Employer wants to pay me outside of Guru.com, isn't this against the Guru/employer service agreement?

Hi Denise,

I believe that this is against the TOS. You really should report this entire thing to help desk so they can investigate.

It looks like the employer is directing you away from Guru at every turn - payment, accessing files, and not awarding through Guru. If I were you, I would approach this with caution. Guru cannot help you with a dispute or to collect payment if things go wrong unless you are working within their framework, and running the project according to the steps provided. If there is no Safepay, there can be no opportunity to fight for your income. You have no guarantee of anything beyond being taken for your time and effort.

Take care

:)

Denise,

I had a similar experience recently. It is not only against Guru rules, it is potentially fraudulent. My requestor asked that I access a website URL that he provided and to let him know when I reached $5 of work (?!) Another professional sent in a similar question late last week. Please report this to Guru and do not register (or even try to access) the website address. It could be a potential phishing situation.

Guru, please consider giving job postings more scrutiny. Professionals, always be aware and if something doesn't "feel" right, it probably isn't.

Good luck, Denise -- RT

Christine is right. It IS against the TOS to receive payment outside of Guru. The whole point of using the system is so Guru gets their cut.

Thanks to all for weighing in. There are a lot of good comments in this thread detailing the risks of agreeing to work without a formal http://Guru.com project award and accepting direct payment. Keep in mind that projects of this nature can be reported for investigation by clicking the 'Report this Project' flag on the Project Details page.

Upon review of this particular project, it does not appear that the Employer is offering a legitimate opportunity. As such, we have closed the project and the Employer has been removed from our site. An announcement was sent to those Freelancers who've submitted bids to the project, and we have refunded all bids submitted by Freelancers to this project.

Thanks again for alerting us to this matter, and please let me know if there are any additional concerns.

Thanks Christine! How do I report it to Guru? I have searched the site and just can't figure out how to do it.