ProZ.com, Inc.Reviews of proz.com

Impossible to get in touch with a support staff. My account has not moved since 24 March - no offers whatsoever.

Extremely untrustworthy with lying outsourcers who aren't professionals but scammers. Proz facilitates scammers by letting them not pay you when they find your work low quality. So outsourcers like Daniel Shamebo take advantage of that. He lies that you're impersonation of sworn translator and rushes you without paying a fee and even paying at all. When you've done the best and made time to work on the project for him(you also have other better paying jobs to work on) he complaints without reason that your translation doesn't match when it's correct and you have checked everything double. So you delivered service and get paid nothing. This is unjust; nothing is paid when nothing is done but when something is done you should at least be paid something. Nowhere in the world you hire someone and not pay that. But at proz.com that's what happens. DONT WORK WITH/DO BUSINESS PROZ.COM; THEY'RE RULES DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE AND WILL YOU WORK TEN PLILUS HOURS FOR NOTHING FOR SCAMMERS WHO TAKE YOUR HARD WORK AND JUST SAY THE QUALITY IS LOW SO TO NOT HAVE TO PAY. MEANWHILE THEY OF COURSE USE EVERY BIT OF YOUR HARD WORK WHICH IS OF "LOW QUALITY" TO THEM.

It's hard enough to be a freelance translator, but ProZ takes advantage of you. You can't find a job unless you pay for a membership. There is NO control by the site whatsoever, so the companies trying to hire you are often not offering better than minimum wage. After you paid ProZ to get a job, that's what you get?! Direct applications are the only way to get a job. At least you won't be robbed of your money.

I got a business account there and I got scammed by someone pretending to be a member of the BlueBoard companies in the platform. We submitted 5 projects for them but they suddenly disappeared after the second reminder of the invoice. I sent all evidence to a ProZ team member but they were unresponsive. I contacted the mother company and they said I was scammed big time. I am not sure how to get my money and the freelancers' money who worked for me on such projects to get their money back.

LAUGHABLY TERRIBLE SITE. Used to at least be helpful to a beginning translator. I have all kinds of complaints about Proz.com. First of all, Proz.com shows tremendous favoritism and defends “bad actors” all over the place. First of all, there are all these fellow members of Proz.com who are rude as can be. Usually older translators like Kim Metzger who are meaner than a snake in the forums to particularly younger translators new to the industry. Kim, for example, really isn’t a translator. He’s more like a troll who spends all day long on the website. There is no doubt whatsoever that you can find even thousands of examples in the forums of him being extremely insulting to fellow translators. If you try to defend yourself, then the owner Henry rushes to his defense and threatens YOU with expulsion. RIDICULOUS. I think there are many people who rarely come by anymore because they tired of all this crap. The moderators are usually the meanest of them all who need reined in themselves!!! Proz.com also defends bad agencies. If an agency complains about your work and doesn’t pay you in full, you aren’t allowed to leave a negative rating – which is absolutely ridiculous. Many agency owners are COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT and can’t speak English to save their lives! (Ironically, most of the people WHO WORK FOR PROZ.COM seem to speak very poor English themselves.) Why aren’t you just allowed to give your opinion (truthfully, of course) and allow the agency to respond if it wants to? Why all the censorship and brow-beating? Many of their rules are completely nonsensical and enforced even more nonsensically with lots of favoritism. For example, non-paying agencies are supposed to be banned after two negative entries. But some get very quickly banned even if their numbers are overall quite good, but then others have negative entry after negative entry after negative entry, but they haven’t been banned and are still even allowed to post jobs. ????? THE JOB BOARD IS COMPETELY WORTHLESS. I do specialized types of translations and used to get on average probably one job a week from the Job Board. These days, I average probably one job EVERY TWO YEARS. The Job Board has become the haven for sleazy agencies looking to scam translators or to get people to work for one-tenth of what any self-respecting translator from the West would work for. They also don’t update the Blue Board directory of agencies very much at all. Many links lead to empty pages or you get a notification from Avast not to proceed because it’s a risky likely scammer’s site. I don’t even bother to research my translations via the Kudoz term search. The searches seem to produce very bad results. Again, they are rarely updated. I have received notifications that entries involving myself were updated FIVE OR TEN YEARS LATER – well, I guess better late than never. DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY.

Despite its user base mainly made up of freelance translators, the site exploits this base in its bid for income, and arguably also makes the job market worse for them, by contributing to downward-sticky prices for established, professional translators in what is a race to the bottom. Don't be fooled -- they are on the side of outsourcers with paid accounts. Support tickets raised for outsourcers who have rejected your Blue Board WWA rating with lies (and substantiated with evidence to the contrary) will be closed with no action taken. In other words, the one thing that ProZ is possibly useful for these days -- the Blue Board -- has been grossly compromised. Won't name names here, but ask around. There are smaller, paid rating boards that don't ask for very much, which are much better and ethically managed, and which provide far more reliable insight into the trustworthiness of a potential business partner.

They show lots of racism and discrimination towards members from 3rd world countries, muslims, and members paying less annual fees and they recruit lots scammers... Also they have very strange rules, that work just fine for unreliable clients or scammers. Recently we faced non payment issues with few companies we met through proz, we still weren't allowed to report the matter on the blueboard record, and proz moderators are always taking side with those with better membership or from the same nationality, race or religion... They do not treat freelancers in the same manner. Very cheap customer service. Not trustworthy. Thank you

They help scammers and they only care about who pays them more, they are very racist. They do not provide good support.