BEWARE FREELANCERS!

I feel compelled to warn other freelancers of the horrific ordeal I just endured at [login to view URL], an obviously inferior site to this one. I bid on a project and apparently won the bid, but (I learned later) due to technical issues, I never recieved notification - until I got a nasty email from the administrator admonishing me for ignoring the client and threatening to ban me from the site. Needless to say, I was horrified that the client had been kept waiting and promptly logged in to accept the project. Unfortunately, more technical problems... so I email the admin of the site and instruct him to forward my acceptance and told him of the problem. I also told him I was not happy with the rudeness displayed in his email, and he best check his own notification scripts. While awaiting a reply from either the admin or the client, I realized that the email correspondence had been cc'd to the client as well - his email address was visible in the email! I figured it had to be a slip-up, but took advantage of it and let the client know I had accepted the bid. The admin emails back, with all of the email correspondence to date below, and I see that again he has included the client in the email!! So now this client is listening to complaints about the site, and having to endure getting all the emails. I was upset, and emailed back to the admin telling him to respect the privacy of the emails - that the client does not need to be party to problems I am having with this site... he emails back AGAIN with the client cc'd and says "its like a forum here - there are no private messages"!!!!!!!! WELL!!! As you can imagine, I lost it. Told him if I wanted my complaints public, I would have posted them in the message board; that it was completely unprofessional to subject the client to all of this, and these emails were damaging to my relationship with my client because he did not need to be party to my anger with the site. Guess what?? YEP!!! ANOTHER EMAIL CC'D TO THE CLIENT!! And this one was a "what's your problem" type of message!! The worst part is, at this point, the client emails me with sympathy over my problem with this idiot, forcing me to apologize to him that he had to be subjected to it. The client also informs me that he has released funds from escrow as per our agreement, so I go to the site to withdraw it. CAN YOU GUESS???? Yep...technical difficulties. I'm so fed up by this point I could scream. I email the admin and tell him to release my funds to my PayPal account since his site is not working, and INSTEAD OF RELEASING MY MONEY, HE FORWARDS AN EMAIL TO ME THAT HE WROTE TO THE CLIENT....TELLING HIM NOT TO PAY ME!!!! I just about fell off my chair!!! He told my client he'd had dealings with me, and he should basically watch out because he "had a feeling" about me, and that if the client still wanted to pay me, the admin would NOT PAY ME, but instead GIVE THE MONEY BACK TO THE CLIENT to pay me directly as they "don't want to be responsible". So now I get to wait around, hoping the client gets this email from the idiot so I can get paid... If anyone wants to see the full string of emails, I'm more than happy to share. You can reach me through my website. There is LOTS more that what I've said here, but the gist is that these morons have a site that doesn't work properly, and they do NOT respect their members!!! It makes me so glad there are sites like this one!!! Lisa (cleverldy)