Is freelancer.com legit or scam?

It is 5.5 years since I reviewed Freelancer.com in my blog post "Is Freelancer.com a scam?". The post remained my most viewed blog post with 200+ comments for quite a long time. Most of the comments are from the users who agree that Freelancer.com is indeed a scam site. I can understand that they found my blog post by doing a quick Google search on "Freelancer.com scam." However, what is more interesting, some readers actually defended Freelancer.com. Interestingly, some of them did not really look genuine (why would you search and land on a blog post discussing whether freelancer.com is a scam unless you were searching for it?) But that it is just a guess. I also noticed canned comments from Freelancer.com employees (most likely bots), suggesting the concerned users to email their support team.

There have been alternatives popping up every once in a while. For example, the HubStaff. However, I am not really comfortable with recommending any of these. As in the past, the ones that many of us suggested as better alternatives to Freelancer.com were later acquired by Freelancer.com anyway. So the new ones can come to the same fate, or they themselves can turn into large evil corporations.

Apart from the issues of landing with a scam employer or a scam employee, Freelancer.com itself is a heavily unethical platform. By searching around the Internet (for example, read Freelancer.com is destroying my life), or reading the tens of comments in my previous blog post on Freelancer.com, you can get a taste of it. Most of the blame on the platform comes from its unethical way of charging. One particular case even I encountered was, the employee is charged the Freelancer.com 10% fees (which can be as high as 100$, if the project is 1000$) even if the employer turns out to be just a scammer. Since the employee did not get any benefit of the platform, any ethical organization would just refund the money. Other obvious issues are lower transaction rates, even lower than your banks, and the painfully long time they take to transfer your money! Transferwise does it at least 10 times faster! That is one ethical company. Freelancer.com on the other hand, an unethical bullying company. The most inhumane characteristics of Freelancer.com is when they randomly choose to block your account and ask for random verifications (as reported by commenters, sometimes driver's licenses are not accepted despite being listed as an accepted form of verification in the Freelancer.com itself).

If you must use sites such as Freelancer.com, try to work from a cheaper third-world country such as Bangladesh or Thailand. Not from Liechtenstein. Because you are not going to get paid higher just because you live in a more expensive or more developed country. 

Moreover, you real-world credentials do not really matter in the Internet world. It is hard to verify on the Internet whether you are who you claim to be. So even if you are an expert, you still have to build your online empire from ground-zero. Start this when you do not really need money, as a past-time. Working on Freelancing websites is not going to give you money quick unless you already have an account with justified success. The early days will be plainly painful as you put in work to a negligible payment (since your competitors are from cheaper countries anyway). 

There are of course many success stories. Many were just lucky or from the third-world countries with a competitive advantage on such global platforms. For example, 5$/hour is high in many South or South East Asian countries, while it is very little for most of the western countries. Others had the patience and time to build their profile slowly, till they can reach the 40 - 50$ hourly rate.

My verdict: Find a real job in the real world if possible. Want to be self-employed? Find local employers and build up a brand, so that you can find clients without greedy middlemen such as Freelancer.com. Freelancer.com is not entirely a scam. But it operates in a gray area with shady business practice (non-existing customer service paired with questionable antics to extract more money from the clients/users), acquiring competitors aiming to operate in a near-monopoly.