Add your names to an open letter of complaint on new payment processing times
*****ATTENTION FREELANCERS AND BUYERS******
Please read our letter of complaint below and comment if you can with your name, when you joined People Per Hour, what CERT level you are and what your line of work is. If you are able to, please also comment and tell People Per Hour how this is affecting your life. This will be left up for a few days and then we will send it to PPH's complaints department and Head Office. The comments below are intended to do just the above, if you would like to enter a more general discussion there is one happening here:
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Dear People Per Hour,
We are a group of loyal and hardworking freelancers on your platform. Some of us have been working as freelancers on People Per Hour for over 11 years. For many of us, People Per Hour is our sole source of income and we have poured in years of effort and time to build up our footprint and presence on your platform.
We are writing to you to let you know what damage the changes to your payment processing times 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.
We wanted to let you know just how much havoc, chaos and panic you have caused in our lives since you announced your decision to subject us to the new payment clearance process and times.
We have all lived through a year and a half of the most disruptive time in any of our lives due to the pandemic. We are sure it hasn’t escaped PPH’s attention that freelancers have had a rough ride during this time. 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.
For some of us, our families rely solely on the money we earn from PPH and we live from invoice payment to invoice payment and for this, we work very hard. Everyone who has had experiences of being a freelancer knows that cashflow and being paid on time are big challenges. We are hungry, tired, our rents are behind, we are unable to pay our mortgages on time. Some of us do not know if we will be able to pay our internet and phone bills to enable us to keep working on the platform. Some of us have had to use foodbanks and negotiate with landlords and banks, even though we have money sitting in our escrow on People Per Hour that could cover all this instantly.
In particular, we are very concerned and feel let down about the lack of transparency People Per Hour have provided during this time. None of us understand what these ‘checks’ are, and we have been left to come to our own theories. There are many things we don’t understand and People Per Hour have not been forthcoming with any transparency. For example, you state "Clearing periods only limit the withdraw of funds from PeoplePerHour. Earnings are added to your available balance and can be spent within PeoplePerHour instantly." This makes no sense to us, you are saying you need extra checks before we can receive our money due to fraud, but yet we can freely spend the money on your platform. In addition, many of us are confused and frustrated by the fact that timescales for these checks vary wildly depending on how much a freelancer has earned - if it's a series of checks, it's a standard procedure for all, surely?
We have not heard anything from People Per Hour that makes us understand why you are doing what you are doing. We simply do not believe that in the world of instant payments, high tech and on-demand services why you need to hang on to our money for 18 days. It just won’t work for freelancers in the long term, but at the moment, many of us are wondering what we will do in a few days’ time when the food runs out, when we can’t pay our internet bill, or rent or our mortgages leading to us not being able to work at all and when the stress of this may just be too much to bear.
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. We have been left with the impression that People Per Hour doesn’t care about its freelancers and that you do not consider us important.
We would like you to consider as a matter of urgency the following points:
- Restore the withdrawal and payment processing times to 48 hours
- Engage in meaningful dialogue with us about why this decision has been made
- Stop penalising freelancers who do not earn above your self-imposed ‘threshold’ to benefit from the 7-day withdrawal process
It is in our interest as freelancers for People Per Hour to be a success. We can help you do this, but not if you continue to treat us in this appalling way.
Yours Sincerely,
Meri W, joined PPH in 2013, Top Cert Level, Business Plan Writer.
Rachel B, joined PPH in 2012, Top Cert level, Voice Over Artist.
Thorsten H. t/a HPD Translations, Joined PPH in Aug 2019, Cert Level 5, Owner/Consultant/Translator HPD Translations.
Catherine A, joined 2015, Level 5, content creator.
Simon C, joined PPH 2016, Cert 5, Programmer.
Marcus B, joined 2015, top cert, print design, audio & video services.
Sehrish Mushtaq, Cert 5, Photoshop Expert ,Top Photo Retoucher ,Photo Editor and Graphic Designer .
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Official comment
Dear Freelancers,
Firstly, we want you to know that we hear you all. We completely understand that the last year and a half has been really tough for everyone. Your frustration is understandable, and in future we will make sure to communicate changes like this much further in advance to give you more notice.
Unfortunately this is a necessary process as we have grown and have to meet new regulations. Some freelancers have asked why they can spend the money freely on PeoplePerHour while their funds are in clearing. This is because we can retrieve any funds spent on PeoplePerHour products, if any red flags occur during the clearing period. Please see our blog here for more details on the reasons why we’ve made this change.
2020 hit the self-employed extremely hard and we’ve taken steps to provide support during this time. One of the ways we’ve done this is by lowering our fees to the lowest fee tiers in the market, to further support our community of freelancers during these uncertain times.
The tier system that allows for faster clearing periods is 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.
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.
We are truly sorry that you have all been impacted by this recent change. We will continue to strive to improve our customer service process to ensure that people are responded to as quickly as possible moving forward and we’ll do our best to make sure that our communication on similar changes is much better in the future.
Best wishes
PeoplePerHour Customer Support
Comment actions -
Koshala, joined 1 month now, Cert level 4, Social Media & Marketing
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Nancy Callegari, joined this platform in 2010, now a Top Cert transcriber, proofreader, copy editor and writer
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Karen & Eric
PPH since 2014
Cert 5
Earnings $26,000
Software Engineer & Content Creative team.
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Gagan
Cert 5, Freelancer since 2017
Systems and Hosting Administrator, Web Designer and Developer.
Just had a task for Web Design close with a new client... one month to complete a big site, complicated functionality but all went good, delivered, Customer leaves a shining review, happily paying 3 times of what he initially came in for. I usually transfer funds once every 2-3 months or when I'm need, I was surprised why it would not let me transfer the 'just earned' money. Researched and came across this thread... really heartbroken if such blanket policies are imposed.I work on quick tasks mostly, 100-250 range usually. The bigger projects are usually not from PPH but I do get them occasionally. My gigs last 2 to 10 days at max, waiting for another 14-18 days is a miserably long period to get hold of your own hard earned money.
I have loved PPH, it has been a great financial supporter for me and I met some interesting, very good clients but this is seriously a shot in the foot, killing the whole sentiment.
I just pray and wish this is hold back period is reduced to less than 7 days, if it really must.
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G -
14 days to get paid and then a further three days to process a withdrawal, the interest earned on our money must be very nice on top of the fees PPH charges.
Bad policy, badly communicated and badly executed too.
PPH may live to regret this money-making scheme disguised as supposed money laundering protection.
John Darvall, Cert 5
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Skye Godfrey, joined last year, Cert 4.
I couldn't agree more. I am flabbergasted at the lack of professionalism. Usually when terms and conditions need to be updated and/or changed it's a far more transparent process with notice given. Furthermore, there are some inconsistencies in how the 'policy' has been applied as outlined in this thread. In addition to the points already identified, I would also like to highlight that PPH take their service charge DURING the 14 day (plus...) period required to check the source is legitimate. How can this be?
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Kate Gabrys
Member since 2011, Cert 5
PPH has no right to hold on to money that is not theirs to begin with. If they want to keep our money for 14 days and make profit on it, how about they stop charging fees? Especially that those are charged before the payment is 'cleared'. I will be moving away from this platform with my regular clients.
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PPH is acting as an escrow system which in itself is illegal. They don’t have the correct licensing for this purpose!
As mentioned above, they are so quick to take out their fees but dance around the bush when it comes to paying out people’s money!!
How this company has been in business for this long is beyond me.
I’ve already said good bye to this platform and I’m just waiting to get my money out (£650) and will never work on here ever again. And will never recommend this site to anyone.
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Now Everyone Happy to hear from CS .They are not interested to solve our issue .i have few question for All of You .
1: Can PPH Get the Business without Freelancers ?
2 : How PPH Earn ?
3 : Why PPH Deduct the Fee If They don't want to listen ?
4 : Why we are bagging To PPH ? (in the condition of showing Nice )
5 : Should we wait More in the way of Nice ?
6 : What will You do the Esp Top Rated or Cret 5 when a Day You wake up and open The PPH and You dont find any PPH ?
i asked You all of them Use trustpilot when they Solved our issue we change our feedback if they still not listen Then 2ND ACTION WILL BE TAKEN FROM OUR SIDE me and all other freelancers contact with the regular clients and work Through Payoneer or invite them any other platform and work with theM 0 fee .if work through payoneer Just in 5 minutes You will get the payment in Your payoneer account without any fee and Buyer also will happy to pay a very minor 2% fee rather then 20 % to PPH .(But this is the 2nd option 1st we tried to PPH will solve our issue Through Trustpilot )
@All
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Thanks so everyone who has added their names so far, please keep on spreading the word. Can I ask a big favour- can we keep general discussion/comments to this thread please as we are just trying to keep to names and details on this thread: https://support.peopleperhour.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4403556666001-An-Open-Letter-to-People-Per-Hour-Please-Comment-Below-on-Payments?page=1#comments
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Meri Lines :
Every time you say you are bringing PPH down, or burning it to the ground, it just highlights to me that you really don't need PPH- but I do. And I need it to work. I need buyers not to see really negative and potentially libellous reviews all over the internet and I need PPH to see that we are a professional, realistic group of freelancers that are taking this very seriously.His words are harsh but i don't think his meaning also harsh .i am agree on Your this point that we don't care what CEO DOING in His life and any other
Meri i think he wants to say this is the way that PPH will listen our issue and not only listen our issue they solved our issue .2nd what You will do when You wake up a day and dont find the PPH .Then what You will do or any other top cret or cret 5 . i am also Cret 5 and don't have any other source of income but try to understand in the condition and becoming so so nice mean You are agree with their policy when They wants They pay You when They don't want they don't pay You ,
so My request to all of You please don't become so nice They Eat You and don't become so Harsh They Spit You .Do the action in the middle .
write a review on trust pilot and explain why we are given this review with true reason don't write PPH Scam or fraud or any thing explain Your true reason
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"If you request your withdrawal after 12pm on a working day, or on a non-working day, then the 48 business hours start counting on the next working day."
This is from the Customer Support on the site. In short, your 48 hour waiting period for withdrawal only applies if you try to withdraw the money before 12pm. There was no mention of timezone, the best way to check is to look at the time that appears next to the withdrawal request/attempt.
In short, 48 hours withdrawal time in many cases is actually going to be 72 hours assuming there are no weekends or holidays in between, otherwise they will be significantly longer.
To be clear there is no mention of this at all on the withdrawal page where it merely states 48 hours, working days only.
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Wow @voiceoverPaul,
good to see such a senior member raising concerns. I can't agree more, rather than tighnting the bolt on freelancer's payment, PPH should really focus on minimizing those fake buyers who just sign up to post fake posts, posting links for SEO juice and waste premium proposal credits for freelancers. I have been reporting such for the last 6 months on regular basis but it just doesn't seem to stop. PPH needs a better screening process and some appropriate 'escrow fee' to sign up as new Buyer to evade such spurious sign ups.
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