I am one of the people running a med-tech blog Medgadget. We are not developers, we are in medicine, so we needed to hire someone for a WordPress job. So, we went back to our account on ScriptLance, only to discover that it was bought by Freelancer.com. (We used SL for 20+ hiring projects before, with no probs.) So we created a new project, and after we offered a generous budget, we had more than 20 bids.

We hired a developer NovaStudios, who advertises as being US-based, has good ratings. To make a long story short, all work done by NovaStudios was from overseas. During the first 2 weeks, we paid NovaStudios 75% of the $1250 budget (mistake). Then things degenerated. The site crashed, the developer was gone. We restored the site from DB. Then the developer reappeared, then disappeared. And so on. Nothing was ever delivered. After 3 months, we filed a dispute, to abort the project and get our remaining 25% of money back.

Here's the crazy part. On Freelancer.com, the developer can return the money and himself close the project. And that is even though it was my project, and I paid for it! So, he returned the $250 from the escrow, closed the project, and I couldn't even leave feedback!

My multiple emails with Freelancer to get an opportunity to leave feedback were unsuccessful. See this:

http://medgadgetenglish.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads//2013/02/View-Ticket_-SED-989-67810-.pdf

2 Lessons.

1. Don't use Freelancer.com if you need a developer. Freelancer.com will provide you with no protection.

2. The system is prone to abuse by developers. They can get on many projects, and after 1st payment, they return the escrow money, close the project, and their reputation is protected. Their identity is probably protected as well (Freelancer.com is based in Australia/Singapore).

P.S. A Kicker. Our site was hacked just days after all this.