Penalize Hourlies with late deliveries
If you wanna know more details, please go to my account and check out the hourlies I bought till now and look by yourselves how long these people needed to have the work done and how long they promise they will have the work done and how many of them really care about the job, or how serious they are taking their hourlies? 50% or less? This is crazy! If they do not need the job, go and have some fun somewhere else and PLEASE do not waste other people's time!!!
I was trying to be nice all the way and I really didn't want to pay those hourlies which are delayed like 10 days, 20 days or even 1 month! Are you kidding me?
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When we create an Hourly, We can put a highest of 5 days for Delivery. Not all the projects ends in 5 days. They might need more time. And If this happens like, I submitted my project in 4 days and client stats giving me silly error fixing issues which doesn't makes sense??? Don't always think about the Buyer guys, Think about the Sellers too. If you don't One day you will only have Buyer without any seller.
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I have sold 6 hourlies in the past month and a half to the same buyer and we both agreed on the time to be delivered in the workstream. PPH considers them late based on the date they were delivered but they are not based on buyer/seller agreement. How will PPh account for that? Realistically my hourlies are not late. Will sellers still be penalized in instances like this?
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I deliver EXPRESS sales letters via an HOURLY and am the TOP letter freelancer by quantity delivered.
This is what I do in the 'real world' so am good at it !!
I can research, produce and deliver in 12 hours.
What I can't do is ensure that the buyer answers all my questions and gets their response to me in this time or indeed within 1-5 days. They just send when they are ready. They may also want to send extra info.
As a result some are late or over the express time through no fault of my own.
Letter writing is still very competitive on PPH hence the use of Express !!
Penalising freelancers in these circumstances is somewhat unfair I feel !!
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There is a lot of debate on this topic. PPH needs to look at this from both ends. Some say the customer (client) is always right. There are clients(Buyers) who abuse the system to get away with things and on the other hand, there are Professional(Sellers) who under-deliver or fail to manage projects [hourlies] properly.
Some projects within hourlies cannot be executed in the time frame when that hourlie is purchase x number of time. Perhaps PPH need to think of a special algorithm for hourlies where "actual" time is taken into account for delivery after x number of purchases.
For example. An hourly for building an ecommerce site - delivery in 3 days (72hrs). .
- Est actual time on project 8 -12hrs /day x 3 Days.
- Total maximum time devoted to a project =36 hrs
- Seller's time to rest = 5-8hrs /day
- Total minimum time devoted to rest = 5 x 3 =15hrs
- Time remaining to spare: 72 - (15 + 36) = 21 hrs
If there are 5 hourlies bought , the time required will be 5 x 36hrs = 180 hrs (No CAN DO in 3 days solo :-(
In reality, a person or company can take several jobs at a time. It is made clear to the client when it can be delivered based on current workload.
PPH Hourlies doesn't caterer for these scenarios. What would be nice is a system designed to offset delivery time based on number sold and orders in the queue. There could be a trigger for Buyer to see Est time for delivery based on the orders in the queue and for Seller to set parameters based on times it can take him or her to actually complete the hourly.
One may suggest adding more time to the hourly to cater for this or contingency. However, one risk missing out on sales because it may seem too long a time for some jobs.
With all the feedback above, PPH can implement a fair system to penalise seller* if hourlies are late* that is due sorely to Seller's fault/ incompetence. Set Triggers or stop clock if Request for more info is sent to client for more info etc.
Be sure to involve all of us when you plan to design, test or implement this Penalty system.
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Very good idea, time and again, people on here promise to get a job finished by a certain date and it never happens. One told me he couldn't reply as he had gone on holiday in Italy..!! Then after he gave me a second deadline, he was late on that too.
I am losing confidence in this website fast, as i have paid developers for jobs to be done yet there always seems to be a problem with the finished item. The quality of work for the most part has worked out to be poor.
Half of them also go via skype then asked not to be paid through PPH because of their charges. Foolishly I have agreed only to regret it. Infact the only time it has gone fully through PPH the quality of the work was excellent.
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Surely if the developers say that it is not always down to them and they would be penalised because the customer might take time to reply etc. That is most likely because they work outside of pph. if you have a question for the client, ask it through the pph system where the time can be logged etc. If it then takes the client 5 days to answer back their reply would be logged too and you would have proof.
Trouble is most of you make contact through here but then do the rest via skype to avoid the charges.
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Hmmmm So you are saying that we should only stick to the top 300 or so on a cert 5. How are the others meant to get there unless they get the work and feedback?.
I looked at his feedback and comments on the first two pages. They were all bar one 5 stars. On the negative feedback it seemed the client made changes outside of the original remit of which he wasn't prepared to pay for. That to me seemed reasonable for the developer to refuse if it wasn't in the original request.
I thought based on that i would give him a go.
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I can see why someone might want to communicate between buyer and seller via Skype or some other voice or IM system, but if you agree to payment outside of PPH, you are not only violating the TOS, buy you are asking to be ripped off. That's a big advantage of PPH or any other escrow system.
Those who do that deserve what they get, which may well be nothing, and have no right to complain.
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Ana, I am pretty annoyed by your recommendation of Cert 5. I'm guessing you're a Cert 5.
The Cert system is not solely about Quality, it is also about how frequently a freelancer does business on PPH. If you have a PPH 'holiday' your Cert rating degrades and it's not because the freelancer has become untrustworthy or incompetent.
The Cert system is a corruption of the old feedback system and is designed to encourage freelancers to be active on PPH frequently to keep their reputation - penalising those who do not fill the PPH coffers on a regular basis.
Before you ask I am not a Cert 5, but a Cert 4 and would no doubt be a Cert 5 if I was more active on PPH.
People on Cert 1 can either be new on PPH, but brilliant, or have poorer feedback.
There are good people on Cert 1 and it's up to the buyer to exercise some vigilance by looking at feedback before Cert rating. Then make an informed choice.
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I'm not sure I understand why the original poster is wanting to use penalties, so 'the stick', as an incentive to deliver an agreed service (more) on time.
In the real world marketplace of services punitive measures are a rarely used tool. The carrot works instead much better than the stick, because it is a win/win trade instead of a win/loose.
So, if there are buyers who have structural problems with timely deliveries, they ought to get the tools (or make the choices) to make the deal more attractive, so they outcompete the other buyers and get the best service, the most timely delivery they wish. The buyers need to be aware that it is not a one way street in any market. Buyers DO compete for a seller's services, so for their limited available time, and especially for that of the better sellers.
If, for example, the constant lateness of deliveries is due to a buyer paying too low a price in the market, it would help to make it visible to him, to allow him to decide to offer a more competitive deal to his sellers, which could be often in better pricing or maybe in another less direct way (I can even imagine valuable referrals as something to trade or it could simply be the simplification of a project that is getting too complex and time consuming for the seller).
So I suggest looking at making it visible to the buyer what his 'competitive position' is compared with other projects in this market place (or maybe even beyond that).
The main reason why buyers and sellers in any market end up 'separating' is often not an intentional misrepresentation by either, but rather more a lack of sufficient transparency of each other's needs and capabilities.
A punitive system will not solve that. It will just incentivize abandonment of one another, and even of the marketplace.
Peter
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There needs to be a bit less penalising of workers, and a bit more quality control of the employers. There are some absolute jokers on this site who want the world for $10. Then there are those that can't even be arsed to describe what they require other than a few sentences, usually without any punctuation.
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Paul,
The making visible for a service provider of his market position here, should be data driven, with data collected from both competitors and customers selling/buying comparable services. It requires some standardization of course, but one can also learn from less fine-mazed data. Ideally, since this marketplace may not have sufficient historical data right now, one should probably also get insights from external data sources. It can start with very basic data without overcomplicating.
Example: A web designer who designs e-commerce sites wants to price his service right and look for teh type of customer who suits his marketing mix best.
He gets access to historical anonymized data about competitors and customers, like:
Service scope details like 'hours worked', 'subject', 'technology used', ' number of web pages'
Prices paid (break downs for example per page)
Forecast turn around time and actual turn around times (display planning gaps per customer to compare)
Customer locations (countries, which give an idea of the differences in work and trading cultures)
Customer payment behavior (planned payment vs real payment date comparison)
Provider data (countries, planned vs actual delivery date comparison)
This rough insight into his potential product/market combination (his marketing mix) will allow the service provider to decide where he wants to position himself in the market where his customers and competitors operate adapting his price, deadlines, payment terms etc to that market instead of just randomly setting unreasonable goals and expectations.
Of course there will need to be a feedback mechanism to let him know in how far he met his goals and in what market position that end result puts him, so he can decide if he wants to improve. It could even be that he sets red flag positions he does not want to get into to get a timely warning that he is setting himself up to fail. That could benefit customers too, like if a deadline threatening not to be met, would put the provider in a bad situation and he would be incentivized that way to prevent it by working extra hard for the customer.
Peter
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Thanks for the explanation Peter - I've been through it and I don't think it's at all workable. It might be workable for a company with service standards that can be imposed on employees, but not for a free-for all organisation like PPH, whose 'workers' are not amenable to tight regulation, nor are jobs fitting a specific type or pattern, as they might be in a target business or business division.
PPH has limits over the regulation they can impose on freelancers and a very limited ability to impose quality standards of any type. The existing quality standards they have tried to impose on freelancers, seem to be flaunted by the organisation themselves. PPH is a small company in relation to the market they try to control. Anyone that has felt frustrated by their customer service response will understand that they don't seem to have spare capacity.
To put my own situation on this: I don't usually take on projects on a per hour basis and when I do I usually agree a specific budget that turns it into a fixed price project.
It would be simplistic to try and map hours to web pages ( I have done web projects where a single page has involved, days of backend code development and graphics generation). It would be simplistic to try and understand client/freelancer turnaround interactions ( for example in my current project on PPH the client supplied examples of what they wanted as done by rivals. I decided to offer an alternative so that I would be happy to show it as my work rather than disown it; the result has been multiple exchanges between me and the client resulting in turnaround times between hours and days. I don't mind, nor does the client, any statics would have no value ).
I won't go on but the measures that you seek to use in evaluating buyers and sellers aren't collectable and nobody, buyers or sellers wishes to be trying to analyze some spreadsheet when deciding if a freelancer is good for them or not.
I don't need all this complication. The buyer can read my feedback, engage with me in discussing the project and we can get a measure of whether I a suitable and whether I wish to work with the buyer.
PPH needs simplicity not complication.
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Paul.
1) I wa snot aware that my suggestions were described as mandates or regulations. I suggested a tool, so something to optionally use. providing data for that tool, does not constitute a mandate.
2) My example should not be construed as the design of the ultimate tool, just an example. It can be complicated or simple. The more complex, the more value it would offer. An Ipad offers more value than a hammer.
3) The current myth in application and site design is that those products should be simple. The truth is that value implies complexity.. not simplicity. If one wants to make real good money, complexity is a must. It means that one offers greater more substantial value. This is why one sees sites starting as simple migrating to more complex designs eventually.
The whole 'simplicity' idea is but a 'market entry gimmick'.
Peter
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This is the longest trend i have seen on PPh!
I don't think so..
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Anyone know how to claim back refund which has paid. I requested for a designed job which was delivered but didnt realise my printer cant use as the resolution too low then got so much trouble to get her to sent the high resolution to me and the response time is so bad until i have risked my publishing time.
It meant to be another 2 more jobs but kept saying working on it but didnt deliver at all. She should have tell me that she cant do it, then i would have looked for another person.
just to be nice i gave her 5 stars for the first one but regretted after that when she didnt bother for the subsequent design and response time is extremely frustrating.
Every single job involve great deal of money. i would like to retract my comments on her. how to go about it?
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It is nothing to do with hardware. She just didn't did it right the first time. She managed to rectify eventually but did not deliver based on the timeline she promised and the other two jobs she did not even bother to notify. Would be okay she just upfront that she tell upfront if cannot deliver. It is so not professional. Found another designer. Work and response time is superb. Like this website think is a brilliant idea but people must ensure sellers are professional to handle the tasks otherwise give wrong impression
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Yeh, I agree with Emily that Sellers should be professional to work in this platform. But Buyers must have the minimum knowledge about the project they are asking for too.
I had a buyer who wanted a e-commerce site developed With Woocommerce plugin. When I developed it for her, She said, What the hell did you do? I want it in HTML!!!! Imagine a WordPress Woocommerce site in HTML!!!
And another time She was apparently forcing me to make a different design for her Godaddy Shopping cart site, whether godaddy doesn't even provide their codes to see.
So, Its not always sellers fault, Sometimes it can be Buyers fault too. And thats where PPH should have a system to investigate which side is the trouble maker.
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I have just had an horrific experience with an HOURLIE. The facts are:
Client purchased Hourlie on 2/8
I told him I could not do until 11/8 which he accepted
I then carried out work on 11/8 and invoiced him
On the same day, the PPH system decided the Hourlie was overdue and REFUNDED THE CLIENT WITH FUNDS OUT OF ESCROW!!!!
I am still trying to rectify this problem with PPH but so far am having no joy.
If this is how the new system is going to work, I am going to have to stop publishing and accepting Hourlies.
Has anyone else had this problem?????
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