Offer an Instant Messaging or Chat feature between Buyers and Sellers
Sort of like the "facebook" style, allowing people to contact those online, and leave messages for those who aren't!
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-1 BAD idea
Even if this was only available once a proposal is accepted/hourlie pucrhased, as some people have already pointed out, this could very well lead to buyers trying to communicate with sellers at all hours of the day, and will inevitably cause some buyers to give negative feeedback, even if the time at which they tried contacting the seller is in the middle of the night!
This is especially the case if the buyer and seller are in different time zones - something which a surprising number of people forget to consider! Eg. I'm in the UK, but some of my recurring clients are in the US and Australia. Please explain to me exactly how that would work with IM... :/
What would be a good idea is if the workstream reshfreshed automatically, as the manual nature of this at the moment really is a pain!
Just my 10p...
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I have about 44 kind vendors who want to participate in my project. I finally accept one but have to spend ages writing to each of the unsuccessful applicants and it takes for ever. The system has been around for years why have they not addressed this problem. Then vendors will know that they have not made it and move on to the next prpposal and also start to sharpen up their act. perhaps they should see the "site" of the successful vendor
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I think Buyers will think this is a great idea, but Sellers wont. I also think there should be a choice of whether you want this or not as a seller. I have a LOT of messages through PPH, the last thing I want is for everyone to start instant messaging me.... I'm not going to have a chance at all in responding to it all. It will lead to duplicate messaging too...
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Thats what i just send as an email look at apptaskit.com support I loved it I also worked there, I m also having some trouble in setting upo my hourlie
where to get supporT?
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where to get supporT?
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Hi! All of you seem like pretty experienced users of this site, so let me ask you since it's impossible to reach a human being on "people per hour". I was told to remove my contact info in order to have my application accepted. I have read other posts on this, but unfortunately they didn't help. Aside from the fact that it seems really silly to me to remove my contact details, I can't figure out how to do this. I've tried all the editing prompts that I can find, but nothing seems to work. Any ideas out there?!? Thanks guys!
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This is what will happen:
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BUYERS TO SELLERS:
Hi, I have a job needs doing, how much?Hi, thanks for doing that last job for me, I have something small to do, you couldn't just go to my site and change XYZ could you, the logins are the same as I gave you before.
Hi, I see you have spent half an hour submitting a detailed proposal with everything I need, but I just want to take up some of your LIVE time unpaid asking questions where you cannot ignore or reply later because it is live chat.
SELLERS TO BUYERS:
Hi, I did that last job for you, do you need anything else doing? C'mon, c'mon, giz us some work!Hi, I have posted a bid for your proposal, just to repeat what I already said and just annoy you, I do great work and will do some extras for free, please choose me, please, please.
Hi, did you get chance to review my bid on your job request?
And so on, and so on.
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The only system which would be VERY useful is an inline comments system where buyers and sellers can ask questions ON THE PROPOSAL page, no where else.
Drop the clarification board which means my global inbox can be full of messages and I have to remember which messages are for which proposal. It's not hard, but a Q&A message flow within the proposal page itself would make it more logical and clear where you are replying and for what job.
Just send my inbox with "You have a new message [link] on proposal [title]", then I can go to the proposal page and easily see the job, my bid, the previous messages I had with the seller, etc, all in the relevant place.This will allow communications to be relevant to the current project, and nothing else. Sellers can ask buyers question before making a proposal (eg is your budget flexible, do want XYZ or ABC etc). then once a seller has made a bid, buyers can ask questions about specific aspects of the bid and details the seller gave (eg will this feature you are making do XYZ as well, I need that).
This would be useful.It also makes PPH cleaning up better, archived proposals also archives data from messages, away from the main system/user DBs etc and keeps them together for archival purposes.
Live chat between buyers and sellers will be bad for everyone. Some people have said that it will be welcomed because you can get quick answers, however from my experience, this is not the case. What if the seller isn't available? At least with a message the seller gets notified they need to pop on.
Also what you get with chat is usually quick "mixed" messages. Static (not chat) messages allow people to think, proof read, and make sure what they are asking or replying with is concise yet simple, and just right info as required.
I've had buyers on live chat on other freelance sites, and the questions are too fast and hefty to give decent responses to.Development and web design work can often require some thought as to how something would be best done, and this is not ideal in chat where the buyer is sat waiting for a reply!
Live chat would mean those who are here all the time are more likely to get a job as they were present to reply in chat, which is unfair.
Also, often is the case you get bogged down in live chat spending your time for free and getting nothing done. And importantly, this is the case when working on an actual project you have won and the buyer is chatting about stage 2 things when stage 1 is only just underway.Again, static messages allow for a small (but acceptable) time delay for people to think, and grab a second from their work to reply concisely.
Also, buyers would end up with numerous chat channels open to different sellers asking the same questions about their proposals etc, and sellers numerous chat channels to all the buyers they currently have a proposal in.
It's called chat for a reason, and 80% of the time it's just a distraction and loss of time, more than a benefit.Most people will just be offline anyway, to avoid being "bothered". I think this would be a terrible idea for more reasons too.
It's arguable that this could offer advantages once a bid is won, for sellers/buyers to comm about the work being underway, but not before, and even then there are still caveats to it..
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I largely agree with most of James' comments above on the subject of instant chat.
I think the point about the difference between the static chat (like the workstream) where one has time to make a considered and thoughtful response to a line of communication, and instant messaging (where as the name implies an instant reply is expected), is well illustrated by the difference between James' post (October 10, 2014 ) and Md Mahmudul and other's one liners..
Open IM where all could contact all freely would be an awful 'improvement' to make to PPH, not to mention it would scare off a large percentage of first time buyers if the first job post they make, they are instantly chat-bombed with a load of unsolicited and irrelevant messages from sellers
If this is to going to be implemented at all it needs very careful thought about how it will actually work. I certainly agree that there is much that could be done to improve communication between buyers and sellers both pre-project agreement and in-project but an open IM free for all is certainly not the answer. If implemented badly, communication on PPH will be many times poorer than what is currently available
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Personally, I think an IM feature would be a good idea just for when jobs are accepted as buyers have been asking for my Skype ID, which I barely use. I have found that some people can be unreliable with payment when I don't go via PPH, for example somebody I regularly write SEO articles hasn't paid an invoice I sent a week and a half ago and it's only for £30! PPH don't just want to earn their bit of commission off your earnings, they want to actually protect both the buyers and the sellers.
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Personally, I think an IM feature would be a good idea just for when jobs are accepted as buyers have been asking for my Skype ID, which I barely use. I have found that some people can be unreliable with payment when I don't go via PPH, for example somebody I regularly write SEO articles hasn't paid an invoice I sent a week and a half ago and it's only for £30! PPH don't just want to earn their bit of commission off your earnings, they want to actually protect both the buyers and the sellers.
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I also have to check my gmail inbox for new messages from PPH users. Otherwise I have to refresh the PPH page every 10 seconds. It gets worst when refreshing the whole PPH page.
PPH offers best lowest fees. But is worst platform for live chats. Because of there out-dated features I had lost $ 200 proposal. Will the owner of PPH pay $ 200 penalty. On serious note I will visit the PPH office.
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