Fortunately, I had direct contact with the client and he paid me through an online payment platform. My client had used a bank account from a different country than the country listed on his freelancer account. They banned his account without even notifying him. I couldn't even reach him through their platform.
And stay away from freelancer.com. You can always find new clients there, but contact them directly after that becasue, obviously they don't have any kind of protection for us so, why should we pay some additional fees if we are going to get screwed anyway ?
Fortunately, I had direct contact with the client and he paid me through an online payment platform. My client had used a bank account from a different country than the country listed on his freelancer account. They banned his account without even notifying him. I couldn't even reach him through their platform.
Read through the comments on the parent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677 Specially this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626790
And stay away from freelancer.com. You can always find new clients there, but contact them directly after that becasue, obviously they don't have any kind of protection for us so, why should we pay some additional fees if we are going to get screwed anyway ?
Good Luck!