total rate you will be paid. So if you are doing a job for $2,000 you owe Freelancer.com $200. If the employer disappears and you don't get paid as above? You guessed it. You lose $200 which goes straight to Freelancer.com.

3. Being charged by Freelancer.com for "admin fees" that are non-existent. You will be charged for anything and everything. I had money withdrawn from my account ($200) and it was then returned minus $25 for "admin fees." Crazy.

4. Freelancer taking out money from your account for no reason. Many many many people have stories of having saved up money in their account only to log in and to find that it has gone. One person lost $2,000. Freelancer.com then tells them it is because of a "dispute." If the project was a fake, you were paid to do it but then the project is disputed as fake? You guessed it. You lose your money anyway.

5. Freelancer refusing to allow members to withdraw money from their account. Again, I have read many, many, many, stories of people having stored up money and then trying to withdraw it out and Freelancer.com taking weeks to respond and then refusing to allow the withdrawal because of "admin reasons." Someone should sort out their "admin."

6. Slow response from customer service. Don't even bother to contact customer service. The live chat button does not work, and there is no phone number to call for help. You may as well take some coins and plant them in your yard. You stand a better chance of getting your money back that way.

7. Extremely low pay for tasks (sometimes as low as $1 an hour), and mostly menial tasks. I think this is because the site is dominated by members who live in countries where this is seen as a good hourly rate and so they can bid ridiculously low. There is no way I could compete with these low prices and so rarely was able to bid.

8. No form of dispute arbitration. Again. Don't bother. The dispute arbitration makes Elmo look like he has a PhD in Mathematical philosophy.

9. Fake reviews on members so what looks like a good employee is actually a scam. This one is crazy. So I did some work for someone and left a review. They hired me for a second time. On the second project they disappeared after I worked for like 25 hours on a project. I contacted them over and over again. No response. So I asked Freelancer.com to help. Dispute arbitration? See the comment about Elmo above. The result? No money for me but my REVIEW STAYED UP. I was not asked to review them again and I asked Freelancer.com to take down my positive review but they declined. So they ripped me off but STILL GOT the great review. They carried on putting up projects and I am sure are ripping people off to this day.

10. People are verified by they are clearly using fake IDs. This is also common. With many reviews of Freelancer.com, people have said that they have worked with only verified employers to try to avoid scams. But then the verified user scammed them. When they are then scammed by a verified user, they then tried to contact the user outside of Freelancer.com so searched google only to find that the identity is false and does not exist. Also people have had negative experiences with the whole verification process. Sometimes Freelancer.com insists that members get verified. But then members get their accounts suspended for not verifying properly and then spend MONTHS trying to get this resolved so that they can get back access to their accounts and money.

All in all, this company is dubious at best, and a scam at worst. It is clearly taking a lot of money from people in as many ways as possible and with no concern for it's members.

NASA needs to completely remove itself from this company and stop working with Freelancer.com. It is NOT A GOOD LOOK!

For more information on the site reviews have a look here (although this was a five miniute google search, I am sure there are many more):

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.freelancer.com

http://fitsmallbusiness.com/freelancer-com-reviews/

http://www.highya.com/freelancer-com-reviews

https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.freelancer.com

https://omnipresentwords.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/freelancer-com-scam-part-i-how-10-cost-me-14000-among-other-misgivings-and-apathy-of-freelancer-com-staff/

http://blog.hubstaff.com/review-of-freelancer-com/

http://fitsmallbusiness.com/freelancer-com-reviews/

http://www.reviewopedia.com/freelancer-com-reviews

http://read2learn.net/freelancer-com-scam-2012/

http://getahindu.blogspot.de/2012/08/can-freelancer.html