General Question to Sellers: Do sellers feel protected by PPH terms?
A bit of an explanation as some may not be familiar with this automated process that actually affects all sellers. PPH will automatically refund a buyer if a project hasn't been invoiced within 30 days. This is regardless of deliverables being provided, there are delays from the buyers or even if the buyer has not even asked for a refund. It is completely automated, and nobody will check to actually understand the situation prior to releasing the funds back to the buyer.
Personally speaking, this is the situation I faced this week. I have a web development project that has been going on longer than usual due to delays caused by the buyer. They chose to communicate via WhatsApp because it is easier for them as they are travelling a lot and like to respond on the fly. That is absolutely fine for me, I am more than happy to accommodate them and they have done nothing particularly wrong in this scenario other than being extremely slow getting the initial content over to me (a pretty normal problem for web developers). After I had received the content I sent over the deliverables for review within the timeframe stated in my offer (both via WhatsApp and on the PPH stream for my protection, I believed). A few days later I can see the job has been automatically refunded by PPH despite the work clearly being carried out in the workstream and even more importantly no refund had actually been requested by the seller. I have been informed that nobody will check the stream or provide any mediation on the delayed work and their system will instantly side with the sellers after 30 days and provide a full refund and also temporarily drop your rankings impeding you from gaining more work for a while. Their solution is to ask the buyer to pay again, meaning if they suddenly change their mind about getting a website for whatever reason, they can just disappear and I lose out. This also still means my rankings are affected.
I have also had an issue in the past with an awkward buyer providing a completely incorrect brief and then demanding I add much more functionality at no extra charge after I had built everything to their original brief. When I refused (obviously), they requested a refund and to my shock PPH support asked me to try to resolve the matter, which was impossible without working for many more hours free of charge, so they just sided with the buyer and granted the refund and again also affected my ranking, this time permanently.
So my question is, am I the only one here that feels like PPH doesn't offer sellers any protection anymore or are there more of us?
Just curious.
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I agree.
My first disagreement on here resulted in me losing over 50 hours of work and not getting a penny. I was copy-editing a document. 40% could not be changed due to product names/specs. However, I got the document under 50% Copyscape from the original.
The buyer uploaded screenshots showing it was 99% the same (yet neither of the files had the same amount of words like the ones I was working on. We spoke outside of PPH; he was happy with the work. Even in the workstream, he stated after the time had passed, to do more edits and he was happy.
PPH gave him all the money back, throw away my 50 hours work and gave it to him for free because it was late, they ignored the fact he asked for edits after the time had passed or the fact he uploaded fake screenshots.
This week, someone bought an hourly. Sent me links that were broken or to a person's facebook account, asked for all this stuff like blog posts, content, graphics etc. PPH told me to call them (yeah like hell after last time I got told that can't be used if there is an issue) Kept pushing for information to be sent the same broken links. The buyer put in a refund request which I was fine for. However, I lost 50 points because I apparently did not do the work to standard?
Even though I couldn't do the work because no information was given and I was given broken links. So I am slowly trying to find a new website, because no sellers on here are protected at all.
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I can completely relate to that mate. Support contradicts it's own terms constantly, that is if you finally manage to reach a human and not a bot. The issue I have found and know many other sellers have too, is that PPH used to be fantastic in it's infancy and as such we managed to get lots of work in as well as having the peace of mind that we had our backs covered so we never needed to join other websites such as Guru and Upwork. As such, the standard of this platform has dropped significantly and sadly it is now almost too late to go and get work without any reputation on the other platforms. As far as I can see, this is PPH's only saving grace that they even have decent, experienced sellers still own this platform.
It is just so frustrating!
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