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
-
Just when you think this is 2 hour embargo is the height of folly, you realise things are worse than you thought:
-
Well isn't that nice of them? helping the new guys. Hands up who amongst my fellow level 5's, or 4's or even 3's got any 'help' when we first started except being told we could improve our rankings by promoting the site?
They have made s**toads of money out of us and now we are tossed to one side and to try and keep us happy they send us emails for jobs we don't have the skills for or the ones we can apply carry the kind of wages a money wouldn't get out of bed for never mind a professional freelancer. As for this new video feature, its a perverts paradise and wrong on SO many levels;"Hi my names Deb, I am the best person for this job for all the reasons cited in my profile which you could have read in the time you have wasted watching this poxy video that tells you sod all about my writing skills but DOES lets you know I am a 40 something brunette".
-
This isn't a case anymore of wether this new skill feature is a good or a bad thing, it is simply a case of this skill system not working. I add a skill to my profile but yet cannot bid on the relevant job. I find it staggering that a business can introduce a feature like this and not test it and iron out bugs before implementing. I find it even worse that with all the problems lots of other people are having with it too, this has still not been fixed.
This happens regularly with myself, I have skills filled out in my profile and yet cannot send proposals for the relevant jobs. I have built up to s cert 5 and now find I have to wait 2 hours to send a proposal.
-
I have skills filled out in my profile and yet cannot send proposals for the relevant jobs
This is entirely intentional.
PPH (do correct me if I'm wrong), are taking a buyers job, crossmatching the supposed skills required by the job and then selecting from the pool of freelancers available a number of sellers to invite to make a proposal for that job. That group of invited favourites, err.. chosen sellers, will be composed of a mix of newbies and more established sellers.
Lets suppose the job is about writing and for arguments sake there are 250 writers on PPH with no current jobs.
PPH might invite, say 25 sellers from the pool of 200 that were identified as candidates for the job.
This means that 225 writers perfectly suited to this particular job will be prevented from making a proposal for two hours, even though their skills match perfectly, while the PPH chosen 25 will get a preferential head start at the expense of everyone else.
Naturally I have no idea of the real figures, but the core of this system is to promote some people and inhibit others.
A lot has been said about how bad the PPH skills matching algorithm is, and it certainly seems to be atrocious, but even if it were to be perfect, the majority of people complaining here would be no better off at all.
The crux of this is that the poolof available talent is much larger than the pre-selection made by PPH and people selectd by PPH and no matter what PPH does to their algorithm, excellent candidates for a job are going to be held back - cheating seller and buyer alike.
The inefficiency of the selection process is a complete red-herring. Even with a perfect selection algorithm, chances are that you are going to be stopped from making that proposal for a dream job within the first two hours, regardless of your skill list or the efficacy of the PPH programmers.
What makes it worse (gosh is that possible) it seems buyers have to specify some kind of primary skill, which they cannot change and may not even match at all appropriate seller skills.
-
I'm being matched with people at 4am!!! It would help if i could set hours for matching me and also - yes i do design - but not not clothes,handbags and certainly not for $6! This is such a floored system and i wonder if it is being explained to buyers that they now have to wait to use us?
-
that's Great News everyone BUT....
sorry to say this peeps _ DON'T get your hopes up too far _
if you look back through this (saga of a) forum thread
you'll notice the dreaded 'white boxes' have come and gone several times over the last days/(weeks!)
with no explanation or regular timing to these events it's clear the system is being taken offline_ upgraded_ then put back on again_ WITH NO OBVIOUS IMPROVEMENTS ADDED! *>: *hopefully i can take this comment back _ which i would be delighted to do of course
and just to think_ if the white boxes have finally gone forever_
this could be one of the last posts on this thread : ) -
Dear Valued PPH Users,
As we had mentioned in a post from last week, our development and product teams had deemed it necessary to re evaluate the way the feature works and we have implemented a change as of today to confront these issue. We understand that many of you were not happy with the 2 hour limitation on the site and we have as of today removed this feature altogether and it will no longer apply in any case.
Our goal was to improve on the product that we already have and this may mean that ideas and features will be successful and other times they will not. We do want to stress that we do listen to your opinions and suggestions and are always open to your feedback. I would like to apologize for any inconvenience that this feature may have caused you and we look forward to creating better ways and products to implement on the site that will benefit all our users.
Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions. Many of you have pointed out some ideas that will be very helpful in our product development and we continue to look forward to listening to all views.
kind regards,
Michael
PPH Customer Support Manager
-
I am a new seller and since I registered as such and became approved I have not been able to make a proposal for anything. I suspect my primary skill was wrongly set to something that no buyer ever uses rather than "C++ software developer" which should be fairly commonly requested.
So the new system makes it impossible to match a newer seller with buyers in my case as there seems to be no way for me to fix this issue.
Michael's partial answer to some aspects of the system's problem does not address the issue as it affects me and many others like me. A problem remains.
-
I would like to clear up some of the confusion. This new system does NOT help newcomers find work. There is no help to anyone based upon the date they signed up with PPH, or based upon a skill set. This appears to be total choice on the part by PPH to put those people who do not have the skills necessary for the job, or will work for $0.10 per hour! Have you looked at some of the profiles of those who get to bid? They are not qualified for the jobs. As a relative newcomer no matter how I change my skills they never match the job. I have over 30 years experience and I know what I can do and only try to bid accordingly. This system is just discriminatory and illegal. And I agree with comments on the video. I don't mind verifying myself to prove I am a real person to PPH, but I believe I should be hired for the job I can do and not how attractive I look. Then again, I am a beautiful woman so maybe I should do a video if looks is all that counts :(
-
Thank-you PPH the acknowledgement to this flawed system is much welcomed and the removal of it, in its entirety! I was really getting disillusioned and fed up As I have virtually made nothing since and due to the new implementation, when previously I was doing well. As I continued to receive jobs more often then not for everything other then what I was actually qualified for.
I am a Graphics Designer by trade and professional. Yet however I was being selected for projects ranging from; Pattern cutter, Garment Embroidery, Industrial Design, Product Design, Package Designer, Technical Draftsman. The best and actual last one that I was recommend this morning was to go for a Job posting with this description:
You are a perfect fit for a new Job - be quick and get it
You're one of the most qualified Sellers for the Job* "I need ladies underwear samples making and help with design work" because of your skills in Design *.*
Do not get me wrong I have nothing against Knickers in fact I quite like them given in the right circumstances and context. I should probably mention that I am a male just to be clear. And I have actually nothing against males wearing nor designing them. I never like to say never and perhaps in the distant future there is perhaps a very rare remote possibility that I may find my self designing Knickers for a living. Its just that it is not really part of my skill set at this stage of my life and does not really float my boat (the designing aspects of it that is)...
Anyways thanks again for listing, it really is much appreciated no matter how long it may have taken to get there in the end* ;)*
Regards.
-
Thank GOD it ended.
I'm still getting crap invites, but that may be due to a timing issue.
To reward PPH for scrapping this system. I will buy some bids (something I normally don't do).
AND ... if PPH wants some beta testers for a new feature, I'd be open to the idea. I think a few select freelancers would be willing to beta test an idea before it is launched in such a "Surprise" manner on the unsuspecting masses.
-
I think at the very least, PPH should link skill sets together into logical groups. They said I matched a job which involved sourcing luxury cars in Europe. I have no experience in cars and I do not live anywhere near Europe. Then I discovered that I can't bid for drawings and illustrations, even if these are part of what I do. I paint and draw and make digital artwork, but I only put artwork and painting in my top 10 skills. I tried removing one of my other skills and added illustration so I could bid, but it did not work. Then I tried adding drawing but you have 3 choices: technical drawing, engineering drawing, and house drawing. What happened to all the other possible kinds of drawings? Isn't that crazy? And when will the changes to your skill sets take effect? The categories are just too narrow and illogical and we cannot expect the buyers to think of all possible categories of sellers' skills that would cater to their job post. Both your sellers and buyers are losing out on opportunities because you used the wrong medicine for the problem you were trying to solve AND this system of categorizing is very much flawed.
-
Hello PPHers,
In regards to having Beta testers, that's a great idea. We usually do test trial most features with a small group of users before we take it live. However, on some features we must test it on a larger scale to have quicker results on the outcome. Ill bring this up to our development department to possibly reach out to users who wouldn't mind being in the testing phase.
I have seen some comments regarding Deskdonkie and that PPH is testing products for that specific site. This is not true, the 2 products are separate and we are not running tests on PPH for Deskdonkie. PPH is a large platform that is constantly evolving and has a large user base. We would not devalue PPH for any reason. Deskdonkie is still in its infancy and will take time to grow. Needless to say that if there is something that may work on one site, we may look to implement on the other if we feel that it would benefit our customers.
The idea behind the matching has always been to try and match quality buyers with quality sellers so that we avoid conflicts that we have seen in the past. This matching filter may not have worked, but we will be looking for ideas on how to make this more functional.
The 2 hour limit has been removed, if some of you are still seeing this, please be patient with us as in some parts it may still be showing but will be removed. The invitations to jobs will continue although we will be making changing to have better matching emails based on the skill set.
We have recently implemented a seller application process which started 3 weeks ago. This feature is to ensure that all new sellers meet specific criteria when creating a new account on PPH. We have other projects that we will be looking to test which we feel will make PPH a more quality and effective site in the long run for all our customers.
kind regards,
Michael
PPH Customer Support Manager
-
Hi Michael, thank you for clarifying some of this but the seller application process does not appear to work.
Before I was approved I could make proposals but after I was approved I cannot make any proposals at all as far as I can see. I am effectively barred from using PPH and there does not appear to be any appeals process.
I am not alone in this.
Post is closed for further comments because the limit of comments per post has been reached.
Comments
1902 comments