Paid $200 for a 'guaranteed' freelance gig platform and got nothing but spam bots

Signed up for this site that promised direct client leads in my niche, but after I paid the $200 fee, all I got were messages from fake profiles asking for free work... I wasted 3 weeks chasing dead ends before I finally gave up. Has anyone else fallen for one of these paid platforms that just takes your money and runs?

3 comments

3 Comments

michael_green441mo ago

Did you actually manage to get your money back from them? I remember back around 2008 or so, I signed up for one of those "premium job board" sites that was supposed to give you direct access to hiring managers. Paid $150 and all I got was a bunch of outdated listings and automated emails. Turns out the whole thing was just a scam run out of someone's basement. I ended up having to dispute the charge with my credit card company, and even then it took months to get a refund. These platforms prey on people who are desperate for work, and it's a real shame because there are legitimate ones out there, but they're hard to find.

gavin3651mo ago

Yep, @michael_green44, chargeback was the only way. Took forever though.

brianm661mo ago

Are you sure that wasn't the same platform? I actually read a pretty detailed breakdown on some freelancer forum a few months back where a guy traced the IP addresses of those "client" messages back to the same server the platform was hosted on. According to that post, they basically just copy-pasted the same generic job offers to everyone who paid, all run by a small team. Your $200 story sounds exactly like what he was describing, right down to the "free work" requests. So it's not just you, a lot of people have been burned by this exact setup.