Names changed to protect the (not so) innocent.<p>----Start email----
Hi Modest Freelancer,<p>I hired you on oDesk more than a year ago.<p>I have hired 50 people on oDdesk and they have all given me 5-stars ratings except you. You gave me one star.<p>I'd like to offer you the opportunity to rate me 5 stars.<p>So far, I have not rated our project together. If you do it, I will give you 5-stars in return.<p>If you don't, I will give you 1 star also, dropping your rating significantly.<p>Let's be frank. Very few people deserve just one star, I certainly didn't. I don't know what made you react to me so angrily, but you got paid for your project, so I couldn't have been that bad, not with all these other great ratings. Whatever happened was just a miscommunication.<p>If you go to your "past projects" you should be able to find the project and change the rating, or contact customer support to do so.<p>Let me know what you decide. Thanks.<p>- The Man
----End email----<p>FWIW odesk responded promptly when I alerted them to this and they said it is not tolerated. Ironically odesk feedback closes after 14 days so after I told him I would not be strongarmed he told me 'Now you get the one star' and 'You're your own worst enemy'(I love that one). Presumably, that was before he actually tried to change my feedback and realized he could not.
I have found many more problem clients than decent ones on sites like these. When I do find a good one, I generally finish the work very quickly in order to impress them and it often turns out they only had a day or two of real work to get done. I usually get great feedback, but when I ask if there is any more work I get things like 'we are running out of runway, so just waiting for funding' and 'we got offers for funding we just didn't like the terms' (that "founder" squashed the project within weeks after not getting the offer he wanted which makes me wonder if he ever believed in his product at all) and I end up back searching for new clients and spending inordinate amounts of time finding worthwhile contracts. I have been trying to refocus to more word of mouth networking as it seems this brings much higher quality contracts. What does the HN community think?
Wow this is pretty insane. It's crazy how those sites seem to have lowered the standard of freelancers significantly. I also find it nearly impossible for a pro freelancer to not be competing with $5h guys that are mass replying on jobs (and usually get them). You should check out: <a href="http://www.cnnected.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.cnnected.com</a> an experiment to (maybe) solve this problem.
I stopped taking jobs on Odesk because of things like this. I find that the less a company is willing to pay a freelancer (I've seen $2/hour max on Odesk), the less professional they will act.
I have also given up on trying to find Go contracting on these markets. It's just a complete waste of time if you try and offer anything that's well planned.