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
-
@Paul - thanks for that, I follow what your saying:
"I have been known to make proposals with inflated budgets, telling the buyer that it's deliberately high and will be reduced subject to more information from the buyer. In those cases I generally ask the buyer not to accept the proposal without further discussion."
Might of seemed obvious to you, but that's one I'd not thought of, and good idea. Set it higher than needs to be, and explain why. Mmmm.. might try that one.
So there IS a way that you can have (private?) discussion with the buyer, without them initially accepting a proposal then?
Do you reckon it might be a good idea to ask questions in a proposal rather than via the board (if that makes any sense?)
@Deb - yep, sounds obvious. I have actually just started asking clarification questions, but I do come across one or two, where the buyer doesn't appear to have responded. Either that or they have responded privately (if that's possible?)
I'm actually looking at one at the moment, where the buyer has just put willing to spend "not specified", so would that one be an hourly job or fixed price? However, when you move the mouse over 'Deposit', there is a pop up saying "jobs of this size require 100% deposit from the buyer".
I do usually check the buyer out, reviews etc. I would NEVER do freebies, and have enough intelligence to hopefully be able to smell a rat from a mile off. But you never know, people can be VERY cunning lol
-
Hi Malcolm.
Beside the £ sign to the right of box where you put in your price it should say 'per hour' if it's an hourly rate. I have personally never seen a job requiring 100% deposit. If its a one off job ,say 500 words on flea treatment' and I put in £12 it will auto fill the deposit box with £12.
-
So there IS a way that you can have (private?) discussion with the buyer, without them initially accepting a proposal then?
Only via the clarification board. Everyone see your first question, only you and the buyer see the follow-on questions. Buyers are renowned for ignoring the clarification board.
I often have protracted discussion with the buyer following making a proposal and may at that stage insist they don't accept the proposal until some details are properly understood.
My high budget approach can be very hit and miss, but it has worked nicely in the past.
willing to spend "not specified", so would that one be an hourly job or fixed price?
Whether the job is hourly or not should be clear. If the budget is not specified, it's a fixed price.
I have no idea about the job values where 100% deposit is required. I routinely ask for 100% deposit up to £100.
I am picky about the buyers I will work with. There is one buyer I worked with and I felt like washing my hands everytime I sent him a message. I have had over fifty jobs on PPH and really very, very few bad experiences.
-
I wish there was a way to close work streams down to stop getting bombarded with messages. As you said Paul once you have made a proposal the buyer can then contact you which opens up a workstream. Even though I have cancelled my bid with the dude offering my £1 an article with promises of great riches he is still sending numerous messages a day thus I'm getting numerous email alerts. It's more annoying than anything else and I have to say, having been lucky enough to get over 200 jobs in PPH and selling a stack of hourlies, I haven't had a lot of hassle, it just seems to be in the last couple of months it's got a bit daft in this respect.
-
@ Graeme The way around that is to send anything via the workstream, i know loads of people who have done that and I used to work for a guy doing product descriptions which I posted directly onto his site and sent him some random article when I raised the invoice, Once I had done this twice I then just raised invoices without sending anything, was this the first time you had worked for this guy?
-
@Graeme. That's another strange ruling from PPH. I regularly design brochures, presentations, elearning etc for clients that are so large I cannot upload them via the workstream and have to do so through Dropbox. I have also had to send other files direct to clients by email because either the PPH system isn't working properly or it does not support particular files (MS Publisher being one). I've always told clients that as long as they pay through PPH then how we communicate with each other and send files shouldn't be a problem, particularly if PPH cannot support those file transfers.
How on earth can PPH expect all the work that we deliver to be uploaded through the workstream? I’ve seen adverts for people to decorate someone’s house, paint an oil painting, work on-site for a week, make sales calls. I don’t see how any of these can be ‘uploaded’ through the workstream!!
-
Sounds bizarre Graeme.Years ago a colleague told me of a contractual obligation to deliver some software to a client on a given date - a Friday. The software wasn't ready but would be on the weekend. The software was couriered to the clients office and was left there (the client wouldn't be installing it) until Monday, when the contractors software people arrived and took the delivered software and installed it on the clients server and the client was happy.
Strangely, the bug that existed on Friday disappeared during the software install on Monday. Of course, it's entirely possible a little mix-up might have occurred between unpacking the delivered software and loading to the machine.Funny that.Stupid idea by PPH, but an equal absence of lateral thinking on your part Graeme.
-
@Graeme - sometimes the only file I have uploaded has been a portfolio example and other times I have never uploaded a thing, but still got paid.
I guess for you the best thing would be to upload something, anything, and see if that makes a difference.
I did have a message from PPH a couple of weeks ago saying that as there had been no activity on one particular workstream since the job had been awarded they would refund the escrow back to the buyer soon. The reason there had been no communication was that the buyer had awarded the job and then taken a long holiday (which I knew about). We just then exchanged a couple of messages and PPH backed off. So maybe they are monitoring the workstreams for activity and as long as there is some then they relax again.
-
@Paul, it should not need lateral thinking to invoice a client and get paid. When you say absence of lateral thinking I assume you think I should have tried uploading any convenient file and trying again? I did think of that but was worried about drawing the wrath of PPH support if they were actually manually checking.
@Fiona, I think you and @Deb are right. The reason I have not come across this before is that every other workstream had something uploaded before I invoiced.
-
it should not need lateral thinking to invoice a client and get paid.
Quite right, but we work with what we have not what necessarily should be.
worried about drawing the wrath of PPH
They won't pay you the money you are owed and the client is happy to pay you. What exactly are you afraid of?
-
@Paul -
Only via the clarification board. Everyone see your first question, only you and the buyer see the follow-on questions. Buyers are renowned for ignoring the clarification board.
I often have protracted discussion with the buyer following making a proposal and may at that stage insist they don't accept the proposal until some details are properly understood.
So considering that you suggest that most buyers ignore the clarification board, do you send a proposal, indicating that you would like to discuss further via the board, and then post a 'question' letting them know that you are awaiting possible discussion or something? (bearing in mind that AFAIK, the buyer cannot communicate with you via the board, unless you've sent a msg first??)
I've been caught out several times by projects being more complex than they seemed. I just suck it up.
I don't know about the rules that the buyer is supposed to follow, but I assume that you will, of course, have your limitations on that one. Say for example, the buyer actually needed about 2 weeks worth of work more than was originally thought to be needed, but because it was fixed price, you weren't allowed to charge anymore. Or the buyer that puts down a fixed price project, where part of the job is deliberately withheld from you, the buyer then turns round and says, 'well, actually I need this and this doing as well', and you cannot do a dicky bird about it. Or can you? Report the buyer, perhaps?
-
Malcolm, I think you're over-analyzing this.
There are no sure-fire ways to get the buyers attention or make them answer any questions.
*Say for example, the buyer actually needed about 2 weeks worth of work more than was originally thought to be needed, but because it was fixed price, you weren't allowed to charge anymore. *
That's correct. I would suck that effort up and not charge.
the buyer that puts down a fixed price project, where part of the job is deliberately withheld from you, the buyer then turns round and says, 'well, actually I need this and this doing as well'
You can do a dicky bird about it.
You can quote for the extra work and ask the buyer to put the extra money into escrow.
You can refuse to do the extra work
If you cannot reach agreement with the buyer about doing the work you can try and negotiate a mutual exit from the project and if that isn't possible, ask PPH to mediate on the situation.
Malcolm, I feel you are over-analyzing potential problems when you should actually be working on projects for buyers. In my experience there may be issues but they are the exception. I think my PPH project count must be about 60 now. One dispute involving PPH, one client that kept extending the project and I found him unpleasant to work with. He wanted a refund and all the project work that I had done. I was so glad to see the back of him I did both. There have been other awkward clients, but that's life. So my 'bad' experiences run at less than 1% on PPH.
I recently had a massive over-run on a PPH fixed-price project simply because I didn't like what the buyer was asking for so I went that 'extra mile' to produce a result I was happy to be associated with rather than a result I would be embarrassed by but would have been fine for the buyer.
-
Malcolm, for the most part buyers are accommodating and sometimes will offer to pay more on fixed-price projects if you can communicate the unseen issues or there is a change of direction to make the outcome better.
On these forums we concentrate on the 'bad eggs' of PPH and don't talk about the great clients. My biggest disappointment about PPH is not what buyers do but by what PPH does or doesn't do. PPH facilitates lowballing buyers and complicates the system with idiotic restrictions. It should be a lean and mean business with low overheads. PPH must waste hundreds of thousands of pounds making sellers lives more complicated.
-
Paul. I agree with you on many of these points. Communication is key to achieving mutual satisfaction. I have been given, for example, an 800 word piece to write but have delivered them 1000 and explained that those extra words were essential to get the full information across. Likewise, I have been asked to do 1000 words and I have suggested it would be better at 750 so not 'padded out' with waffle and have offered to reduce the price accordingly. I don't get a lot of hassle thankfully and have some very good regular clients, the worst ones are those who pay the least and expect way more than their pound of flesh.
PPH's attitude to problems is a major problem in itself. Trying to make a complaint about a buyer is a virtual obstacle course and if you have the gumption to battle through this you can bet your bottom dollar the best result you will get is an auto email. All these tech guys sitting around must have to keep coming up with ideas to warrant their wages and have clearly never heard of "if it ain't broken don't fix it". As not one new 'feature' ever makes life easier for the seller, the ones who are actually putting the money into the substantial PPH pot.
-
Paul, I am ALWAYS open to constructive criticism, and if you are right and others on this forum agree, then maybe I am over-analysing this. However I also think you may have got the wrong end of the stick.
There are no sure-fire ways to get the buyers attention or make them answer any questions.
I COMPLETELY agree with you. What the buyer does IS entirely up to them, of course it is.
What I am trying to achieve though, is the SMARTEST way of doing things. I don't know if I've stated before, but I am relatively new to this site (I only joined this year). I have been submitting proposals, and so far, in those proposals, I have usually had to ask further questions, which I would have normally asked via the clarification board, but couldn't because of the PPH rule that you couldn't until you'd submitted three proposals. Why I don't know, but anyway....
The issues I currently have are mainly to do with the MECHANICS of the site I think.
One issue that I have is that if the clarification board is largely ignored, then the only other way to do it (I think) is by submitting a proposal (and ask questions within that, which I thought defeated the whole point of sending a proposal in the first place?). Alternatively, ask questions within a proposal, but then doesn't the buyer have to accept the proposal in order to respond back to you? And if YOU then decide to back out, doesn't that hurt YOU the seller? AFAIK, the buyer can't respond to you via the board, unless you've posted first?
Do you see where I'm going with this? I think it's the logic of it????
I admit that I am new to the bidding for jobs game, so I guess a have a lot to learn.
You might suggest that I just go on the helpdesk for answers, but tbh I got so fed up with spending ages trying to find the right answers that I gave up, and came on here instead. Another thing is, that I find I get answers a lot faster AND ones I can understand on here, than contacting the helpdesk.
-
Malcolm. once you have put in a proposal the buyer CAN contact you before accepting it, just not the other way around which tbh I think sucks. Once they have sent a message tto you hat Workstream is open.
I have cancelled many bids and never been affected by it so don't worry about that side of it. Sadly, you have joined PPH after their golden period and are experiencing the worst of it. At one time every jib listed had complete instructions and I hardly ever saw the clarification board used,
it seems now to be the case that there are so many freelancers out there the buyers can be as arsy as they like; just look at how many bids there are for jobs with a 5 word description. It's a buyers market and they know it and the unscrupulous ones are taking advantage of it. Good call in not bothering with the help desk, we make much more sense on here :)
-
Deb, THANKYOU very much for that!!!! :) You've resolved a few queries I had.
Sadly, you have joined PPH after their golden period and are experiencing the worst of it.
Well... if I have, I have I guess, not much I can do about that one lol :)
I can get very frustrated QUICKLY, and if I can't find the right information with relative ease, it irritates me.
Most of the problems that people describe on this forum, I understand and probably have come across myself.
Of the jobs I have come across so far, 9 times out of 10, you need to ask further questions. It might sound obvious, but there's no point taking on a project if you don't have a VERY clear picture of what the buyer wants.
Another thing I find tricky, but reckon I might implement Pauls method, is quote a higher price, and just ask questions in a proposal instead, and point out to the buyer in the proposal that the price given is negotiable.
As Paul has mentioned about sending further quotes for work, I guess PPH shouldn't be too bothered about quotes changing all the time. Can't see how the system would work otherwise.
At the moment, I'm not a 'trusted seller' so I guess if I don't live up to their expections, I will probs get kicked off anyway???
Unless I absolutely have to contact the helpdesk, I will always come here first Deb :)
-
Oh yeah, before I forget... there is that thing that PPH states of buyers making decisions within hours of posting a job, which is fine. But I would always make sure that I tick the box about being informed if the buyer chooses someone else. So far, never received a single confirmation yet. The ones I've bid on just say 'closed'. I do realise though that buyers can purchase off the system and go with an external company/person instead, but in that case, the buyer would just cancel the job anyway. Wouldn't they?
-
buyers can purchase off the system and go with an external company/person instead, but in that case, the buyer would just cancel the job anyway. Wouldn't they?
Rarely. Most buyers find someone and couldn't care less about the job left behind on PPH. Some will advertise the same job multiple times on PPH at the same time.
if I don't live up to their expections, I will probs get kicked off anyway???
I think PPH set a very low bar, so you should be safe. Their main expectation is to minimise buyer dissatisfaction and maximise their profits.
I really don't think you quite follow that PPH is a mostly automated system. PPH aren't spying on us watching our every move. They only really get involved when there's a problem. They don't have the manpower to keep personally monitoring what we are doing if they don't already have some cause for concern brought to their attention.
-
@ Malcolm, rarely do I receive a notification telling me a job has gone to somebody else. If you notice jobs usually say they are open for proposals for 29 days so when those buyers award the job off site so to speak they just leave them there until the time has elapsed and they disappear, as Paul said, they couldn't care less.
The only jobs I have ever been awarded within this so called magic "2 hour period" is those I have either been personally invited to bid on or are marked urgent. In my experience if you haven't heard about it within a couple of days forget it. For the hell of it I often check back over old job proposals via the work streams to see what happened to them and 9/10 they are languishing on day 24 with 84 bids or something stupid like that and you know they have gone "off site".
It is very much a buyers market and depending on the market the work is intended for many don't give a s**t about the quality just getting it done cheaply.
Post is closed for further comments because the limit of comments per post has been reached.
Comments
1902 comments