PeoplePerHour.com Review – Is it a scam?
PeoplePerHour.com is a website that connects small businesses and freelance workers worldwide. Established in 2008, People Per Hour has already outsourced over £37,500,000 worth of services from £100 or less worth of small projects to on-going contractual work.
The website claims that many business owners use them to hire workers to accomplish small projects which often last from hours to weeks. This setup allows small businesses to create virtual teams without the red tape, cost, and bureaucracy of traditional employment.
How PeoplePerHour.com Works
According to PeoplePerHour.com, business owners can post a job for free and takes just a few minutes to accomplish. Once the job ad is created, it will go up on the site and be viewed by freelancers. There are 3 types of jobs that can be posted by business owners in PeoplePerHour.com: the fixed price, hourly, and base+result fee jobs.
Freelance workers, on the other hand, can choose a job to bid from these seven main categories: IT/Programming, Marketing/Sales, Design, Admin/Secretarial, Writing/Translation, Accounting/Legal, and Others. If clients can post a job for free, freelancers will be charged a small service fee for a successful bid.
Final Thoughts on PeoplePerHour.com
PeoplePerHour.com provides a good opportunity for small business owners to outsource projects without really having to go through the process and implications of traditional employment.
While freelancers can register for free, there is a certain amount to be paid for the site’s service. If you don’t mind the site’s service fee percentage which could range from 4.5-10%, then PeoplePerHour can be a good try.
Please leave your comments or your experience with PeoplePerHour.com below; it helps others.
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Hmmm…
I have been using people per hour for quite some time now…
Well, better than any similar site I have tried, but still not my priority as a way to work…
I couldn’t say that any of these sites are scum… Just good for clients and very competitive for freelancers.
Atrocious and appalling are the nicest things I can say!
I’ve been using PPH as both a seller and buyer for quite a few years now. I was so amazed with the type of things on offer initially. However, as I started purchasing and selling. I started to see the huge cracks within the company. It is all one big sham to con consumers out of their hard earned cash.
I also use other freelancing sites and some of them offer verification of employees through ID checks etc. This offers much more transparency and accountability for the people you are potentially going to work with. While they all differ in the ways they are run. They all operate on a similar model by offering to be an escrow to ensure that as a buyer your work is complete and as a seller your money is received. However, due to numerous complaints and shoddy service. I have also witnessed major changes in the way things are done.
Firstly, they used to offer a telephone number and the people answering seemed very unprofessional and like they come from the council estate side of town. They would often fob you off with short answers and just keep you on the phone repeating sorry they can’t do anything and how sorry they are. Remaining apologetic, brash, rude and quite brazen.
My first bad situation was during a telesales campaign that I wanted to run. The seller was silly enough to use his real name and once I realised he was a convicted criminal. The scam all came to light. The escrow system doesn’t normally release the money straight away and it takes time to be released. This is used to protect sellers. However, on the other hand. If a seller releases the invoice and the buyer doesn’t reject it. The invoice and funds are unrecoverable and paid automatically. When signing up you do not need to put many details other than you name and email. This should show you that as a consumer if there is no such transparency. Why on earth would you purchase from the website.
The telesales agent made fake follow up emails to show he had done the work and then charged me around £300 – £500 pounds. I soon did a background check with a simple Google search and found out that he was a conman. He had burned down a hotel and been in prison. I was absolutely flabbergasted and shocked to say the least. I called up PPH and they didn’t seem to care that much. They said they deactivated his account and cannot recover the funds. I said to myself that I will recover through PayPal, as they kept repeating their garbage. Pending the claim that I made to PayPal. Their account was frozen as a result and they sent me a very rude email saying why did you not ask us for help and in a very rude tone said why did you do that??! To which I thought what kind of low company is this.
I also had solicitation through a fake call centre based in Dubai by an owner called Adam and another one who promised me targeted emails. They almost conned me and I was clever enough to see they were not genuine. There is a plethora of scam sellers online. Even the highly rated sellers are fake and with fake reviews. You will see so many similar names and it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. I believe that I was probably the only seller on there with real and genuine reviews!
Furthermore, I also had a buyer change his order half way through for a £3500 project. I had already completed the work and was left out of pocket by £1500 pounds!
I recently purchased a press release and it was completed and there were minor amendments. The buyer was highly rated on the site and so I felt that I was in good hands. However, the buyer quickly sent the invoice on first draft and I thought this was very cheeky and unprofessional. I didn’t reject the invoice, as I wanted to pay them and felt it was ok. The changes were just one or two words. The second part of the job was to send the PR. However, to date it has never been sent and I don’t even have a copy of the amended version. The invoice was then automatically released after 7 days and I was very busy. I thought he will reply and as a gesture of good will I didn’t reject it as we were having dialogue every few days. As soon as the invoice was released he has disappeared for around a month now. PPH state they cannot recover my funds. They are appalling and their behaviour is atrocious. They are one of the most unprofessional and low ended companies that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. As a seller of hourlies and popular featured services. I would often have sellers threaten me to give free work and they would not release the invoices. They would blackmail me to do extra work that was not included in the cost given. This website is a sham through and through for decent freelancers. The only ones that are making money are the big scammer owners at PPH and the scam sellers. Stay away from PPH at all costs!
P.S. The fees are a joke! 15% is joke ridiculous to say the least. Xenios is making his wallet very fat, but I am sorry Xenios your wallet will not even buy you anything soon. Because people are seeing your company for exactly what it is. See their employee reviews as well. They are a joke like their customer service.
I’m a freelancer producing quality work. After I’ve done, say, £50.00 worth of work and my bid is £25.00 and I get £25.00 and I still get a request to add to that work without further payment I get people upset that I haven’t produced the work I was asked to do – I’m thinking – is it really worth bothering with the contractors on this site? I’m not even asking a fortune. The other problem is that employers want to employ as cheaply as possible. They would then receive bids from India, Phillipines etc., and these people really don’t know, for example, how processes work in the UK. They don’t know the culture of the UK, postcodes etc., and have to be given a lot of instruction on how to do the work because of this. Yes, it may be cheap production, but I have taken on tasks and not been paid because the person entering the job, whilst they receive the amount of work to that value (and more), still feel that they haven’t received the work that they asked for. I feel the people placing the jobs don’t realise the volume of work that is put into these jobs by the freelancer who really doesn’t get paid enough for the time input into their project. This leaves the person placing the bid feeling that the work hasn’t been fully completed.
The problem is that the amount of work completed very often doesn’t reflect the time input for the job. For instance, I will bid at, say, £25.00. I then complete £50.00 worth of work and the person inputting the job feels I haven’t completed the task when they start to want even more. I’ve completed twice the volume of work for half the price. Very often a person inputting the job wants me to do the work but does not get around to awarding the job on People Per Hour. I run my own separate business and can invoice through that business. I then don’t get paid. It’s only recently that I’ve been having more and more problems with the contracting side of this. In reality if someone is too lazy or can’t be bothered with work ethics or expects more for their money than half price, they are simply expecting too much work of the freelancer compared to how much the person posting the job is prepared to pay. You also have UK companies employing people from India and the Phillipenes. Those who are not from that area of the world are not likely to understand the culture nor what is required. Therefore, how can a person who does not know the culture even in Europe be expected to know what to produce. Yes, they may be very cheap at, say, 20p per hour, but the quality of imput cannot be guaranteed. I receive less than £1.00 per hour and still have people who won’t pay for quality work – and I don’t hardly charge into more than £25 per 200 quality, up to date contacts. If someone isn’t prepared to pay, they will say anything to make that happen, even if it’s simply an excuse not to pay rather than looking at the volume of work the freelancer has produced.