New system aimed primarily at matching newer sellers with buyers
So now it seems I have to wait two hours before I can bid for a job. This is extremely unfair. Not only do experienced creatives/designers have to compete with an unfair playing field, ie people offered to do a job for £10 when it is clearly worth £100, we are now not allowed to bid for jobs as soon as they appear on PPH. What kind of system is this?!
Awful. Unfair. Unprofessional. Discriminatory.
Regards
C. Howe
-
Thanks Kelly.
I'm going to keep posting examples of why this system is so frustrating for sellers. This morning, I'm told in an email I've been selected to bid because "You're one of the most qualified Sellers" for a job ... but this seems highly unlikely, as the job is in German, which I don't speak.
Meanwhile, I'm blocked from bidding on a job writing blogs on small business topics - I'm a blogger with specific experience writing on small business topics. I'm told "To be eligible to bid first for similar Jobs in the future update your profile with relevant skills." - but my profile has blog writing as a skill, and is full of references to small business.
Whatever the intention behind the system, the language being used to explain it is misleading and frustrating.
-
I am also fed up of NOT being selected for jobs, for which I am well qualified, that have healthy budgets and then being 'selected' instead for jobs with laughable (or 'cryable', depending on how you look at it) budgets that I wouldn't dream of bidding for. I am a professional, with 30 years of work experience and 3 degrees relevant to my work. I DO NOT work for anywhere near minimum wage, let alone less than the minimum wage.
-
Am I the first to say... I think I can feel an adjustment to the algorithm. I have just received 2 jobs from PPH and they have been spot on. Good price, correct skills. if this carry's on I think I could like this system.
Has anyone else noticed an improvement?
Im CERT 5 and have worked really hard and really silly hours building portfolio, constructing good proposals, being good with clients... and so on. I guess when the algorithm kept sending my jobs that were not in my skill set and for $10. I nearly strangled my cat. Then I see a job which is just right for me on the jobs board and paying £500. I click the job and it says. No, pi**off come back in 2 hours... you getting my point PPH? We work hard to earn more in fees, we work hard to creating the best we can. This is why clients pick us is because they like what they see and like what they hear.
Im not sure if that was a rant or just letting you know how it feels from my position.
But the last to jobs sent through to me have been spot on... fingers crossed and leave them buttons alone PPH developers :)
-
Still not seeing an improvement.
I've just seen a job with a budget of £1.5k for which I am qualified but cannot bid on until the 2 hours are up. There are already 9 bidders so probably not much point in bidding once the 2 hours are up.
The last job I was selected for had a budget of $10 (£6)!!!
-
My personal feeling about this 'preferred bidder' system is that it is an attempt to stall low quality providers from bidding on jobs they have inadequate skills to do. It doesn't reflect well on PPH or any of us when poor quality suppliers are effectively spamming buyers on the off-chance they'll win the job.
I think it would be far better to allow buyers to reject a proposal and provide feedback that would identify problem sellers ("proposal rejected - buyer skills may not be applicable to this task", "proposal rejected - buyer skills may not be up to this task", etc.). PPH could then reduce the free proposals available to sellers that frequently make proposals that have no hope of success. This would make them less inclined to make proposals since they'd need to pay for proposal credits to continue to waste buyers time.
This would be a better system for all of us. PPH currently looks like it's operating some favourites club excluding very capable sellers as well as the rubbish ones. I know it makes me feel like some second-class citizen, rejecting from bidding on jobs I could do and I have a LONG history on PPH, a 97% rating, many thousands of pounds earned and cert 4 (only, LOL).
For me personally, the two hour window of rejection is unlikely to affect my chances of selection, but I hate being identified as someone who shouldn't bid on a job I am perfectly suited for. PPH identifies me as some second-rate seller. That's what bothers me.
PPH should be lean and mean not complicated and distorting the availability of sellers to solve a legitimate problem in the wrong way.
-
It is a pain this new feature and people are clearly annoyed with it as with most of the new changes which haven't really been thought through much at all. I'm getting first refusal on jobs that are nothing to do with what I do , so that's equally frustrating and I do think this and some of the other new features need to be readdressed.
-
Moira
I think that the reason you can't see who has bid during the 2 hour window is simply because nobody has bid yet. Perhaps the selection has gone to loads of people who are not qualified to do the job.
I have seen some jobs with the white box over them that are so niche I was surprised that they had been selected for this 2 hour window at all, as I don't expect there would be a huge number of sellers on PPH with the required experience. For example, I was selectedto send a proposal last week for a job requiring an expert in Patent Law (I'm a graphic designer with NO legal experience). I don't expect that there are all that many Patent Law experts on this site, so why bother restricting the bidding on it at all? Another thing that doesn't make much sense.
-
I hate that my first post is a compliant but so be it. I'm an experienced website designer / developer and have tried to adjust my profile skills to only use tags that conform to the new system. I even sacrificed a few I wanted to keep to show my diversity in hopes of being able to bid on jobs. Yet something I could do in my sleep, like http://www.peopleperhour.com/job/fix-a-website-font-sizes-and-buttons-style-491182 is blocked from me. After reading the various threads, I can now see why.
I'm just wondering how this is going to be addressed and adding my voice of concern and frustration.
-
Sadly like many others I find myself both excluded from jobs that I'm qualified to do and also repeatedly invited to jobs that I am not.
I have yet to receive a single "invite" proposal for a job that I actually have the skill set to do. Clearly there is a massive disconnect in the background database that links jobs with peoples profile and skill set. Even without this I find the system previously worked rather well. By bidding sensibly and working hard on projects I've managed to make Cert 4 in about 4 months. Now I often find myself simply book marking relevant jobs and going back outwith the exclusion period.
The greatest problem is surely that sellers will look at this, consider that there is supposedly a system in place to allow a window for those 'qualified bidders' and then somehow not receiving a bid will then assume that there are in fact no people qualified within that window and all bidders outside it are just chancing a job? It seems hugely detrimental to sellers, buyers, and PPH itself.
-
I agree with each and every word that Fiona has written here:
Please remove this terrible "selected seller" feature, it is not helping any of us - neither the buyers, nor the sellers!
-
I agree with what Roland mentions. I have no legal knowledge but PPH does seem to be going against its own terms. To quote from Roland's answer:
Terms of Website Use ( http://www.peopleperhour.com/static/terms-of-website-use )
“We are solely a marketplace for buyers and sellers to interact. We do not search for, select or introduce buyers and sellers to each other. As a result, we are not regulated under employment law and in the UK the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 or other* employment agency laws do not apply to us*.”
In my understanding PPH-Matching is using a method by which they are ‘searching, selecting’ and ‘introducing’ buyers and sellers to each other in a manner that has little or nothing to do with open and fair markets. The mere idea of a selection algorithm contradicts their statement. This in turn raises the question of their non-regulatory status in implementing ‘Matching’.
I receive invites for presentation jobs worth $10 just because I had done one job with that tag. It is NOT present in my skills currently. And I get no invites for any jobs that have all tags similar to my skillset. There's no way I am going above CERT 2 if this continues -_-
-
Only had a quick look but the CEO of PPH has set up deskdonkie which at a glance is competing with its own sister company by offering introductions without people bidding for the job! So basically, expect a merger very soon on the back of investment. PPH has had to have sever injections of investment to keep afloat. Basically, they are filtering the good from the bad to streamline desk donkie so it offers a better service from the off. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong?
I'll take a closer look at desk donkie in detail and may be totally off the mark.
Mike
-
So, just had a look at desk donkie.com and here's what it offers:
Unlike with existing marketplace models where there is a lot of friction in selection, price setting and delivery, DeskDonkie uses intelligent algorithms to route the work to the most suited available taskers with a proven track record, so the work starts immediately. Delivery is time-boxed so you only pay for results, and price is set dynamically based on availability and demand in real time.
Sound familiar?
Mike
-
Desk Donkie doesn't look good. They are just exploiting the sellers. I am from India (one of the countries from where all the cheap labour comes from apparently) and I would still like to be paid the standard rates, and Desk Donkie takes that away from others too.
It seems like PPH is just a testing platform for algorithms intended to be used on Desk Donkie. Because all the features there are being implemented here, and CRITICIZED, which of course, is ignored.
Let's see how long Desk Donkie lasts for
-
Desk Donkie is really about PPH trying to run as a service bureau. The 'fortunate' sellers invited to participate are essentially a pool of resources on hand to service any jobs that come along. Unlike the main PPH operation, they do care about the quality of people in the pool because they wish to establish this as a quality service.
I find the name offensive and I think it's a very poor choice. I suspect it comes from the heritage of PPH where mastery and nuances of the English language has never been a strong point.
The stated aim of the two-hour lockout to give new sellers better opportunity really flies against other policies at PPH. The commission system is oriented to reward 'frequent fliers' and the quality of long-term sellers is known but for new people is not known. Why would any company now disadvantage those with a great track history in favour of one with little to no history?
I think part of this conundrum is about the complaints PPH sees and the way they react. There is plenty of competition in PPHs market otherwise new sellers wouldn't find getting the first few jobs difficult, so there is an ample supply of sellers. Problem is that sellers that can't get that job straight off make a lot of noise about it indicating there's a problem. PPH hasn't realised that it's a problem for that seller not a problem for PPH. Their solution to that 'foot on the ladder' issue then becomes a problem for everyone.
It's also possible that buyers are complaining about the quality of sellers making proposals. This would explain the picking of people in order to raise quality. It doesn't explain why they would then try and mix in sellers with little history.
Imagine if one of the golf courses was over-subscribed, so they barred established members for two hours a day, picked a few favourites and signed up new members who might not even be able to play. This is what PPH are doing here.
It's really a crazy system, isn't it?
-
Personally I don't find that buyers offering jobs that I find attractive ( ie rather better than £6 ) jump in awarding jobs within two hours of posting, but other niches may be different. I don't go for featured proposals, so in many cases a buyer won't see my proposal until the end of the day in any event. I just miss out on being at the top of the queue. For a buyer really to see my proposal in a timely manner, they need to be online looking at the PPH system.
It is rare for me to bid on jobs I can't get so I run a big surplus of free bid credits every month.
-
Lisa, welcome to the club.
If you consider how many sellers there are that match a given criteria, it's inevitable that only a very few will be picked by PPH to be put forward. Just having the right criteria is no guarantee of being picked by PPH for the privilege of bidding within the first two hours.
I am always coming across jobs where I am excluded from bidding, even if I am a perfect fit.
Post is closed for further comments because the limit of comments per post has been reached.
Comments
1902 comments