verified payment method icon

I was wondering what happened to those icon, as I use them a lot when applying for an assignment, hope engineering will be able to display it back soon.

Regards

The engineering team should consider an alternate way to show "Payment Verification Status" for such cases, e.g. plain text vs. icon indication. Jacqui please advise them on this.

Also pleas note that "Payment Verification Status" is not a just an icon, it's a very important indicator, which used all the time by providers on determining if take particular activity (apply to job) or not. So than icon issue is blocking good part of providers from doing their everyday activities, they're kinda blinded: how do I know if to apply to certain job posting, if I don't even know if poster really going to use oDesk to get their project done (and confirming that with establishing their payment method), or it's just another dead post. It's not a secret that bigger part of job postings at oDesk are never being proceeded to hiring stage..

Again, oDesk doesn't have to use image/icon as the indicator, that was just your engineering team's choice. And it's not definitely good for oDesk & oDeskers to stay without the indicator at all starting November 13 2008 (when it has disappeared) till the November 19 2008 (on Wednesday's weekly site upgrades), all the more till Nov 26!!!

It's a considerable fault, and please notice that it's bad not only for providers as they can't apply with insight, but for oDesk too as there will be less deals on the site till the situation's fixed.
 

I myself used that icon on certain phases of my application or work, but its not really an indicator to me, as to whether I should apply for an assignment or not (remember that card verification can take a while), but that icon will become very relevant when I am being interviewed for the assignment (so I may follow it up with buyer at the end of a successful interview) or when the assignment was rewarded to me (so I may follow it up, ensuring smooth transition), most especially, when I am about to start work for that assignment (don't work for an unverified buyer, hourly or fixed-rate).

I not sure if oDesk allows a project to go ahead even with an unverified card, to Odesk's moderators, your thoughts on this please.

Regards

Although I'm not a moderator but a provider, I can answer you: yes, it's possible to start with the project of buyer who didn't verify their payment method. You can find that at http://www.odesk.com/help/help/billing_and_payment/twosmall_charges under "I hired a provider, but my card isn't verified yet. What happens now?". That's why it's so important to be see that indicator.

Regarding your tactic: yes, you do that right way mostly, but let me give you couple advices as oDesk veteran. You should more carefully use your resources such as time, efforts, and application quota as well. You can't apply to everything, right ? You're limited by quota, and there are pretty many relevant jobs posted (at least, sometimes So you don't need (and shouldn't in fact) to apply to those where status is "Not verified". E.g. if post was made yesterday (I mean some reasonable time ago), and there is still "Not verified" status, there is 99% probability that  it will never be passed into something real. It's a dead job posting. And applying to it, you're just wasting you valuable time, efforts, and quota. It may happen that you spent your quota on meaningless postings (how else to name job postings of buyer who never verified their payment method and therefore are not going to pay at all??), and missed really good job which was picked by somebody else.. Yeah, it's a real world - welcome

Sure, all this works only if you're making good cover letters, spending your time & efforts on that (as oDesk does encourage you at every convenient moment), not just spam applications. And, there are some exceptions exist related to some sort of another oDesk mistakes when e.g. buyer in fact has verified payment method and pays their bills during months, but oDesk system says that "payment Method not Verified" anyway.. But, that's another issue to be researched and fixed by engineering team.

Anyway, believe me, it works. And that way you'll decrease the share of that "Job opening expired" notifications, being able to start concentrating on improving your chances to defeat your contenders and win certain real job. But, that's totally different story..