Have any other Freelancers been let down by PPHs dispute system?
Answered
Has anyone else been left hanging by PPHs dispute process?
I've just received a response to a dispute I raised last week and it seems PPH have completely missed the issue and not solved the problem.
After accepting my proposal and the finished work, my Buyer suddenly announced the PPH's fees where to high, and rejected my invoice unless I did more work. Naturally, after suggesting they talk to PPH customer support (which they refused) I raised a dispute (which i had to pay for)
Their response states
Dispute Cancelled. As per the refund policy, the buyer needs to give the seller a chance to provide at least two revisions on the deliverables in line with feedback before requesting a refund.
but the issue isn't with the work, the buyer is complaining that PPH fees are too high and now refusing to pay.
The Buyer hasn't requested a refund, I raised the dispute as the Buyer is rejecting my invoice.
There is also no instruction from PPH regarding what anyone should do next in order to solve the issue. Since they're holding the Buyer's funds in escrow, it seems crazy they haven't set some kind of timeframe or simply released the funds??
Since I have had to pay to raise this dispute, I am pretty underwhelmed by their response and service.
Has anyone else had a similar situation, or know how to fix it?
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Official comment
Hello Dan and thank you for your feedback.
We understand the reason for the cancelation and we apologise for this inconvenience. Please be aware that you have received a refund of this dispute fee and you can review the funds under your PPH Account.
That being said, unfortunately, as per our Terms and Conditions all Buyers have to proceed and pay a fee, therefore, your Buyer will need to proceed and accept your Invoice if the job is completed to their satisfaction. Regarding the funds, we do have a timescale - if an Invoice is raised and the Buyer hasn't taken any action within 16 days then the funds are being paid to the freelancer.
We are currently working on a new feature that will help our Buyers and allow them to review every single fee before the checkout page and will not have any impact on our freelancers who work for these projects.
Thank you for your understand and patience.
Comment actions -
Hi Dan,
I had the exact same issue! It's so frustrating dealing with PPH Suport - it seems they only help the buyer and not the Freelancer when it come's to bad buyers.
Please see my post I made today on the community forum. Would love your feedback there too!
Kindest Regards,
Roxanne
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Truly woeful!
I am still waiting for the matter to be resolved, a full month later!
Have just been told by support (who I had to wake up as they had clearly forgotten about me), that I need to raise a Dispute - exactly what I did a month ago, that they then cancelled. Another £5 fee just to get paid. PPH have of course already taken their fee before it went into Escrow.
It really does seem that unless Sellers ask for the full fee as a deposit (which will of course make it difficult to get work), we are completely vulnerable and unsupported.
I wonder how many Sellers silently get ripped off every day??
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Update on my PPH misery:
Have just been told by PPH support that the deposit is in fact there to protect the Buyer, not me, and can only be released by them. I mean WTF?!? This is the deposit that i set in my proposal, that was then accepted by the Buyer.
I have to raise a second dispute, which will again cost me 10% of the o/s funds.
Gobsmacked.
If anyone has any idea how many other freelancers have fallen foul of this, I'd love to hear it. It can't just be me.
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@Dan...I'm starting to think Buyer exploits are more rampant on PPH than I imagined. You are right, Dan, many freelancers are probably quietly suffering from it and don't speak up. Won't be surprised to find that PPH is founded and sustained on Buyer fees. Can't bite the hand that feeds you, right? Yup, PPH and its Buyers are solid partners. Please let's vigilantly protect ourselves since PPH allegiance is unabashedly to its Buyers. Case in point, if the PPH HR Team Recruiter emails us project details that include directuons diverting the freelancer off PPH Workstream, it tells me that the PPH recruiter is firstly not reading the project contents and is certainly not taking the time to vet the Buyer to safeguard the freelancer from possible fraud. Summed up, no-one is watching out for us freelancers. So watch your own back...or find another freelance site with a system that hopefully supports all stakeholders equally.
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UPDATE: PPH JUST CANCELLED MY DEPOSIT!!
Honestly, if I wasn’t so angry I’d laugh!
After suggesting I raise another Dispute to resolve the issue of the Buyer repeatedly rejecting my invoices, PPH have now refunded the deposit to the Buyer, saying my work wasn’t delivered. I am beyond shocked. There’s even a reply from the Buyer in the project feed saying “Thanks Dan, apart from one spelling mistake all looks good”.
My conclusions?
As a freelancer you have zero protection on PPH from scammers and just plain bad clients.
PPH don’t really care, and their support and disputes team seems to be staffed either by bots or people who aren’t qualified to arbitrate.
From messages received, I am not alone.
I don’t really want to consider legal action, it’s so tiresome, but really now looks like I don’t have a choice. The sum owed isn’t a huge amount, but the principle is really important.
Has anyone else had to do this? I’d appreciate hearing from you.
Dan
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Hi Dan,
Well, I certainly feel like I am speaking to bots, that's for sure! I am quite surprised at how it all works to be honest, especially when it's REALLY OBVIOUS, the buyer is a scammer that does not want to pay!
I am starting to think that maybe I should only send proposals where the buyer has purchased from PPH before, but even that isn't foolproof.
I just want to cancel the workstream altogether now but I am scared that I will be penalised for it or bad feedback, instead of the crazy scope creep my scam buyer keeps pushing on me. I refuse to do more work for free! I laid out the details extremely carefully to the buyer at the beginning of the job, the first thing they tried to do was get me to communicate with them off PPH! You would think that would be enough of a red flag for PPH to get rid of them, but no. My workstream is an absolute joke with this buyer, it would be on one of those blogs about nightmare buyers in freelancing!
I always thought that as long as you do your job, and there is evidence of it, PPH would make sure you get paid. Seems not to be the case though.
I don't really know what to do in my situation but I certainly do not feel supported. Seems the buyers know they have the upper hand and the seller cannot do anything so they take full advantage of us.
Hope
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Hi Hope,
Yes, I know what you're saying. I thought I'd finally made a breakthrough, with PPH offering a refund of my Dispute fee and compensating some (though not all) of my lost income. However, after sending a few comments back, the reply I received seemed so scripted it didn't answer any of my points. So yes, bots. I am left wondering if I've spoken to anyone 'real' yet.
It's a shame, but the way things are at the moment, I don't feel I can work on PPH with any security at all. PPH just seem happy to make money from every party at every turn, without really focusing on the experience, or even whether it is lawful!
Dan
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Sorry guys, I need to rant and I am somewhat glad and albeit disgusted that I'm not the only one getting more and more infuriated by this platform. Your stories also sound horrendous.
They have tried to automate absolutely everything, every step of the way even to the point my location was changed and locked to another country as I use a VPN for development work last month. 8 years ago it was really good, I had no issues with the 20% fee they charged when they offered us freelancers real protection which was called upon a couple of times in the past.Now is a different story, working inside PPH is becoming exhausting and the seller protection they state everywhere literally does not exist any more. I had two automatic refunds generated and sent back to the buyer this week due to deadlines being missed, even though the delay was evident that they hadn't actually provided the content needed to carry out the job until a day before the deadline and even then the job was carried out and sent back for review two days later. Despite this the refund was automatically raised and processed by PPH themselves. The buyer hadn't even asked for a refund or disputed any invoices, PPH just sent their money back and actually gave me -1 star review despite the work clearly being carried out and awaiting feedback from the buyer. If that's what they do when there isn't a dispute, you can only imagine how quick they will be to feed you to the sharks when there is one! I didn't even know you had to pay to get a dispute resolved, so what the hell are we paying astronomical sellers fees for?!
I naively gained so much work through this platform years ago that I never bothered creating an account on Upwork or elsewhere. I am now regretting it, as trying to get work on other platforms with no history is near-on impossible.
Thanks PPH, took a fantastic model and royally f*cked it, ultimately because of greed and trying to cut costs on paying staff. -
The biggest mistake we as loyal PPHers made was not creating parallel accounts on sites like Guru and Upwork back in time.
I have worked with around 300 clients on pph but now PPH is a lost cause and in past 6 months i don't know how many fake jobs and fake profiles I have reported only to see nothing happening to them. Such profile n fake jobs results in lost proposal credits and valuable time.
As a seller we have to get account verified before doing any job but buyer can do anything without verifying the account.
I messaged the product development in-charge of PPH on LinkedIn but he is yet to acknowledge my message and complaints about the site now (even after 1 month).
So that's the work culture of PPH.
Greed and arrogance has killed this golden business.
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Pete
The same thing happened to me a few days ago! I use a VPN as I always have done and all of a sudden I get a notification saying they have changed my location to MIAMI (I am in Kent) and if I want to change it back I need to send them a copy of a utility bill! I honestly can't be bothered with the hassle anymore. How can they have articles espousing the wonders of being a digital nomad, yet having a system in place that totally goes against it? Almost every job I have done on here has been a huge hassle or proper waste of my time. LOTS of back and forth for weeks trying to get help from bots.
Avi
I was very naive in not setting up other profiles on other sites but I am currently working very hard and am totally devoted into creating profiles on as many freelance websites as I can, whilst putting a stronger effort into real-world leads as opposed to just online.
I think, although PPH has harmed our ability to make money for ourselves AND THEM, I don't see this as a bad thing anymore. I think they have taught us a valuable lesson, NOT to rely on any one platform as they can change in a heartbeat! They can't get past their own greed and I can see many highly talented freelancers leaving this platform. So many profiles are fake now and SO MANY fake jobs and job cancellations were starting to make this website less worthwhile anyway!
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Sellers can also be shocking too.
I too am suffering a really poor service. I thought buyers were protected using PPH, and up until now, I thought that was the case.
A seller has delivered a really poor project and is obviously making a great deal of money out of this knowing how to play the system.
Really poor to be honest, it's making me deliberate on looking elsewhere for a PPH service.
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