After leaving UpWork, I signed up to Freelancer. Their fees are much higher and not much decent projects, but anyway, tried my best to offer professional services there with competitive price and finally got a customer. His previous programmer wasn’t able to get iOS location services work in background mode and as I had done such kind of thing before, obviously I was able to get it work. But customer wasn’t much satisfied, because he had expected the timer to work on background mode which is restricted by Apple. Anyway, after some discussion he paid for my work.
But to get the money back to my PayPal account, they demanded me to confirm a code in my mobile phone? This phone number given to them during registration wasn’t anymore active, because Maroc and Roman gangs rob those kind of things in Barcelona. Actually, I have no need for a mobile phone anyway, why I have to constantly spend my money on those things to get robbers supported.
It isn’t obligatory for a person to own a mobile phone and I assume, that those businesses has deal with mobile operators to get them more customers. There isn’t any need for me to have a phone, because I use Internet and WiFi. And instead having an expensive iPhone from Apple, I’m just using less expensive iPod and this has been enough for my needs to test apps, use Social Networking sites, read email and eBooks, listen music, etc.
So, the money was there nearly a year until I asked phone from a friend to get this sorted out.
But, when trying to change my phone, they asked ID verification. I made a photo of my Estonian ID card and send it to them. But they rejected it, because my given address was in Spain and I should have some Spanish document and not the Estonian one? As far I’m aware, I can reside in any EU country and will not need to change my citizenship to the country, where I wan’t to stay! And they told that they accept only passports. Why I need a passport when I have no intentions to travel outside EU?
What next, maybe soon they start to ask electricity bills as using a solar panel enough for your power needs isn’t allowed by some freelancer job site?
Anyway, as I’m unable to use their services anymore, I asked them to close my account and return prepaid monthly service fees, which they reject again. So, practically they have made their business model to constantly charge monthly service fees from customers unable to use their services, because they can refuse to close people’s accounts?
I encourage every decent hacker to shut such kind of scam sites down!
I have had same kind of experience previously with Goodreads. When I launched my book, I created also my book page there. But some sick people there started to put negative reviews and rated my book with 1 star (probably not even reading it), so obviously I wasn’t much happy with it. And when using their service myself, I constantly got spam from them to update my progress on books, that I didn’t like and obviously after some pages I discontinued to read them. I’m not a masochist and obviously their site is dedicated to such kind of persons. So, I closed my account and was expecting my books to be removed as well. That didn’t happen. So, I contacted with them asking to remove my books there which they refused. I even sent them my copyright certificate to clear, that my books are in my name and not theirs. But they answered that they have right to list any book they like as they are such kind of Startup? So, probably it needs a court order to get my book pages there deleted and money transferred.
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