Got Scammed On oDesk

Sorry to hear about your situation.

I've been jipped on Odesk before, but for a far less dollar amount.

I don't know how to help you... sorry - I just wanted to say good luck and I hope you find a resolution soon.

Blinking unfortunately you're probably going to have to chalk this up as a lost. I'm assuming odesk TOS says they're allowed to take from your bank account, if it doesn't you really have three options.

1)Contact odesk about this and tell them you want your money back
1)Get a lawyer and have them fire off demands and threaten a lawsuit (in terms of actually going to court if they refuse, is probably not worth it)
2)Contact the agency that issues Odesk's business license for your state, forget the name maybe someone else can tell you but read about people here doing that for Paypal when they withheld their funds and it got that cleared up fast

Also IMHO you can't really expect those with power to not abuse it, instead the trick is to remove the power from them and then they're no longer a threat, and you can do this with odesk by making sure the bank account you have linked with them rarely has any money in it, in the future.

honestly, it sounds to me like you didn't not actively keep tabs on what was going on very good.

odesk has a grace period to dispute earnings. For some reason you failed to check their work during the grace period. When you don't file complaints and stay on top of things in a very timely manner, you forfeit some of your rights to mediation via odesk.

and if i am reading this right, this problem was from 4 months ago. Meaning you showed a negative balance of 2k in your odesk account for 4 months and just thought the problem would go away? That rarely happens.

Wait something doesn't sound right. How exactly did odesk "force" an echeck payment from your Paypal? If you terminated the billing agreement within your paypal account then there should have been no way for them to do this. Perhaps you could open a paypal dispute?

sorry for your loss.
that happened to me too. NEVER LEAVE AN OPEN CONTRACT WITH ANYONE ON THESE SITES. THEY WILL SCAM YOU.
MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE BAD FEEDBACK TO MAKE SURE THEY NEVER WORK AGAIN. I ONLY WORK WITH 5.0 FEEDBACK ON ODESK.
SEE IF YOUR BANK CAN HELP YOU WITH THE BAD CHARGE. MY ADVISE.....................ALAWAYS USE YOUR CREDIT CARD SO THEY HELP IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG.

Try Elance for your next project.

Sorry that happened to you. I'd always heard good things about oDesk.

David nailed it. You need to be careful who you associate with. I'm sure this isn't the first time that the group you hired worked like that. Did you perform the proper research beforehand?

Ignoring the problem certainly didn't help.

My husband and I had a similar problem but on a different Freelance site. We wrote on their FB page and that got them to take notice. We had found a discrepancy in their terms so maybe try reading over their policy. Hope things work out for you. Were your contractors using the time tracker for hourly? I've read oDesk guarantees workers pay on hourly but not fixed. Did you make sure to follow-up with the leads they gave you before invoicing? Usually if it happened with one the contract would normally be terminated...or did you have them send you a bunch of leads/sales at once and then invoice?

Sorry to hear that. I am with odesk for quite sometime already, maybe it just happened that you dealt with wrong contractors. This is very sad indeed as most contractors do their part to keep their reputation and odesk's reputation as clean as possible

If i read your concern right, your problem is already 4 months old? you should have settle this immediately and filed a dispute right after you find out about their bad work. That is why Odesk have a grace period for every contract for the clients to review the work done by the contractors.

Sorry for your lost. But do not deem Odesk as some scamming freelancing website

There is nothing wrong with odesk. The problem is with the scammers. I have been working in odesk for last 2 years. There are professional hazard in every profession. People like us who are in IM, their biggest professional hazard is not getting paid after working. Prevention is better than cure. Before working with a client, do not ever deny their history and feedback.

I got scammed by a company called socialadr and all I did was tell Paypal and they had the money back in my account in 3 days.

As someone who has worked through a freelance site for years (as a worker, not a buyer), all I can say is that there are ways to protect yourself (as a buyer).

1. Give very clear instructions in your bid request. Vague requests often get bidders who really have no clue as to what you want, or what will be expected from them. Personally, if the bid request isn't specific enough concerning what is expected from me (the worker), I don't place a bid at all. When those that do bid are awarded the job with vague instructions, the buyer usually isn't going to get what they want or expected. That bid request will be used in the event of an arbitration - and you need to word it carefully to ensure that you are covered if the work done does not meet your stated guidelines.

2. When selecting a person or persons to award the bid to, take your time! Don't just look at how much they are bidding, or how wonderful their little note to you sounds. Go look at their work history. I have never worked through oDesk, so I'm not sure how it is set up, but at vWorker, you can go look at anyone's profile, and see what past buyers had to say about their experience with a worker. Workers can also see past experiences from other workers with buyers.

3. Keep all of the communication through the site, so that you have a record of it in the event of an arbitration. If you have conversations on skype with your worker, copy and paste the entire conversation, and put it in the messages on the freelance site, just to have a running record. This protects you and the worker. Ask the worker to respond to the message with the copied conversation stating that it is a true and correct copy. I know vWorker states in their terms of service that they can only consider conversation that has taken place through the site, but this gets around that rule if the worker agrees that the copied conversation took place as posted. Do this as you go! Don't wait until a problem crops up.

4. When work is done/submitted, check it. If you are not happy with it, try to work out the problem with your worker. If they cannot or will not make corrections or adjustments, open an arbitration, and read everything that you are sent from the arbitrator carefully and immediately, and make absolutely sure that you are following the rules of the arbitration. You could lose the arbitration (even if you were in the right) simply by not following one of the rules of the arbitration process.

I have personally only had two arbitrations, both of which were self mediated. Those occurred when my mother died, and I needed to cancel two jobs that I was working on, and the buyers were of course understanding and supportive, and this did not affect my rating at all. I have, however, had a few friends who had to go through the arbitration process, and what I've stated here is what I've learned from them and their experiences. One was a buyer.

Other than this, the OP should contact PayPal and dispute the charge. Additionally, you should never pay upfront for any work through a freelance site that uses an escrow system (don't release funds without checking the work, or without the work being completed).

Hope this helps someone.