Providers in the Search for Jobs Area

Hello Pothi,

To some certain extend I do agree.
However,as you might remember I had some dicey buyer& a 1500 USD project, he had his cc verified but was extremely cautious to not reveal any personal information about himself. So, if a buyer wants to dupe a provider of the fee, then he can do so even if he is verified.

I also believe that many quality buyers are hesitant to provide their cc information, while having their first look around.

E.g.: I just got hired 4 days back for a 888 USD fixed price project.Total newbie buyer, no cc on file - not even in progress. Once the NDA was signed & the interview via Skype came to an end; I popped the question about the payment & a retainer (please note, I never ask for a down-payment in my initial bid/cover letter)
That was before the weekend, he told me that he will initiate the cc verification and today I got my 300$ retainer.

ONLY FOR FIXED PRICE PROJECTS,MY SUGGESTION:

I believe that Odesk should implement an escrow system & arbitration service,for fixed price projects which have a value above xyz USD, and should make it mandatory to use the service.
Furthermore, Odesk should especially for this kind of fixed price escrow projects allow money to be coming in from sources other than credit cards such as: Paypal, Moneybookers etc. ... So, newbie buyers wouldn't need to give their cc info on the very first job-posting and the provider could be quite sure to receive the agreed monies once he/she delivers the work. Age verification of US buyers via drivers license or social security number checks as well as telephone verification could be done.

Maybe it's a good idea to introduce a one time fee for buyers who don't want to reveal their cc on the very first assignment and offer/force them to use an escrow service (incl. phone verification)?

Maybe it's a good idea to introduce membership fees for providers? - It shouldn't be mandatory to be a member, but members could be using the escrow service for "free"?

If Odesk believes that an in-house escrow service is economically not feasible, maybe they should look for a 3rd party provider to handle the escrow process?

Up-selling is the KEY to raise the quality standards of this market, without running into loss. Odesk can only become a quality marketplace by implementing added features/services, at an extra cost.

Cheers,
Rick

Its understandable that some Buyers are hesitant at first to give out their cc info until they are sure they find the provider fitting their requirements. What is important is that we, Providers, do not start work on a project unless the buyer's cc has been verified. By this, we protect ourselves and at the same time educate the Buyers about the system.

The Buyers I am working with didn't have payment verification when they posted the jobs. But, as soon as I was hired, I encouraged them to have their cc verified before I even start working on the assignment. A really serious buyer will do just that if he wants the job done.

Just sharing....

odeskmommy.com

I get all the new postings via RSS feed and for a few days I looked at them to see how many were bad. Just from the title I could tell which were providers. I think I put in about 8 help tickets a day for a few days flagging inappropriate job postings. It usually took them another day to get them down. I stopped doing this after 2 days, I was just curious how many there were and it is not my job to monitor these things. It seemed it took a rather long time to get them down too.
I think that it is time oDesk beefed up their staff a little bit and monitored the posting before they go up. With a global workforce they can have some help people on line 24x7 to monitor these things for probably quite little pay. Maybe if someone went online once an hour and approved job postings thing would work a wee bit better.
This does seem a recurring source of frustration for providers and it seems it could be solved fairly easily.
Just mt 2cents .