Vicky S.

I have been a loyal freelancer with PeoplePerHour since 2016, have built up a good client base, and have 550+ 100% positive reviews.

I was approached by a new client in September asking me to translate his book into English. He was insistent that he only wanted to make one payment, so he paid the amount in full as a deposit at the start of the project. This money was held in an Escrow account for security while I was carrying out the work, so I haven't seen a penny of it, but I believed I was covered in case of a dispute. After being communicative for the first few weeks, my client was then unresponsive for eight weeks.

I submitted the finished book together with my invoice just before Christmas, and he finally responded stating that he required changes. He agreed to approve the invoice if I promised to make the amendments. I agreed and requested a list of the changes.

Once the invoice had been approved, the funds then went through a two-week clearing period (which according to PPH T&Cs should have been one week). The funds were cleared and available for withdrawal, but the following day PPH rejected my withdrawal, requesting further confirmation that the work was fully complete. They refused to release my funds of over £4,000 until the Buyer responded, despite my protests that the Buyer has not responded or even seen the messages on the workstream for the past three weeks. When I asked them for a timeframe for how long they would hold the funds, they couldn't tell me and just insisted that the Buyer must respond. What if the Buyer never responds?! Do they expect to hold on to my money indefinitely? As far as he's concerned, he's paid the money and doesn't owe anything! I understand that they have to protect Buyers, but what about Freelancers? According to their T&Cs, if a Buyer doesn't respond to an invoice, then PPH can automatically release funds from Escrow after seven days, yet they can't release money that has already been approved by the Buyer?!

I am now being told that they are allowing the Buyer three months to respond, and after that they will re-evaluate, so there's not even any guarantee that I will receive my money after three months! Where is the justification in that?! Please bear in mind that it already took me nearly four months to complete the work without seeing a penny!

It looks as though PPH have already deducted their £423 of fees and no doubt they'll be making interest on my money for as long as they can hold on to it!

If I had known that it was going to come to this, I would never have taken on this project. I will certainly never be taking on any more large projects through PeoplePerHour ever again, as there is no guarantee I will get paid. There is no real support whatsoever for freelancers on this site. I wouldn't be surprised if they started taking admin fees off the amount currently sitting in my PPH account, as funds are not meant to be held in there for more than 30 days.

I can't afford to lose this money, so I will be pursuing this further. Having seen that others are having similar issues does make me question PeoplePerHour's practices.