oDesk

I have been working in ODESK for two years. I had the unfortunate mishap of complaining to their customer service and their Odesk Marketplace of my recent buyer (also known as my employer) and some of my co-workers making fun of my ethnicity and my being a disabled person other than having a hairlip. If I could draw your attention to their ODESK Marketplace regulations, it bespeaks of two things: GUARANTEED PROTECTION from work and harassment of any form. When I complained about the buyer's behavior, what happened was that Customer Service referred my case to their Marketplace and I was asked to submit my evidences from pictures (JPEG/PNG) to chat transcripts of any form if available. I have done all of that. While awaiting the result of the investigation, WITHOUT WARNING, ODESK SUDDENLY PERMANENTLY SUSPENDED MY ACCOUNT. I was the victim and the complaining party and this is what they do to complainants. This horrible story just tells you that ODESK is BIASED if you will comp... Read more

oDesk is one of the best e-working platform. Best thing about oDesk is that it gives equal opportunities to the new-comers. How??? New comers can take unlimited tests and they can increase their job quota to the maximum without paying anything. However on other sites, to increase the quota, people need to pay some amount 'in terms of upgrading membership' oDesk has the most simple process amongst all e-working sites and is easy to navigate. If people are doing things right on it, they are most likely to find the projects soon and continuously. I myself got the project very first day and I am established contractor/freelancer on oDesk. I am in a good position to compare different e-working sites, unbiased, because I have tried them all and i don't know i was lucky with oDesk or what but it really paid off. Paypal is widely used to withdraw payments, however where paypal doesn't work, moneybookers, western union, Master debit card and Payneer Cards are their to assist the situation. ... Read more

NEVER, EVER USE ODESK FOR ANYTHING, ANYTIME!!! I HAVE JUST BEEN THROUGH THE MOST HORRIFIC AND COSTLY EXPERIENCE OF MY ENTIRE ADULT LIFE WORKING WITH ODESK. LAST YEAR, I HIRED AN INDIAN WEBSITE DEVELOPER THEY HAD RECOMMENDED. HIS WORK WAS SO UNPROFESSIONAL AND SHODDY, I REALIZED AT ONCE THAT ALL OF THE SO-CALLED "SKILLS" HE LISTED WERE ALL TOTAL FABRICATIONS. AFTER FIRING HIM FOR GROSS INCOMPETENCE, I HAD TO STILL DISPUTE HIS CHARGES FOR UNUSABLE WORK WITH ODESK, SUCCESSFULLY WINNING MY CASE. BUT INSTEAD OF CLOSING MY ACCOUNT WITH THIS PATHOLOGICAL LIAR, THEY LEFT THE ACCOUNT OPEN, AND I JUST REALIZED FROM MY BANK THAT HE HAS BEEN MAKING FALSE CLAIMS AND CHARGING WEEKLY "WORK" TO MY BANK DEBIT CARD. WHAT CAME NEXT IS BEYOND BELIEF. IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT THEY HAD PROOF OF HIS WRONGDOING IN THE FORM OF MY FORMAL DISPUTE THAT THEY HAD DECIDED IN MY FAVOR, ODESK DID NOTHING BUT SEND THE PERPETRATOR AN EMAILED FORM LETTER, SUGGESTING THAT HE "GET BACK TO ME." AFTER DOZENS SUCH RE... Read more

Odesk is definitely a great opportunity to work from home temporarily after you just lost your job or just looking to supplement your income. I like this company because freelancers are paid hourly and can work according to their availablity. I post work from home opportunities regularly on my site and highly recommend Odesk to all of my readers.

0 stars. Working with oDesk was the biggest mistake of my entire professional career. I attempted to get my website converted to HTML5 by no less than THREE of their contractors. Since they were all from India, language was a major problem. But worse still was their amazing ability to lie through their teeth about their website skills. None of them were truthful or accurate, and NONE of them were able to finish my job correctly or professionally. The last imbecilic moron I contacted totally misrepresented his programming skills, then had the incredible temerity to present me with a big bill for a totally incomplete site that I couldn't even use!!! I wound up having to formally dispute payment for this job, and thankfully the the oDesk administrators agreed with me after having read the many frustrated messages I placed to these individuals. They are responsive to your questions if you can get through to them, but as mentioned often, oDesk appears to have no customer service ph... Read more

Terrible customer service. I have spent many hours on the phone and online trying to resolve an issue. Spent a week waiting for a resolution, still nothing now. I was promised multiple times to have a resolution within 24 hours. It never came. Now, I am sooooo angry about being lied to and mislead, you find me writing here. You cannot be notified when someone leaves you a review, so unless you are a paranoid narcissist, you will get the shaft from helping people by giving them a chance when they have no reviews and they fail to perform. They can be angry, hurt your profile, and walk away from their empty profile thinking that they can speak English well. But all of your hard work goes in the toilet. So you get hurt, they may walk away with a small upfront fee, and your profile is forever scarred. Notice how most of the fans actually work for odesk? How many more of these five star reviews did not disclose their affiliation?

I am a U.S. resident who used Odesk for outsource programmers. I had a terrible experience at oDesk. I wasted about $5,000. Was it oDesk's fault? Unfortunately, yes partially. oDesk lets Providers hide their negative feedback. What is the point of the feedback system then? Many of the programmers would have excellent feedback on a bunch of small projects. They then rip you off on a large project and hide their negative feedback. I contacted oDesk about this but they have no plans on changing their system. I was extremely disappointed in their service. Another very disappointing feature: You can only dispute hours from the last week's work. You can never dispute hours before then. Again, this is terrible for large projects that take more than a week to finish. This means they can rip you off weeks after weeks and you can only dispute the final week's hours. This is exactly what happened to me. Why did I get ripped off? Because the Provider had excellent feedback but if you take a clos... Read more

There is no way to communicate with potential employees. I am not allowed to talk on Skype or any other way. Later, when i hire these people, it turns out they have no knowledge at all. oDesk customer service is horrible as well. The only thing oDesk is good at is charging 10% and closing the accounts.

It's impossible to compete with people who are willing to work for $.02 an hour! Odesk's software is from hell--I can't EVEN seem to get it removed from my system. They have no uninstall program or [malicious] software removal tool available. grrrr. It's impossible to get a hold of a real live person when you need to. Odesk is a nice idea, but that's about it.

Disclaimer: I am currently a member of the oDesk Support Staff. However, what I intend to share is my experience as both a provider and a buyer... I signed up for oDesk in the fall of 2007. I began working very sporadically shortly after. By Spring of 2008 I was busier than I ever anticipated. Using the oDesk model I was able to hire people to work with me. I have worked on both fixed rate and hourly jobs and have encountered no issues with working, with being paid or with the 'monitoring' system that so many find offensive. As a provider I have found oDesk staff members to be helpful, offer assistance as needed. I love the fact that if I run across a questionable job opening I can flag it and oDesk will review it. I also love the guaranteed payment on hourly jobs (although I also work on a number of fixed rate jobs). In spite of many complaints (especially from new users) about rates on oDesk, I have found most buyers are willing to negotiate a fair rate. One of my favorite t... Read more

** Full Disclosure: I now work for oDesk, but my review is solely based on my prior experience as both a buyer and a provider ** For buyers: oDesk is a great tool for both finding great providers AND managing their tasks. They offer two payment models: fixed price and hourly. If you have a small project with clear specifications and guidelines, a fixed priced job may be perfect for you. If you have a larger project with unclear specifications, or if you require consulting, hourly projects are great for that. The benefit of fixed priced jobs is that you have complete control over when and how much to pay. Some providers request an upfront payment (which is understandable), but once the initial upfront payment has been paid, you have full control over the payment schedule. The downsides to this is that 1) if your scope of work changes over time, you may need to work out new payment structures with the provider, and 2) you do not have the added benefit of the Team client for time ... Read more

I'm a web developer and programmer, and Odesk allows me to do something that would have been very difficult without: network with literally anyone in the world instantly, with the assurance that I may bill an hourly. I don't need to verify the person is who they say they are, because the billing process is handled for me, and payment methods are registered before hand. If a person ever did decide to take off, Odesk would cover it anyway, like an insurance policy. I think of Odesk as my agent. Although there are many aspects to the service, the most important are: 1. Find potential customers, and provide a means for those customers to find me. 2. Keep track of all my hours, and provide reporting of hours performed. Odesk is like a dual-broker in a real-estate transaction: it works for both parties, and will negotiate settlements if there is a disagreement. 3. Billing. Billing happens automatically every Monday. I have money deposited into my bank account every Thursday. There ... Read more

It's great! I decided to turn my back on the corporate world and take up a career as a freelance writing. If it weren't for oDesk, I couldn't have done it. After signing up and taking a few tests, I had my first job in about a week. oDesk has allowed me to pay my bills, become a professional writer, and concentrate on graduate school.

Here's what you get with oDesk that you don't get on sites like elance, rac, gaf, and whatever other bidding sites out there: PAID weekly for the TIME you put into your project...and best of all, payment is guaranteed! None of the other job sites have the balls to offer that guarantee. SOFTWARE: oDesk takes a lot of rap for their software and the types of jobs offered on the site. I don't mind it, though. It takes 6 screenshots per hour and counts the number of keystrokes and mouse clicks that happen for each 10-minute time span. It doesn't read my emails, it doesn't scan my hard drive for pr0n, it doesn't hijack my twitter account. Seriously, I've worked in IT departments where I had to install software that did all of that. oDesk's software is nothing compared to that, and at least oDesk tells you what they're doing with their software! All it does is counts clicks and screen captures the active monitor. I have two monitors setup so I can still watch TV and IM while working... Read more

As a freelance writer, I've done my share of trawling random web sites for work. The work on offer on some sites is so low-paid it's clear buyers don't care about quality, tone of voice or other things I hold dear, and I swiftly move on. Other sites have strange models that limit the number of jobs you can apply for without paying some horrendous monthly fee, when a quick scroll through the opportunities makes it clear they've actually very little work in that area, no matter what the site may claim. What I love about oDesk is that it caters to everyone in my market, from buyers of quality articles and copy to people who want quick rewrites for SEO and don't much care about spelling or grammar so long as it passes Copyscape. There truly is work for everyone out there, and it can be easily found and pitched for on oDesk. Better still, it costs me nothing to have a provider profile on oDesk: I simply quote my hourly rate when applying and oDesk put their commission on top. Yes the... Read more