I am surprised by the amount of people calling this scams without thinking. As I promote oDesk quite heavily through this blog I occasionally get an email titled: ‘oDesk Scam‘ where the writer goes on a massive rant about how they got ripped off on oDesk and how they will never use them again.

So I thought I would put my ’2 cents’ forward.

Is oDesk A Scam?

I am just going to jump straight into it and say an emphatic ‘NO’.

The people who regularly reference oDesk as a scam usually refer to being ripped off buy a buyer who didn’t pay, or a service provider who didn’t do the work they were hired for.I don’t know about you, but to me that is people who are ripping other people off – not oDesk.

Interesting Comparison

A local current affair tv show here in Australia recently ran a story on a Nigerian scam that would duplicate car listings in classified sections on regional newspapers and online classifieds, and people were purchasing these ‘cars’ sight unseen and only realized that they had been scammed after they had paid the money. The show rightly titled the ad posters as the scammers as the classifieds are just a marketplace to connect buyers and sellers – and it is the same with oDesk.

With the thousands of jobs being posted on a daily basis it would be impossible for oDesk to personally check over each one, and I don’t believe it is their job too.

It is the employer and service providers responsibility to make sure that they are working with reputable people and this isn’t really that hard: [Read more...]