Monday, May 27, 2013

Suspicious exam experiences at Freelancer.com

At freelancer.com various exams are offered to purchase. If you pass they will let you add a insignia in your profile. Exam cost is $5. Though it is not obvious for all outsourcing marketplaces to charge for exams, freelancer.com has chosen the option. But whether the exam results are authentic or fabricated to induce users to spend more in taking exams is questioned.
A review of a user who sat for the English exam, says in spite of the kindergarten level questions she failed when she took the exam for first time. But immediately she spent another $5 to take the exam again. This time she passed. The problems that she detected were as follow -

...how can 10.8 questions can be wrong? I mean…10 maybe, or 11 but 10.8?
....they won’t even tell you here you did wrong

The most interesting part is that the difference between exam results. 1st time failed with 73% and 2nd time (immediately after the 1st attempt) passed with 98%.



Another user testified that their exam system can be another front for ripping  the users off. while reviewing the site the user stated that when he sat for exam at odesk he scored that high that he was placed in the top 10% . This was his first attempt. Comparing this experience with the experience at freelancer.com he concludes -
I'm pretty sure the tests are rigged . If you get a wrong answer they ask you a similar reworded question like 5 times . Then they say you failed the test with a score of 70% . But they don't show you which questions you got wrong ! They just want you to pay for the same test multiple times

In another case Paypal refunded the user's money which was taken out by freelancer.com without having authorization. It was a small amount of money, but worth mentioning as they took that in the name of FREE EXAM.

1 comment :

  1. Yes. I agree with you. I am a web designer with excellent reviews on freelancer.com. They recently offered a free "plus" membership, which I took, and I was able to sit for exams by paying the fee by 400 awarded credits.

    I took HTML - 1 test. The test was very basic with multiple questions, like you mentioned. I am 100% sure, that all my answers are right. Still, they given me score 68%!

    I took another HTML - 1 test by paying from awarded credits. I got a new set of questions and this time too, all were correct. Still they are showing I am failed with 68% score!

    A reputed web designer can never fail or score such low in basic html questions! Their examination behaviour looks very very suspicious to me!!

    ReplyDelete