Proposal Credits being refunded
Good evening PPH!
I have used a lot of my proposal credits this month bidding on jobs that never actually end up being rewarded. I appreciate if another Seller is awarded then we lose our credit. I also notice that if a Buyer cancels a job, we have our credit refunded which I think is great.
What I am concerned about are the jobs which are never actually awarded to anyone. They are not refunded and we (Sellers) have essentially wasted a credit.
My concern is that other Sellers may put up lots of jobs - with the intent of other Buyers using up their credits, subsequently making us run out - meaning they are essentially gaining an upper hand once a Buyers credits have run out.
Is it possible if you would consider the possibility of refunding the credit back to the Buyer say after a 10 day period - should a Project not be awarded within that time?
Thank you for considering my improvement to your website.
Kind regards,
Tom
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Official comment
Many thanks for your suggestion. I will pass it on to our product team.
Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.
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Good afternoon Kelly,
Thank you very much for your response. I really hope you decide to implement my suggestion. Out of my 15 Proposal credits this month I've got 1 left and I'd say 11 of those are unawarded projects from weeks ago.
Thanks once again, have a great day.
Kind regards, Tom
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Also, to be very honest I would have no problem buying proposal credits. I've wanted to get the £30 100 package but my concern/worry is that most of those will be used up on non-awarded jobs which means it would essentially be a waste of money.
Thanks again for your consideration.
Kind regards, Tom
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Mark, Thomas et al.
Agree totally. PPH have absolutely NO incentive to address this issue, nor are they likely to do so.
If they have been increasing commission rates steadily, this is the other end in silently squeezing money out of sellers for proposals that gradually get wasted,
They give NO though to the inordinate amount of time wasted by sellers wading through job ads and sending proposals. Any suggestion I've made to this area has been met by the automated 'Kelly' shrug of the shoulders.
From my own monitoring of proposals sent ( and clarifications ) to jobs it is now at over 90% for non-awarding of jobs by buyers.
This is absolutely inexcusable and not sustainable. Many, many UK freelancers have left because it's just not worth it to waste so much time. Myself included.
Until the area of job quality control, barrier to entry ( buyer credits ), and a significant change to the proposal quota is made, I for one will NOT be buying any additional proposals.
If a job is NOT awarded i.e. the job expires after 30days then the proposals should be refunded and allowed to roll. This is the only way the PPH will get the neccessary jolt to take this area of seller dissatisfaction more seriously.
Thanks
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It's not the complexity, but the weighting towards buyers, Freelancers are treated as a cash cow, instead of the core clients that their business is built on,
Not sustainable. Eventually the site will be filled with cheap tyrekicker job ads that never get awarded, and responded to enmasse by subcontinent 'freelancers' with cut and paste replies. It's pretty close now.
Lots for good devs over there no question, but I've had clients shocked by the mass and quality of the shotgun responses they get many within seconds / minutes of the ad posted with shockingly inaccurate quotes which skew the real requirements and give the buyer a wholly invalid perception of the dev costs.
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I have just been charged a proposal credit for an invited job - should this happen?
I have bought some credits this month (something I usually avoid like the plague) and so I am watching them carefully. it essentially costs me a pound every time I make a proposal.
I have never received a proposal credit back - despite never receiving an email to confirm a job has been awarded to someone else.
Perhaps it might make sense for all of us to add a small line to the bottom of our proposals - something like:
Please note: if you decide not to award this job (for any reason) please mark it as cancelled. That way we all receive our proposal credits back and can carry on our hard work :)
Feel free to copy and paste.
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Agreed. The proposal system is broken at the moment, or at least weighted against the people who prop up PPH's business - the buyers.
From the ridiculous new 'High Value' jobs - who thought this up and monitor which jobs it applies to should be 'shot at dawn' - to the ridiculously low barrier for entry and quality control on buyers/jobs, and the 'job contests' - just another name for the obscent spec work category.
Essenitially PPH's business model is to get as many jobs on the system as possible, and to get the buyers to quote for them. Damn the quality control and the fact that an ever increasing number never get awarded.
I've been tracking the responses to proposals / clarifications for a while and keeping stats. Not pleasant reading, and won't be for PPH's CEO if/when the resultant post/article reaches the tabloids.
PPH's only comeback has been the %awarded value on the seller, which is worse than useless.
Don't expect any different esp. if it affects PPH's bottom line.
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One year has passed and nothing has changed.
You send a detailed proposal 15 minutes after the job was posted, and it never even gets read. The job never gets awarded. You end up wasting about 14 out of 15 proposal credits. You buy more and the same happens.
Basically PPH's only worry is to get buyers to post jobs, so sellers can spend their money on applying. I wonder why there is no effort on getting buyers to award the job. 20% is a ridiculously high percentage and getting more jobs awarded would mean more money for PPH.
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No, if anything it is now worse. They have expanded the 'High Value' jobs categegory to include a wider range of jobs, as well as other penalties.
The bottom line is that PPH are probably making more from sellers buying proposal credit packages, than they do from commission from completed projects.
I won't buy any additional proposals while this persists, and until the unilaterally despised High Value system is scrapped.
Project take up by buyers is at an all time low, and looking at the proposals sent to UK-based jobs 95% of applicants are non-UK based, and a few others I know are UK fronts for non-UK agancies.
Estimate <5% of jobs are awarded in the Web Dev category.
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I joined only yesterday and one quick look through some briefs the whole process of bidding reminded me of a site called “Imagebrief”. Photography based, so you’d put work samples of
similar types to the brief up and then put your price in. Within seconds there could be 50-100 propsals from India for sometimes a third of your own proposal quotation, effectively killing your quote. Other than PPH any reccommendations for good freelance opportunities? -
No one at PPH listens to feedback.
It comes as no surprise that people are flocking to sites like upwork and guru. They also charge exorbitant amount of commission but atleast 90% jobs are not fake (like here on PPH).
I am sure PPH makes more money when people like us buy proposal credits then from commissions.
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I'm glad I've stumbled onto this thread. Only been an member of PPH for over a month and am already thinking twice. Am wasting so many credits on proposals and I never get told if they're being awarded to someone else. That way I'd cancel my proposal myself, just to clear the list clogging up my workstream.
I've had a few invitations to submit proposals too. Within minutes of me getting the message, I'll click on the link only to find text saying "this project has been cancelled". Last week I was on PPH at the moment an job invite arrive and checked immediately and then the text was there saying it's cancelled.
Is this a problem on PPH? I feel they're either fake adverts posted to waste sellers' time. No way a job can go that fast.
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The bottom line is that the proposal credit system is a primary revenue stream for PPH, so they have no incentive at all to change it.
The more jobs there are - real or fake - the more proposals in general over the low monthly allowance are required. There used to be a cheap 100credt bundle which they quietly dispensd with.
The percentage of real/fake jobs is secondary to the vast amount of tyreckicker ads which never get allocated. Again they have changed their display methods so that post-30day jobs are harder to keep track of, unless to keep an external record.
On the other hand is the number of cheap jobs - often with complex tasks - that somehow very quickly get allocatted, often to the same group of sellers.A very fishy shill practce that PPH don't give a shit about, They make minimal commission and the seller/buyer gets a boost up the rankings.
Purchase credts at your own risk. Keep a track of those you apply for -as well as a random selection of others. Keep a total of allocates/cancelled/expired over a rolling 30 days. You'll be surprised, and a little sickened.
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PPH should start tracking on the buyer statistics not just the % awarded, but the % cancelled.
Ebay note number of retracted purchases, this should be the same.
To draft a quality proposal, with appropriate notes, and more important, exclusions that are not included in the fixed price offer should the need arise or they be required, takes time.
To just submit a "yea, we'll do everything for X" is a liability and unprofessional.
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