This morning, I emerged from my nuclear bomb shelter–rifle in hand, knife in teeth of course–and welcomed another radiation-free, non-post-apocalyptic day. While organizing my AK-47 rounds into various patterns (the smiley-face is my favorite), I had a conversation with the neighbor’s dog about the pending destruction of the world and what recipe would taste best on him if he came back into yard and left any presents for me. Then it hit me. The world hasn’t come to an end for a long time and shows little chance of doing so. That parallels my freelancing career to this point.

Oddly enough, throughout my entire experience on oDesk, I’ve found that I’ve never once been short-changed or burned. Not even on the numerous fixed-price jobs I’ve done! There have been plenty of chances to claim that I didn’t complete the work, didn’t do it up to their standards, or what-have-you. They could have just let the job sit there and not paid me. Plenty of options for the buyer to choose not to pay me.

It appears that most of the buyers on oDesk are genuinely looking to pay someone a wage for their work, and they would rather form a long-term relationship with a provider than screw you out of a few bucks. To me, that’s awesome! However, I have seen a few odd things happen on oDesk which cause me concern. Just as a provider can create a new profile when a job goes bad and they get a bad rating, a buyer can do the same. The buyer isn’t throwing away much when they create a new profile, though. The potential for making money is their selling point.

Previously, I’ve talked about my paranoid ideas regarding buyers not coughing up dough. You have to be wary, but you shouldn’t be too worried when working through oDesk. After the break, I’ll discuss some more techniques to spot shady buyers an protect yourself as well as the other providers on oDesk without threatening to break someone’s legs.

Not to say I won’t break your legs if you don’t pay

Because I might. I’m crazy like that. When a buyer rips off a provider, the buyer isn’t just shortchanging some poor sap that didn’t protect their work. They’re shortchanging oDesk as well, and much like you, oDesk doesn’t take kindly to people not delivering the money they promised. It drives away business. So, if you’re a good provider, they’re going to be on your side because you’re a cash-cow and make them look good. It’s more cost effective for them to eliminate a bunk buyer than to let an honest provider leave. In fact, I think it’d be good to post a “wall-of-shame” to show both providers and buyers who have been eliminated. That would let both sides of the fence know that examples are made of people who try to get something for nothing.

On a few occasions, I’ve seen buyers who have posted a job, hired someone, and then gone on to create another profile and post the job again. Did they get a bad rating? They rip off the last provider and want to do it again? Who knows. I’ve actually seen job postings under a new profile from someone I’ve done work for regularly, and his style of posting jobs is very formulated. He had a great rating on his other profile, so I’m not sure why he was creating another account. Different company? Who knows. However, if you see some job you’ve seen before on a new profile, you should take two looks at it before you accept. Just keep your guard up.

What about these buyers that specifically state that they will only pay you outside the oDesk system in their job postings? Avoid those. It’s not “the man” trying to keep you down when I say that. It’s always a bad idea to waste applications on buyers who are specifically looking to rip people off. Take it a step further: use the inappropriate listing marker any time you see something like that! We need to create a community which stomps out bad buyers, bad job posts, and bad providers for everyone’s sake.

So, let’s say that you’ve done some work for someone. If they were great to work with and paid, give them a great rating! Don’t forget the comment. Make sure you mention their name in the comment and put some thought into it. That will allow you to track the people you’ve worked with previously. It would be nice to see company names (or at least some sort of identifying marker) for buyers, but it’s currently not implemented. The closest thing providers have is the city and timezone of a buyer, but I’ve found plenty of buyers who misrepresent their location (another warning sign). If a buyer is bad to you, rip them on the rating and make sure to leave it in the comments. Be specific. Report them to oDesk. Do everything you can to make sure they don’t want to try ripping off another provider.

While I don’t condone you doing anything illegal to nail a buyer, there are options which are legal and illegal to make them aware that they should have paid you. One of the options is to threaten or carry out legal action. Usually, that will take care of it, but it’s only worth the effort for larger sums of money. Another is to start a negative marketing campaign against the buyer. If you have enough information (which isn’t much), you can ruin the SEO of their websites and their credibility through legal and gray methods to send their website to Google’s version of hell. If you’re a programmer, there’s options you can build into your software to make it go boom if they don’t pay you. There’s several paths you can take.

Providers are skilled people, and it would be wise for scammers to know that providers tend to stick together, probably know crazy people close to where you live, and have friends living in countries who can do nasty things to your business while being out of any jurisdiction. That goes for providers who are looking to pull a fast one as well. Crazy people–we’re everywhere.

Not that I condone illegal activity, mind you.

The best solution is to always contact oDesk to see what can be done about a buyer who is ripping you off. That’s why you pay oDesk that fee on every job. They’re better equipped to handle it, and they would like to keep you around. All you need to do is to keep records of communication, keep your nose clean, and go through the proper channels as soon as you know something is fishy.

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