Friday, December 30, 2011

Why you should boycott crowdSpring

crowdSpring, Chicago based crowd sourcing company, operates an unethical business model, has misleading terms of service, and internal policies that take your money and sucker designers into spending hours of time while deflating their industry, and "abosrbing" award amounts meant for winning creatives.

Much has been written about Spec Work and how crowdSpring is hurting graphic designers and creatives. That is true, and their deeds go beyond that. Example 1.

For creatives that are trying to work with the buyer and seek to communicate with the buyer the company will expel the creative. Meanwhile the buyer is receiving less and less useful submissions because the feedback is all very one way. Example 2.

Then guess what happens, the buyer doesn't find a winning design and crowdSpring decides guess what? Exactly, they get to keep the bounty that you put up for the creatives to work towards!!! Example 3

Even though nothing is in their terms of service and everyone believes their funds are held in Escrow but no- crowdSpring will absorb these funds and keep all additional fees.

By rigging the system so creatives are not given a fair opportunity to win the client, Crowdspring can manipulate things to keep all the money for themselves. Leaving the creative without the money and the client, the buyer without a logo design and no one is happy except crowdSpring that decides they get to keep all the money.

Good luck getting anyone in customer service to answer the phones or respond to emails about these practices, but if you do you likely get the same answer many others have: A creative re-reading of the terms of service or an explanation that you are paying for not the award but something else. Sneaky.

The crowd industry has enough detractors without one of its company's being unethical on top of holding a controversial position.

crowdSpring is bad for creatives and mistreats buyers - Boycott!

Have you had a similar experience? Share your story.