I have been using freelancer for MANY years and have over 100 5 star reviews as a freelancer and 38 5 star reviews as an employer. Everything was great until last week and this week, they handled a situation VERY BADLY, in fact its still ongoing and no resolution has been placed yet.
Let me recount the events for you guys:
I went on vacation to mexico in early october, I came back and realized that my location had changed to bangaladesh, I thought that was weird, but in my mind I just thought that freelancer did that because they wanted me to re-verify my address which was still kind of weird logic but I didn't think too much of it at first.
Next, I logged into my email and found emails saying I tried to add a new payment method and I was trying to withdraw to that payment method. I thought that was very weird.
Third, because of the strange activity I changed my password and notified freelancer that I believe my account was hacked and they should resore everything how it was previous to the hack occourance, which by the way was the same exact settings I have had on my account for many YEARS!
Freelancer replied to that by shutting down my account completely, asking me questions, taking 24 or more hours to reply each time, going back and forth with more questions. Then once the questions were over they asked me to send them proof of my residence, my photo id with a code attached, they approved my documents and gave me my account back. I thought to my self, finally this terrible ordeal they put me through is over, IT WAS NOT OVER! Now I was not able to withdraw funds from my account or cancel milestones either! I had a customer who was under dispute with me I had agreed to cancel their milestone and I could not do it, I also had funds that I could not take. This is terrible and stopped me from doing any more business on freelancer.
Now Freelancer keeps asking me for the same documents which I already provided the first time to get my account back, they ask the same things over and over to the point where they will soon put me out of business.
I live with my mother, her name is on the utility bills, I sent copies of my bank statement, my photo ID, my face to match and their silly little key code which is completely un neccesary but I sent that too and still they are not happy even after I already sent it to them when they first froze my account and they already approved it...
I don't know what to say, maybe freelancer just no longer wants me :(
Hello Aram, it is unfortunate to hear that your account was compromised. My name is Marcus and I'm from Freelancer.com. Verification is done to ensure that the account access will be given only to the rightful account holder. I wish to look into your account and help you in completing the verification process. Please send me an email to marcusc@freelancer.com with your username. I look forward hearing from you.