Programming Hell

The escrow scam

The escrow that I’m referring to is the one that freelance sites use to persuade webmasters and programmers into believing that their freelance site is safe to use.

I’ve been on both ends of the escrow scam. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t call escrow a scam. Some of the sites are scams.

As a programmer, I am still waiting to receive about $200 from a shady webmaster who refuses to release escrow. In fact, after informing this site of the problem, even, they informed the webmaster that he needed to pay up. As I said, it’s been nearly year and no payment. So, where is that money? It’s still in escrow. That means that the site still has it/has spent it.

As a webmaster, I’ve been bullied into paying for services from crappy programmers who could not follow simple instructions, which included an emphasis on having the job completed by a certain time. I wound up paying, because my account was frozen and I needed to communicate with other reliable programmers so that I could finish another job.

I’ll never work on a freelance site again. It sort of defeats the whole purpose of being a freelancer when you have to answer to someone (the freelance site). In addition, you have to worry about whether or not you’ll be paid in the end.

To webmasters, my advice is to stay away from them unless you have the time and money to get someone else to do the job if it fails.

To programmers, I would strongly urge you to not use any freelance site unless they give you the option of keeping them out of the payment process. You don’t want to do work online for someone, then have the payment held in escrow while someone else determines if you’ll be paid.