freelancer.com

freelancer.com Withholding Money by Requiring English Documents from a Non-English Country Internet

8th of Nov, 2010 by User492518

Hello, I can tell you for sure that Freelancer is Holding peoples money. As they currently are holding mine. While I will admit that I did unknowing break the rules by accepting money from a Provider who I hired for a project. He asked to be paid through a different payment option after I already sent him the money. So he transferred the money back to my freelancer account. I then paid him through the other payment processor as requested for the same project. This was more than a month ago. Now when I tried to withdrawal my remaining balance (I also worked as a Provider) my account has been Suspended. Freelance has asked me to submit the following to Prove who I am. Government ID: I sent my drivers licensees Explanation: Why I accepted the money from the other person. A Photo: I was sent a code and asked to write the code on a piece of paper, while holding this paper and my ID I was to take a photo and send it. Just like being booked for jail!!! I did this and I received a response this morning that they could not accept it because they need an ID English. I would like to point out that I have been using my account for 2+ years and that I am living in Ukraine. There is no way for me to get an English copy of any of my ID's. As far as I am concerned this is clearly an a tempt to hold my money indefinitely as they very well know I can not provide this document.

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Comments

4456 days ago by FairTrade

I had the same experience. They are now withholding 350 dollars from my hard earned cash.
If you read the terms& conditions carefully, they do say that they can ask for all these documents.

It's their attitude that makes you feel that you are being interrogated by the police. And their policy of asking for the documents TOO LATE, only after your account is loaded with cash!

Maybe they are obliged by the law to ask for such documents, but they can ask for them upfront, or at least, display notifications from the beginning, that registration is not complete until you provide these documents. Instead, they let you do all the work and then they bully you.

Legally they are correct, but I would never do business with a party that presents late charges and late demands. They probably don't even return the cash to the paying party, and keep it all themselves.