Regarding Fake Profiles and Clients

Answered
Follow
Avi
I have been using PPH for over 4 years now and have worked with 250+ clients on the platform.
However, for the past 6 months-1 year I am seeing a lot of fake profiles and projects being posted on the site. Resulting in waste to time as well as proposal credits. What is more shocking is that people will replicate other person's profile in order to come across as knowledgeable in that field.
The locations are also fake.
 
Could you pls tell me that aren't you aware of this problem and what sort of safety screening mechanisms (although doesn't seem you guys have any) you have in place?
 
This problem has become such big that a lot of my friends and even I have almost migrated to other platforms.
 
Here's hoping someone will wake up the senior management & address the issue.
 
Thanks,
Avi
0

Comments

12 comments

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Spyros

    Hi Avi and Muhammad,

    Thank you for your feedback and please accept our apologies for the late reply.

    Under every project and profile there is a "report" button which you can press. These do come to our support team and we do act upon them.

    Unfortunately most of the times it is not easy to decide if a buyer is fake as someone may be up to a market research and decide not to finally award a job.

    So fake profiles and non-awarded jobs should not be confused.

    Of course this does not mean that our safety screening mechanisms stand up to our expectations and we are looking into ways to improve them.

    Regarding the fact of returning proposal credits if jobs expire, it is a valid point and we will be looking into it.

    Comment actions Permalink
  • Muhammad

    I have been using PPH since 2016. Firstly the new AI of Proposal proirtization is a crap

     

    Secondly in the last month i have sent almost 50 proposals out of 50 only 11 jobs got awarded rest are pending . now these remaining are either fake or the poster doesnt want it. The simplesolution to this one is to cancel the job after 15 days and revert back our credit so we can apply some where else. After month we donot get our proposal credit back and this is a mere robbery . It was good before and now it is getting pretty worse

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avi

    Exactly the reason I have moved to other freelance platforms since PPH doesn't even have a customer care division (instead all they use is bots).

    PPH is a classic example of how to break the wheel in an attempt to reinvent it!

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avi

    Hi Spyros,

    I am happy to see a reply from you.

    For fake profiles, I think a simple solution might be for anyone registering on PPH should be asked to upload a valid id (driving license, passport, etc.) plus no profile should be allowed to be active without a valid picture. I am sure software can detect it and will reduce this issue considerably.

    In the long run it will dissipate negative PR that PPH is getting of late.

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Spyros

    Avi that would be a way however I feel this may put some obstacles to some proper buyers that want their job posted quickly.

    Let us have a think over it and come up with some solutions.

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • YannisS

    @Muhammad Thank you for your feedback!

    You said "I have been using PPH since 2016. Firstly the new AI of Proposal proirtization is a crap"

    Could you please elaborate and justify? We are currently assessing this feature and your input will be valuable. 

     

    Thank you,
    Yannis Sliman
    Product Manager @PeoplePerHour

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Muhammad

    Hi Yannis

    Glad I made my voice got heard. I don't want to discourage your efforts. The first problem with the new AI of proposal prioritization is it takes sentences that are similar in proposals that we have previously submitted. I do logo designing now there are certain things that needs to be included in all the proposal now what I feel is it takes that into account and my proposal never came into recommended tag and always in the list of last ones. It is helping the new sellers as they are writing it once but people like me who post daily proposals have to suffer.

    Second problem is there is no scrutiny for job posting there is a long list of fake jobs that new sellers post to get an idea from well established sellers they take their folio links and use it for their jobs . You should take some amount from buyers as initial security or ask them to verify their payment method this will hugely decrease the spam jobs section

    Third issue is we post for every job and buyer choose nobody and after a month you expire that job but we don't get our proposal refund back and it's wasted . Right now I have more than 20 jobs on which I have sent the proposal in last 30 days and there is no response after a month job will get expired and my credit is gone. Then I have to spent another 20 bucks .

    I feel pph is a great platform and I am getting benefits but now things are getting somewhat spammy . Just worried why this is happening and you should change some policies

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avi

    Hi Yannis,

    There are few things I have noticed in past 1-1.5 years (earlier this wasn't the case)

    1. The new algorithm for proposal prioritization sometimes doesn't take into the skill-set of a freelancer (i.e wrong jobs chosen for the freelancer)

    2. Freelancer doesn't receive the notification (selected message) for the jobs they have relevant skills for

    3. Location criteria is almost never taken into account

    Happy to give more inputs if need be.

    Thanks & Regards,

    Avi Kapoor

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • YannisS

    Hi Avi,

    Can you please elaborate on your second point (2. Freelancer doesn't receive the notification (selected message) for the jobs they have relevant skills for).

    It would help if you could describe in more detail a certain (or a hypothetical) case, where the issue is clearly described. 

    I will then get back to you to all of your points.

    Thank you

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avi

    Hi Yannis,

     

    I meant that for example i am Market Analyst/Researcher then I used get the notification on mail about the projects asking for similar skill-set (not to be confused with project invitation by client). However, now this has changed and I hardly ever get right project notifications (as per my skill set).

    So must have been something to do with algorithm changes.

    Hope this clarifies the point.

    Thanks! 

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • YannisS

    Hi Avi,

    Below are my comments on your points:

    1. The algorithm does take into account the skill-set of the freelancer. However it might seem that sometimes it does not, because the algorithm also considers many other characteristics of the proposal which might altogether be more important than just the skill-set of the freelancer alone.
    2. I am not aware of such an issue on the email notifications. We will look into it though.
    3. Location is taken into account. For example, if the freelancer is from the same country as the buyer, then the proposal is more likely to be ranked higher. It also takes into account other location criteria. However, because the algorithm takes into account many other characteristics of the proposal, it might seem that sometimes it does not take location criteria into account.

    Hope that clarified things a bit.

    Thank you for your feedback Avi!

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • YannisS
    • Edited

    Hi Muhammad,

    On your points:

    1. You are right on this, this is how the algorithm currently works. However, the ranking algorithm takes into account approximately 30 factors, so this one shouldn't affect ranking that much. I have already added this to our backlog.
    2. This is a known issue and we have already identified a couple of ways to address this. It's in our early 2020 backlog.
    3. Again, another known issue that we are going to address early 2020.

    Muhammad, rest assured that most of the issues that are brought up by our community have already been scheduled to be addressed in the near future.

    Thank you very much for your feedback - keep it coming!

    0
    Comment actions Permalink

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Didn't find what you were looking for?

New post