PPH - The Fourth Emergency Service
Just imagine, if PPH ran the emergency services
Caller:
An asteroid had just smashed into our street, several buildings are on fire, the gas main has ruptured, there are dozens of people trapped in the rubble and a woman is about to give birth.
PPH Operator:
I am sorry that you have experienced issues with our service and I have raised a support ticket on your behalf.
Please be assured that our gas fittings are 100% compliant with current legislation.
Is there anything else I can help you with today?
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Official comment
Hi Les,
What can I do for you today? Are there any features or questions I can help you with?
Many thanks for continuing to use our service.
Please let me know if I can help with anything at all.
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Hi Kelly
Not really, this was a light-hearted post to relieve the gloom and stress of dealing with PPH issues.
Hopefully, I will continue to use PPH services though buyers seem to be leaving in droves which is reflected in the decreasing number of jobs relevant to my skills.
I am just trying-out Upwork whose offering seems a lot 'slicker' and well thought-out , with rather more-reasonable fees.
I had a minor support issue with setting-up and it was resolved, very quickly, with just one round of correspondence.
As yet, Upwork don't have a lot of UK jobs but then, as mentioned, the numbers on offer from PPH are falling fast. -
Good luck with Upwork, Les. I've been bidding on there on and off for the last couple of years but I can't break into it at all. There is a lot of work, but also a lot of freelancers chasing it. Out of desperation I took a $10 job that took me the best part of a day to complete in the vain hope it would give some sort of leverage for future jobs, but it had no effect. Some of the projects on there are such low value that I usually walk away in disgust for a couple of weeks before trying again.
An interesting feature is the way they list how much money a buyer has paid as a running total, and also an average hourly rate. When a buyer is averaging $3 or $5 per hour over a long period of time I usually decide it will be a waste of time submitting a proposal.
Another site to try is Guru. That is well put together but doesn't have much work. They have an irritating way of notifying me of suitable projects too late, after they have been awarded. PPH are far better in that respect with an instant notification of projects.
Of the three sites I have used I still rate PPH as the best, but the rate at which buyers are leaving, especially the better quality buyers, is very worrying. I've not had what I would call a proper project awarded since before Christmas. Yesterday I tried to grab a quick $50 project when I spotted it could be done in about an hour. After nearly an hour of correspondence where the buyer would not press the accept button, he finally asked if I would do it for $40. At that point I cancelled the proposal.
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Hi Simon
I only signed-up to Upwork a couple of weeks back and have yet to secure my first job.
I am impressed by the setup but 'the proof of the pudding' is in the eating' and there are only 2 or 3 relevant job postings per day with, as you say, lots of competition.
I currently filter on UK jobs only - in principle, large time differences shouldn't matter but, as most clients have a rather flexible attitude towards timekeeping, communication has proved quite difficult where there is a several-hour time shift.I haven't kept precise statistics but, with PPH, I expect to make a dozen bids for each job secured.
It's purely and simply a 'numbers' game.
This worked-well until recently but the numbers are just not coming though any more.
It's frustrating that most bids generate no response at all and I frequently get into protracted correspondence, only to have the potential client disappear 'into the ether'.
I have tended to bid for the small jobs on the basis that they may lead to bigger jobs and long-term relationships once the client is secured - but, in many cases, the sales cost exceeds the value of the work.
I hadn't heard of Guru to, will take a look today - thanks for the tip.
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Simon
Just managed to secure my first job on Upwork.
Just a cheap ($100) Excel job and I managed to secure it because there is a deadline of Bank Holiday Monday which, as I anticipated, ruled out a number of competitors who are not interested in working over the BH weekend.
There isn't a lot of UK stuff on Upwork but this foot-in-the-door will hopefully improve my chances with that which is available.
Not sure why the prices to UK buyers need to be quoted in dollars.
Will let you know how it goes.
PPH seller payments appear to have improved lately but their charges, especially to buyers, continue to cause issues. -
That's useful and it will be interesting to see if it makes any difference for future jobs. I managed to get a $10 job on Upwork recently. I'm going for jobs on Upwork that I wouldn't touch on PPH, because I'm trying to get some kind of ranking. This can't be good for the overall standard of work.
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Hi Simon
Me too - a lot of the jobs specify a ranking on Upwork but I substitute by providing a link to my ranking on PPH - who are occasionally useful for something.
While Upwork do sometimes provide a warning that fall beneath the minimum criteria, they don't actually block the bid. -
Hello again Simon
Things are going well with Upwork, so far.
I secured my first ($100) job a couple of weeks back, grabbing the opportunity of meeting a deadline which involved working over the Bank Holiday weekend.
I then secured a second job within a couple of days - a bit more-valuable this time at $240.
First one was fixed-price and the second was hourly though it sort-of turned into fixed-price after discussion with the client.
Both are now done and I am just awaiting the payment-cycle to complete.
So far, things have gone smoothly though I will publish a more-comprehensive review of the Upwork service in a couple of weeks.
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Hi Les,
That sounds promising. I search Upwork regularly and then miss it for a while, and when I come back I see projects I might have been able to get but I'm too late. I should try to get more organised with the searches. A lot of the projects on there are very low paid although PPH is racing them to the bottom at the moment.
I managed to grab a job on Guru last week, which was my first for about 6 months. I should have had one the week before because I was invited to bid and was the only freelancer invited. I asked a question and then heard no more about it. When I next logged in I found correspondence that had not been forwarded to me. It looks like they have problems with the workings of their site as well.
I wonder where the work has gone that was on PPH a couple of years ago. There is far less here than when I started but I have no reason to believe it has gone to Upwork or Guru. -
The bank transfers will be more expensive in terms of bank charges for those of us based in the UK. My bank charges £7 to transfer from a US bank and so I need a lot of $10 and $20 jobs before I can withdraw anything.
A useful point about Guru is their commission fee is only 8.95%. I don't know what they charge the buyer.
A big disappointment with PPH is that they don't give a reduced rate for doing repeat work with the same client. That must be costing a lot of business. -
Also, with PPH, the higher/lower fee rate split is based on monthly billing though, in practice, this appears to be to be interpreted as monthly payment receipts.
Either way, the higher/lower rate split can easily be distorted by the precise timing of the transaction.
Basing the fee on the lifetime business with the client removes these distortions and is also fairer because the major service of 'introducing A to B' deserves an introductory fee' but it is not an ongoing service.
It seems to me that the PPH fee structure encourages the idea of using them to find the client and ditching them for future business with that client.
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Simon
I have been most impressed by Upwork Support.
While setting-up, I had a small issue with the fact that my bank account name was different from my own name, as it was my Company bank account.Upwork have an odd system in that you can't raise a support ticked directly until you are 'established' with your first live job – you report the issue via the 'community' blog.
I did this and received a response from Upwork support the next day ─ they are working on Pacific time.
This wasn't a meaningless answer to a question I never asked or even an instruction about the hoops I had to go through ─ after one exchange of correspondence, they reported back that the issue was resolved.
Second issue was clarification of the position on VAT which is, quite honestly, a bit 'woolly'.
I received an initial response within 2 hours, explaining the position.
I responded asking them to verify my understanding of the position and they were able to confirm this the next day.
Yesterday evening, I raised a ticket after experiencing trouble with job submission.
Upwork responded within one hour, explaining that this was an issue requiring escalation to 'Technical Support'.
Next message, dated 2 hours later, advising that the issue had been indentified and asking me to try again.
First thing this morning, I tried again and it worked.
Even with an 8-hour time difference, the Upwork support is astonishingly superior.
PPH, on the other hand, are charging a 'Rolls Royce' price for a 'Skoda Lizzie' service (no offence to Skoda drivers).
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I actually spoke to somebody at Upwork. After completing my first job and earning a full $20 they required a live video link to check that I looked like my photograph. In fact I lost the connection and had to try again and spoke to a different person so there are at least 2 of them there.
I should probably try to configure my search settings better. At moment I only look for work there when I literally have nothing else to do and it consists of looking at my 5 last search results. There is a feed of suggested jobs but they don't match what I'm looking for.
This is where PPH are better with their dashboard and live notifications. PPH have very few jobs in total and I browse the entire list without filtering. I could do without the emailed job invites for jobs with a £6 budget. -
Simon
I did the video thing too.
While one can understand the need to verify the bona fides of sellers, it was a bit annoying that they did this after the first job was completed.
It might have been better (1) if the request had not been accompanied by threats of freezing my account in the case of non-compliance and (2) if the video-chat technology had actually worked.
After 20 minutes of faffing-about with browser settings to deal with non-functioning sound and video, we reverted to Skype where Upwork insisted that I enable my webcam while they were not prepared to enable theirs.
As an experienced interviewer (my main business was staff recruitment for many years), I couldn't really see the value of a 5-minute conversation in which i simply repeated the stuff written in my profile.
The interviewer simply wanted to see my face, not that she had any way of knowing it was my face, and ask me to repeat the skills recorded in my profile.
There were no probing question about those skills or my identity, other than what I had already written in the profile - in effect, a fraud would simply be asked to confirm their own lies.
I really cannot see how that provides anybody with any sort of protection - it's 'going through the motions' so that they can claim some sort of verification has taken place.
Skill Matching
This is always a tricky area because one has no control over the way buyers describe the job and their use of relevant search-terms is rarely consistent.
PPH
I gave-up any idea of PPH sending me alerts at an early stage as (1) the alerts took a long time to arrive and (2) the relevance was never very good.
Things may have improved over the last several years.
At present, I have a spreadsheet which interrogates (Data-Scrapes) the PPH website every 5 minutes.
This alerts me to all new jobs pretty-much as soon as they are posted - as there is value in getting there first.
I initially present this at a list of (single-line) Job Titles which I can easily scroll down and follow the link to the entire job description for those which seem interesting.
There is usually around 150 jobs first thing in the morning but only a handful for each subsequent interrogation.
I am interested in (1) general IT support jobs which can't be easily defined with precise search terms and (2) specific development work using ACCESS and Excel.
My first pass is through the entire list which generally enables me to identify any sort of job which might be of interest.
I then have a button which filters on ACCESS and Excel to spot any of those which I might have missed in the first pass - there are always some some false matches but the are easily spotted in the context of the entire title.
A second button filters on Database and Spreadsheet, to capture those where the specific products are not mentioned.
I generally find that using single terms is more-successful than trying to be too clever.
Only slight problem is that when PPH change the website layout, a bit of re-programming is required to present the correct information.
Upwork
I haven't worked-out a routine to interrogate Upwork yet so I rely on their own search facility.
That have an 'approved' dictionary of approved search terms which include the country - so I can search specifically on UNITED KINGDOM which considerably cuts down the workload.
I keep it simple and search on EXCEL OR ACCESS OR SPREADSHEET OR DATABASE which generally produces the result I need.
There are, of course, false matches but the volume of jobs is so low that this really doesn't matter.
Best of all, if you leave the web site 'on line', it will immediately advise when there are more to download.
This works pretty-well for me though there is doubtless room for improvement
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Simon
I have now completed the full cycle through to payment on my first 2 jobs with Upwork.
Both were effectively fixed-price though I bid on one as an hourly job but agreed a budget of 6 hours.
The 'proper' fixed-price was fairly straightforward as I reported completion of the job, the work was billed, the client paid immediately and payment was available after the 5-day 'security' period.
With the weekly job, I recorded the hours on a Monday and the client paid the bill immediately, throwing in a $40 bonus for good measure.
However, for the amount covered by the timesheet hours, it was then necessary to wait till the end of the week for the bill to be produced, then another 5 days for the timesheet to be 'approved', than another 5 days being the standard 'security' period.
A nice touch is that you don't have to 'request' payment, it occurs automatically on a weekly schedule.
It then takes a few days to arrive at my bank but I guess that relates to being paid from the USA.
With regard to obtaining payment from the client, Upwork deduct this automatically from the client 'payment method' so there are no delays due to the client not getting round to it, etc.
So payment on timesheets is a bit long-winded but the rules are clear and the system seems to operate efficiently.
I have been particularity impressed by the Upwork support which, despite an 8-hour time difference, is fast and effective. -
Les,
You sound as though you are having a lot more success with Upwork than I am. The mechanics of the site seem quite robust but the budgets and the people posting the projects are getting me very frustrated.
A few weeks ago I applied for a $10 project to try to get something finished and it was just answering a few questions. Then I realised the project had been completed in the correspondence and then I was asked to implement the code I had been answering questions on. This became $30 for three projects. Then after completing the three it turned out that was just the first one. Then I was sent the second project, which I've been working on, on and off, for about 10 days. It's a student project so it is demanding and there is no budget. Hopefully it is just about finished but I'm dreading the next instalment.
Last week I applied for a more promising project that was $100 (woo hoo!) and it was technically difficult, which would have reduced the competition, but I could probably do it in half a day if the customer sent everything I needed at once. After a couple of days I got a message, which was "Hi". That came in at midnight so I didn't see it until the next day. I apologised for not being able to respond immediately and got "It's okay" back. I was aware the project was on two other freelance sites so I'm not exactly holding my breath on this one and thought no more about it. This morning I've had a stroppy message saying that he has assumed I'm not interested and he has rejected the proposal. I've tried to explain to him that it was up to him to do something after I submitted the proposal but then I got "When you come bidding on my project, I expect you to be interested and not take 5 days to reply. Especially if you are going to be paid for it. Don't bid if you aren't going to work."
When I take this, and recent PPH experiences I am seriously questioning if any of this is worth doing any more. Two years ago PPH was quite good and I was getting a steady stream of reasonably paid work. Now it's dead. -
Hi Simon
Your client sounds like the 'Henry Hirenfire' character on my recruitment website.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meet Henry Hirenfire!!
Chances are, you've met him already.
Brusque, aggressive and much inclined to speak in short, snappy, sound bites of business jargon.
Delights in putting his candidates under pressure 'just to see how they react' with intimidating questions along the lines of "what makes you think that you are good enough to work here?"
But if you really want the job, you will need to deal with the likes of Henry.
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I do find that the people offering the cheapest jobs tend to be the most demanding.
One has to question why this guy has posted a $100 job on 3 sites
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My guess is that one of the other sites produced a lower bid, because they were not a fixed budget. I thought the $100 was good for Upwork and I would probably not have bid a lot more had I set the price.
I am wary of chasing jobs that are American because the pay is often low and the clients demanding. I think this partly down to the exchange rate and differences in wages and the cost of living, making it difficult for Europeans to compete. I also think there is a bit of an attitude problem when it comes to sending work overseas and that a few dollars will feed a poor foreigner and their family for a week.
Incidentally, I have just seen that PPH have adopted Upwork's approach to reducing fees based on the amount of work done with a specific buyer/seller combination. I hope this is the first in a rolling programme of improvements and it's not a case of too little too late. -
Seriously though, managing the clients can take a lot more effort that doing the work.
I do have a reasonable relationship with most clients but some just treat all suppliers as the 'hired help'.
As with the recruitment example, these are two-sided relationships which require commitment and involvement from both sides.
I did have one PPH small-business client who had assigned his son to manage the supplier.
We almost started on the wrong foot because I quoted £250 + VAT and he responded saying that another UK supplier had offered to do it for £70 and "what made me think that I was good enough to charge more".
At that point, I should have told him to piss off but I politely responded that I sell on credibility rather than price and had an excellent track record which could be seen on my PPH feedback.
I didn't really have a problem with that until I was ready to deliver the 'first draft' of the project (an ACCESS database).
Firstly there was a 2-week delay while he faffed-about upgrading the disk on his PC.
Then, he started demanding trivial 'cosmetic' amendments while failing to properly evaluate the database functionality.
There was then another delay while he went on holiday.
He then became increasingly 'hard to get' due, I believe, to the fact that he didn't really want to take responsibility for testing the system and pronouncing it acceptable.
I then 'forced the issue' by invoicing the job, knowing that I would at least get the deposit from PPH.
At this point, I was expecting to write-off the customer and it was also clear that I had seriously under-priced the project due to the cost of dealing with this idiot.
When I subsequent managed to get hold of him, he announced that he wasn't going to pay until the system went live, ignoring the fact that his lack of communication was preventing any progress toward that goal.
At that point, I went straight to the Father and told him that there would be no more work until my invoice was fully paid.
I also said that I would no longer be offering a fixed price for further work, which would be charged at an hourly rate, to include any hours spent on chasing and correspondence.
In fact, the work I did improved the running of the business and they subsequently returned for several sets of upgrades.
I deal exclusively with the Father now and he always grumbles that I charge him 'up front', won't provide a fixed price and charge for every phone call and email.
I am usually a lot more flexible with clients but, with some, it will just 'bite you in the bum'
Good news that PPH are being more-flexible with charges though the amount of relevant work has seriously dropped-off
The buyer charges are still the biggest issue here - I was looking at TrustPilot yesterday and there are large numbers of complaints about PPH. -
I have a lot of problems with the overall management of projects. The time spent winning a project, the painstaking correspondence trying to get the full details and trying to get the client to accept it and the time spent bidding for projects that don't materialise. This is really the crux of my frustrations with PPH. They take their 30% cut but they don't act as the buffer between the buyer and the seller that is needed. I can cope with some of the low paid projects and high fees, if I was getting a project dropped on my desk for me to get on with. I can't spend a day or two chasing a £40 project, which I might not get anyway.
The biggest issue right now on PPH is the lack of relevant work. If they lost the buyer fees, sorted out the VAT and invoicing and had a support telephone number, it would make a huge difference.
A lot of people want to get the work done by somebody in the same country. It's not a racist or nationalist thing, they want somebody who speaks the language, is in the same time zone, they are on the other end of a telephone, they are subject to the same tax laws and they understand cultural references that might affect the project. I'm in the UK, as are most of clients I work with here, as are PPH. But the advantage is lost when they don't provide adequate support and don't work within the tax rules.
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