Freelancer.com is destroying my life (opens in new tab)

I saw this on /r/webdev and came here to check if it had been posted, glad it has. I hope you receive a resolution on this, and I'm glad when checking on all the freelancer sites, I decided against used Freelancer.com.

I suspect users of these sites are fully aware what kind of a bad deal these websites are. If you are in a situation where you cannot be fully employed or start your own business, they seem like your best hope. These websites are exploitative because they can hold the livelihood of people on already shaky ground hostage. Since the clients on these websites know that the users may be somewhat desperate, they can drive prices down - it becomes a race to the bottom.

What can the OP do, short of creating publicity of Freelancer's behaviour? There does not seem to be any protections ensuring that the author gets paid. He'll be held to the 'terms of service' - which will always be in the client or Freelancer's favour - this is not enough.

They make me think of the rent seeking nature of the 'sharing economy' which just weakens the market and distorts it because it takes advantage of people who do not have an escape. Like if you're uncertain whether you're going to have a place to sleep or eat in the next month.

http://tomslee.net/2013/08/why-the-sharing-economy-isnt.html

The CEO of Freelancer.com actually chimed in on the Reddit thread...

...and made everything sound vastly worse. Link here: http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/243klv/freelancercom...

Basically claimed Freelancer.com had done everything correctly, and that they do accept drivers licenses. But since he didn't dispute a single thing claimed by Dustin, the only way to interpret it that he thought the confused, contradictory, run-around Dustin got from Freelancer.com's CSR reps was "correct".

after reading the reddit thread linked to below, i wouldn't go near freelancer.com; the reddit thread caused me to wonder whether it's even a legitimate business. Three things really caused me to blacklist freelancer.com: (i) the CEO's remarks--never disputed a single fact alleged by Dustin (OP) if anything appeared to corroborate them, and concluded by saying that's how we do things here at freelancer.com; (ii) more than a few people posted to the thread who had also been treated the same way by freelancer.com--ie, cases in which the developer had completed the work, the client was happy with it and wanted to pay, indeed had in fact paid freelancer.com but freelancer refused to pass the money along to the developer; and (iii) the timing of freelancer's byzantine documentation requirement--in Dustin's case like at least a couple of others mentioned in the reddit thread, freelancer.com's requests that the developer supply redundant documentation to verify their account only occurred after the dev had done some work on a project and the client had had paid freelancer.com for that completed work.