ANOTHER Fee Increase? Are you joking?
Sellers like myself are struggling with the race to the bottom mentality on this site already. At least 95%+ of my clients are below the 700 threshold -- I'll be paying 20% on everything.
Your fees are outrageous -- the 3.50 fee per invoice was bad enough, now it's even more. Did you even announce this increase? You will lose the high quality freelancers and the site will continue it's decline if you continue down this path.
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Yes, they won't even honour jobs that were agreed and in progress with the old fees so it is going to leave people who are currently in the middle of jobs that were agreed before the fees massively out of profit.
Who then tells the buyer that the job is going to need to be cancelled (and they lose some of their deposit) because it's no longer possible?
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I'm now looking at ways to make money outside of this site.. this is too demoralising and every job I do on here will be filled with resentment if I don't raise my fees to cover this ridiculous hike.. my clients are going to desert me for work sources that don't have such high prices.
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Here's where to get started on finding other sources for work.. perhaps we should build up a collection here ...
https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/marketing/freelance-job-sites-pay-well/
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Just had this from customer support:
Hello Meri,
Thank you for the response. Please bear in mind that a ticket can be automatically marked as solved by the system and later on close if there is no update from the user in few days.
The community management is handled by a separate team so unfortunately we cannot know when they will give a response to answers posted there; however rest assured that we have passed your complaint to the team in question.
Your Hourlie sales are based on what Buyers are looking for in a specific period of time. This is the summer period, so that justifies any reduction in sales you may notice. However, this matter seems to be irrelevant to the fee scheme issue unless you have increased your prices to make up on the difference.
We are still evaluating the change and the comments from our users and it's impossible to arrive to a conclusion on whether the change positive or negative for the majority of sellers in less than 2 weeks from implementation; there is simply not enough data yet. We will be monitoring the results and re-evaluate if needed, but to our knowledge the new scheme is not set to change in the near future.
If you have anymore inquiries, please let me know.
Have a lovely day.
Best regards,
Fortune. -
I've agreed a £200 job with somebody, once PPH take their £48 - it means I will probably have been able to set myself up on Google ads for that!!!! Unbelievable! Still fuming about this.. no discussion, no opportunity to explore it.. just nothing. !!!! Terrible business practice in my opinion!!! I am happy to sign the petition!
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Hi @Amelia,
here is a link to petition -
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I've been looking into UpWork and they also charge 20% do I guess PPH got a bit green eyed about that.. so I think we should just all put our prices up and stop undercutting ourselves.. if people want it done, they want it done. This does not mean that I'm pleased with PPH I think they've handled this very badly... and have shown their inexperience at being in business... they should have discussed this with us and warned up about what a financial impact it was going to have on us... it's actually very wrong and if they wanted to do that, they should have done it in stages, not the snakey way they did... it's definitely changed my opinion of them and my loyalty is now round about 0%!
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They did do it in stages over several years. Here's a quote from the last email:
'As you know, on March 21st we introduced a new Service Fee scheme. Specifically, newly registered Sellers from that date onwards have been subject to a 20% Service Fee for the first £500 | €600 | $650 USD earned within the month. For any work billed above said threshold the Service Fee is set at 5% (Read more about PPH Fees here)
Established and loyal members, worry not! To date we have honoured the Service Fee scheme that was applicable at the date you registered to avoid incurring any fee increases.'
I made the point then regarding how long would it be until loyal members were would be coerced into the new rules. And here we are one year, three months later.
The problem with raising your prices is that there are always shortlived newbies arriving spurred on by PPH idealistic blogs telling tales of an easy freelance life travelling the world with loads of easy work and cash. These then leave after a couple of jobs having realised that it's impossible to make a living. Then there's the dreaded omni-present third world content farms who will undercut, deliver awful work and pay their own freelancers peanuts. It's clients who will suffer here. Professional freelancers will move on. -
It may well suit medium sized companies too, but it's not going to suit individuals who are freelancers.. who I understand the site is based around. Why they don't see freelancers as a partner versus 'somebody to charge the pants off' I don't know... this is meant to work for us all. I feel abused!!!! I feel like making a living is going to be very hard as it's already a struggle.. I feel that they've stabbed us.. tbh!
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It is what it is, Amelia. I suspect they might be gearing up to sell the business. By upping fees massively and then comparing potential profits with the amount of business that went through last year, all of sudden PPH becomes very attractive to a potential suitor.
Of course, these figures will never be realised and we will all have gone.
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Check this out guys. PPH are now running Text Ads on Google
This confirms what others have said about a drop in Organic traffic to the website.
This is the first time I've seen them running Ads. Before they were ranking right at the top for Organic searches, and they have disappeared from the first page
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They need to hire new marketers. The content marketing strategy they have is quite sad. They had a chance to differentiate themselves by paying freelancers fairly, but chose not to. So, they can expect to lose the quality freelancers and gain thousands of third world freelancers who will not deliver a quality product. Turning themselves into a c-grade website that businesses do not trust.
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dear colleagues, please don't forget to sign petition! https://chn.ge/2KPhwqn
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Just to update - have today had payments from three new clients to the value of £150. PPH have taken nearly a third of that in fees. What is the point of even bothering to use this site. If Natalie is following this thread and listening to everyone (which I very much doubt) then you need to revert back to the old fee arrangement and refund the amount you've stolen off us this month.
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Has anyone tried clicking on the PPH Featured Hourlies daily email lately? I did and Norton now blocks access to PPH from these emails listing it as a "Dangerous website with no valid SSL certificate" and advising customers not to enter any personal or financial information. Norton is one of the most popular anti-virus software packages so if it's blocking me how many potential buyers are also being blocked? No wonder I've sold zero Hourlies lately.....
I have sent PPH a "ticket" about this but really PPH just seems to lurch from one disaster to another lately.
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So, we have a clear combination of incompetence + greed from PPH management. Some very bad decisions that have led to a drop in traffic and a push away from the sites strong point (hourlies) to jobs/proposals. Plus numerous worrisome managerial issues re: filing of paperwork and registering a valid SSL certificate. They are sending spam emails everyday at the SAME TIME OF DAY. This is idiocy. They need a refresh on the management team.
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I could not agree more with the majority of the posts on this feed.
I am shocked and upset by the changes. As a freelancer who has worked via PPH for many years and has made the majority of my monthly income from PPH this is significantly affecting my life. I am losing out on so much money per month from a career that can be very unpredictable in earnings month-to-month in the first place.It is a truly insulting move for us freelancers who work with a larger number of clients on a small project basis and would very rarely earn near to £500 from one single buyer.
I really hope this change is something that PPH decide to go back on soon as otherwise I fear most of us have no choice but to build our reputations elsewhere and ultimately PPH will lose their loyal freelance network and not regain it due to batting us off to the side like we don't matter as much as the larger earners on the site.
Really upsetting and feel so undervalued.
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"we are constantly monitoring the platform and looking for improvements that will benefit the community overall." ...I simply don't believe this, based on the new fee structure, it's clear that the main objective as per usual is to improve the site to make as much money as PPH can get away with before the community kicks up too much of a fuss. People are not stupid.
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