Fortunately, I had direct contact with the client and he paid me through an online payment platform. My client had used a bank account from a different country than the country listed on his freelancer account. They banned his account without even notifying him. I couldn't even reach him through their platform.
And stay away from freelancer.com. You can always find new clients there, but contact them directly after that becasue, obviously they don't have any kind of protection for us so, why should we pay some additional fees if we are going to get screwed anyway ?
This is a legitimate claim. You might wanna take a look at this[0]. I've blocked out the project title and the buyer's name, becasue i don't want my real name associate with my HN handle.
Not sure how you got the "unpaid advertisement" idea from my original comment. That is a complete opposite of an advertisement. However, it advertises the fact that you can get work done for free. Maybe that's what you are trying to say :)
They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other.
I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they suddenly reversed both payments at the end of the last month.
They should validate/verify payments before accepting/processing them, not after a month after completing a project.
Basically, i just did a job for free. no one's going to pay for my time. they have 0 seller protection.
BTW, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect.
Thanks for the reply. it has been a while and i don't even remember the username of that account.it wasn't that important to me (plus, a relatively new account) so i didn't bother contacting HN.
Fortunately, I had direct contact with the client and he paid me through an online payment platform. My client had used a bank account from a different country than the country listed on his freelancer account. They banned his account without even notifying him. I couldn't even reach him through their platform.
Read through the comments on the parent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677 Specially this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626790
And stay away from freelancer.com. You can always find new clients there, but contact them directly after that becasue, obviously they don't have any kind of protection for us so, why should we pay some additional fees if we are going to get screwed anyway ?
Good Luck!