An Open Letter to People Per Hour: Please Comment Below on Payments
Dear People Per Hour,
I wanted to let you know just how much havoc, chaos and panic you have caused in my life since you announced your decision to subject us to the new payment clearance process and times. If you are a freelancer reading this, please comment below so we can try to support each other and so that we can let PPH know what damage this is causing us and that we, as freelancers, are not only the lifeblood of the platform but also real people with real lives and families to support.
I am a freelancer, but I am also a single parent to two young children. We have all lived through a year and a half of the most disruptive time in any of our lives due to the pandemic. I am sure it hasn’t escaped PPH’s attention that freelancers have had a rough ride during this time. I am mainly referring to the UK here as that is where I am from, but I am sure these problems are global for freelancers. As freelancers, we did not enjoy the benefits of furlough, of the Job Retention Scheme and many of us were not eligible for government grants or benefits. As we start to move out of the pandemic, many of us are reeling from the effects and have now been served a huge blow by PPH-a platform that is supposed to support us as freelancers and make our lives easier-by making us wait up to 18 days to receive money we have earned and worked hard for.
I don’t know about other freelancers, but my family relies solely on the money I earn from PPH and we live from invoice payment to invoice payment. We don’t live beyond our means, there is only me earning money and I work very hard.
On Friday, I came to the realisation that due to the new payment clearing processes, we did not have enough food to last us the weekend, let alone 18 more days. My rent was due on Friday, and I have not been able to pay that. So, we are hungry and on top of that I am now really anxious about not paying my rent. I earnt enough money this month to pay my rent and buy us food and everything on top, but it is sitting in my PPH account, and I cannot access it. This morning, my son’s school had to arrange a delivery from our local food bank. I have never, ever had to ask for anything like this before, but we had no choice.
I have not heard anything from PPH that makes me understand why they are doing what they are doing. I simply do not believe that in the world of instant payments, high tech and on-demand services why they need to hang on to our money for 18 days. It just won’t work for me in the long term, but at the moment, I am wondering what we will do in four days’ time when the food runs out, when I can’t pay my internet bill leading me not being able to work at all and when the stress of this will just be too much to bear.
I hope people don’t think I am being overdramatic, for some freelancers this will just be a frustrating experience, but for some of us, this is having real life, damaging effects on our lives and the lives of the people we love- and I am sure I am not alone.
Please comment below and tell PPH how this is affecting your life if you can.
Yours Sincerely,
Meri Williams
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@Adam.
"if you are so unhappy with peopleperhour why not just disable your account and move on with your career on another platform?"
Great question. Here is my answer:
I just do not get to be kicked on the ass and just move on. I already have other means. So, PPH is now just a sort of entertainment to me. So, whatever money is coming, that's fine. But let them even think about touching my money and as I said in an earlier post, it'll get even uglier. In short, Adam, I do not kiss asses. Whoever offends me in this stark way, I know how to pay back. What kind of platform is this that people spit on and still have them on it? Does not that make you think? So, let PPH be like so many other sites and platforms that started so good (take Yahoo! in good old days) but ended up being rubbish. So, to put it in another way, PPH is now a large heap of rubbish that, as a scavenger does, I'm picking only valuable items from that I can recycle or even buy some extra cones of ice cream in this hot weather. But to take PPH seriously would be the biggest joke. I'm not used to speak in this language all the time. I've just thrown the towel. So, what would PPH do? They lose. We gain, even if some of us might lose over short term. Got it?
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I just had a look on TrustPilot and amongst the very negative reviews are many gushing 5 star reviews and next to the reviewer's name it says 'Invited'- does anyone know what this means? Guess PPH are trying to flood TrustPilot with good reviews to counteract the bad...
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Yes, Meri, they're emailing certain members asking for feedback. Positive ones obviously ending up on these sites.
You know from time to time you used to get these survey things, how likely are you to recommend PPH. Something like that. I always replied unlikely due to the high fees. I'd find it totally embarrassing inviting anyone to join PPH when they're subject to 10 per cent fees just for posting. It's unethical. Anyway, yep that's what they're doing now.
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@Meri, ALL
I'm so sorry that you're struggling, Meri. Definitely, it's not good seeing anyone struggling and to express his entertainment about it. Now what I mean is, you guys are being ignored although I'm zillion percent sure PPH has got the word and they do not give a damn. So, when I say I'm entertained I mean I'm entertained to see yet another unscrupulous platform being hurt - bad - for what they do for honest people like Meri.
To answer your question about Trustpilot review invitation, YES, very possible. You can already see more "invited" people in the last couple of days since your open letter has been published. And yes, many sites do follow this unscrupulous practice of writing shining reviews or inviting people to actually write shinning reviews to counter negative ones. The most notorious platform is TripAdvisor. I know from experience.
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@Meri, ALL.
I've just wrote a new review warning users on Trustpilot of possible manipulation of reviews by PPH by inviting users to write shinning reviews. Here is my review countering what's supposed to be PPH's counterstrategy. I'm after PPH until they are on their knees and wake up. It's a marathon. I simply do not give up.
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On a slightly more positive note I've had a payment go through on time, according to the new terms and conditions. There were 14 days of clearing before I could withdraw it, then it was approved within 2 days and in my bank account within 24 hours of that.
That is the first I've had that has gone through the clearing process. -
@ Simon, ALL.
You call this a "positive note"? You've 14 days + 2 days (for approval) + 1-24 hours (final deposit) and you call this positive? Man!
I do understand that when anyone, including myself, is desperate they would hang on any little hope, however delusional. I'm certainly to write a (monetized) post about this experience. Anyone does not want to have his or her post included in any piece I will write on this very unfolding drama?
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"Clearing funds faster for high earning freelancers is a form of rewarding loyalty, essentially we can spend the extra time required to monitor for fraud more closely as it is more acceptable for us to take the hit when we have to cover the cost incurred by fraud. Thus we offer this higher level of service primarily to Freelancers that earn a lot of money from work done on our platform rather than people occasionally earning small amounts."
This whole paragraph makes no sense. They can do the checks faster for those who earn more because...they can cover the costs of any fraud? What? What fraud? That is a nonsense sentence. Also, they STILL have not addressed why it's acceptable for funds to be moved around within the platform and spent on potentially many disparate services, with no checks at all carried out on it. How easy is it to do checks on a payment that has come in that is then, for example, divided up and spent on 7 other services? It's all total rubbish.
I had a conversation with a client who I don't work for through PPH this morning, and he told me apropos of pretty much nothing that another of his freelancers had told him they were moving away from the PPH because of this new system. It's not a good look if word is spreading about your shoddiness amongst people who don't even use your service to start with...
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@Rachel
Exactly, PPH is on a downward spiral and before long will cease to exist.
I have been on here for 2 years, to me that is loyalty, but that doesn't count if you are not a high earner.
High level of service to the higher earners.... wow discrimination on a Tory level. The rich look after themselves and the poor can sod off.
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@ALL.
My suggested title for my planned piece:
PeoplePerHour: The 14-Day Clearance Policy in a Nutshell (Inspired by Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell)
My opening line would be:
Happy freelancers are all alike; every unhappy freelancer is unhappy in her own way. (Inspired by Tolstoy's Anna Karenina's opening line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
You really never know how plight could be a silver lining.
Thank you. Anybody interested in making this conversation into an ebook and possibly a Netflix series?
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@Rachel. None of the statements from PPH make any sense. I had a direct support ticket that is now closed but very little in it was answered.
If the security checks are required by legislation, PPH can point to that and we can go away and look it up. If they are required by their payment provider, they can point to it and we can go away and look it up. They have not told us which party is being checked, whether it is the buyer or seller.
Are they worried that a payment made by a buyer will be overturned? Maybe a cheque might bounce or be cancelled, except they don't accept payments by cheque. Maybe the bundle of bank notes might be forged, but they don't take cash. A credit card transaction could be charged back, but that can happen up to 12 months after a transaction and at 14 days a cardholder might not even be querying an unknown transaction.
Where does escrow fit into all this? We start work with a guarantee that we will be paid because the money is safely in escrow, but after we've done the work we may find out that the money in escrow wasn't really there and we can't have it. Why doesn't the clearing period start when the money arrives in escrow?
Other organisations that check for money laundering, such as an online casino, will check the person and the bank account, but not every transaction. Once a person or bank account is approved, the checks are complete.
I have also raised concerns about the 30 day inactivity period on an account, after which time PPH claim the freelancer's balance. They have agreed that this 30 days starts after clearing but they don't describe the process. We don't get an email to say an invoice has been paid and we don't get an email to say money has cleared and can be withdrawn. We can't request a withdrawal on money that is in clearing so it will be paid at the first opportunity. It looks to me as though PPH are deliberately making it difficult for lower earners to withdraw money, presumably so they can keep it for themselves. Maybe I'm doing them an injustice thinking this, but in the absence of a more plausible explanation, can I be blamed for that? -
@ Rachel, ALL.
Thank you! I always like to be upbeat and activist as I am, I always have some way to navigate annoyances. I'll see that if any monetizing schemes start to pour in more money, I'll for sure share with you all and keep primary royalties for me. Also, it's nice that PPH has built a reputation for years, something new joiners have not seen much of. So, I'll be piggybacking this old and golden reputation to promote my planned piece. (I do not see any syndicated content here on PPH. So much material for inspiration really. Does that mean I should use them as well?)
I'm already excited about this new phase. So, do you think guys I should promote my new piece on PPH too? Do you think they'll be democratic enough to accept be militated on their own turf?
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"Why doesn't the clearing period start when the money arrives in escrow?" - This is a really good point Simon. Or why aren't checks carried out on buyers as they register for the service - that would kill several birds with one stone, reducing dud buyers, scammers etc as well as covering any fraud check they are legally obliged to carry out due to their "growth".
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Hi guys- just had this reply from CS, does anyone know where the community thread he is referencing is? Simon you make some really, really good points- do you mind if I put them to Ioannis in my response?
Hi again Meri.
You might have already seen this reply in the community thread, but I'm copying and pasting the pertinent parts for your convenience.
Q. What regulations would apply to people earning under £2000, apply less to those earning 2-6K, but then all but disappear for figures over £6K? Surely the higher the figure, the more likely there is to be money laundering involved, but somehow that means less time needed to check?"
A. Tier numbers are a result of in-depth data analysis. Many fraud and dispute cases that we have received over the years were included in this investigation. As a rapidly growing business, we have to follow stricter regulations and complete more checks before we can release payments that are made through our platform in order to protect our users.
Therefore, clearing funds faster for high earning freelancers is a form of rewarding loyalty. Essentially we can spend the extra time required to monitor for fraud more closely as it is more acceptable for us to take the hit when we have to cover the cost incurred by fraud. Thus we offer this higher level of service primarily to Freelancers that earn a lot of money from work done on our platform rather than people occasionally earning small amounts. Hence the tiers that are linked to recent income.
Q. How long should it take to withdraw funds following the clearing period?
Upon submitting your withdrawal request, this needs to be processed by PPH. Typically this will occur within the next 48 business hours, and it's an important part of the withdrawal process in order to verify that all the required information has been provided, and the necessary security measures have been executed.
I hope the above has answered at least some of your queries, and reassured you that we are indeed aware of freelancer reaction to this change.
Have a good day.
Ioannis
PeoplePerHour Customer Service -
Help yourself Meri. This is a public forum anyway so anything here is there to be copied, but I'm happy for you to use anything I've written.
I had hoped that after 20 years of running my own software publishing business I had put this behind me and wouldn't have to get into any more arguments with unreasonable employers (if Mohamed will forgive me for using that term with PPH.) -
@ Meri, Simon, ALL.
Holy cow! Read this part by CS closely sent to Meri:
"Therefore, clearing funds faster for high earning freelancers is a form of rewarding loyalty. Essentially we can spend the extra time required to monitor for fraud more closely as it is more acceptable for us to take the hit when we have to cover the cost incurred by fraud. Thus we offer this higher level of service primarily to Freelancers that earn a lot of money from work done on our platform rather than people occasionally earning small amounts. Hence the tiers that are linked to recent income."
So, I understand people not in highest payment tiers are having their money held back as "collateral" to protect PPH against any possible fraud incidents and we, freelancers not making it into the heavenly "Fast" and "Express" tiers, are expected to be told we have to wait until they find "a way" to pay us our money, if at all, instead of that lost to fraud?
PPH is a case example of ultimate roguery. They are definitely making a piece as I note above a sure thing to hit the market to expose them. Motherfuckers!
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Hi Yuriy, I don't know. Fear of 'biting the hand that feeds you' maybe. A preoccupation with remaining professional? Apart from actual military action, what do you think we should do to achieve what we want? It would be impossible to organise a strike, don't think the press or outside bodies care and PPH have really just admitted to us that they don't care about us either...
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@Meri.
I think this discussion is important "the will to win and the spirit of the winner", what Mohamed is talking about. Probably my idea is absurd, but uniting efforts we can not give up and at least try:
1.punish the scammers
2. think about creating a new platform for example "PEOPLE FOR PEOPLE". People of different professions are gathered here, I think we can think about it. -
I agree with your second point Yuriy. We had similar discussions the last time PPH pulled something big like this when they raised the fees a few years ago, and its a great idea to create a new platform, but if we had the money and time to do that, we wouldn't be panicking about waiting 18 days to get paid.
As for your first point- punish them how? Any attempts to punish them will ultimately punish freelancers in the long run. As Rachel said, the only thing that would work is a strike, but it would be impossible to organise and we have hardly any sales anyway...
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This is just a wild guess, but if PPH are worried about covering their losses from "fraud" do you think they might be having problems with buyers requesting chargebacks on their credit cards for non delivery of services? This is the type of thing that could happen as a result of falling standards.
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