2007/10/29
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Onforce
I've been "officially" retired from the technology industry since 2003.
However, I still occasionally pick up little side work bits, do my technology talk show, and I'm always learning and working with new technologies.
I can't help myself I guess I'm more than a little bit of a techno-junkie.
Recently some friends and family asked me to help out with clients who other technicians were unable to help. That's pretty much my
modus operandi these days. I'm the guy folks call when no one else can resolve the problems.
I was asked to sign up with OnForce.com in order to go through a corporations method of paying their technicians.
I signed up back in May but didn't do anything with it.
Onforce has a long, slow, manually processed, seemingly very inefficient process of verification.
They also are very limiting and restricting in their scope of choices. They only list a few certifications, and if you have any that are not listed, they will NOT allow you to list them anywhere. It's ridiculous. And upon requesting increasing their list, they are extremely slow to even respond, but so far still have not made any such changes.
Even some straight forward certifications they are onerous and in efficient about processing.
Their web-based forms are very amateur in scope and design, and lack the usual directives to reduce the need of repeatedly going back to correct entries that are not compliant with whatever rules their obviously very limited database design can handle. And then on the redirect to the page they force you to re-enter some of the fields (such as the EIN - Employer Identification Number) because their scripting is not carrying it over. It shouldn't be surprising that their site feels so "hacked" since it is only written in PHP rather than a more mature, stronger developer community from other languages. The whole site feels a lot like the "phpnuke" type sites. Their forms with lists are in non-sensical/non-existent order (non-alphabetical for product names, etc.).
They don't let providers list more than $200/hr. This is ridiculous. There are many times I've charged $250-$350/hr and the clients have been more than happy to pay for it. This is just more proof that their target audience is low-end consumers, and inexperienced "newbie" service providers and "buyers", rather than more serious corporate and enterprise level, or high quality experienced technicians.
They only allow linking to one bank account for depositing funds (I have 3 banks and 7 accounts myself).
To top it all off their phone support was condescending and down right rude. Very unprofessional indeed (and it sounded US/East Coast, not some other country). Again, very startup like.
Overall the entire company feels like the "bad old days" of the .com VC (Venture Capital) funded startups. It does not "Feel", look, smell, or act like a professional operation. You'd think after their supposedly being around for 3-4 years they'd have things a little more smoothed out. This feels like a first year company.
Also if you make the mistake of registering with your nickname instead of your full legal (for privacy reasons) or business name, you're out of luck trying to use the web interface to make changes. They "allow" the change, but on clicking the "submit" button, it remains the same. Solution, start the whole process over by creating a whole new account. Definitely a long ways they have to go yet.
They provide a background check service, but if your name is like mine (VERY LONG) they don't give any option to enter the lengthy name, thus it will likely cause a background check to fail because of a "name mismatch" to SSN on the 7 year check. They only have fields for First Name and Last Name, nothing for Middle.
Event their password policies are terrible! They do NOT allow using other characters as part of your password, only numbers and digits!
All the criticisms being stated, I like the CONCEPT of what they are trying to accomplish, it's just that their implementation is far too clunky. I don't know how well it's going to scale over time if they do not improve and better automate and streamline their process.
Of course, I'm also not your average newbie, green, wet-behind-the-ears-just-out-school techie, which seems to be the majority of their providers. The site is definitely geared for a less experienced, more basic, narrow expectation of what a technician looks like. It is not geared for a broader, deeper, extensively experienced more computer science oriented provider.
Hopefully over time they will smooth things out, but for now I am VERY frustrated with their service the whole 2 times I've used it.
Again, I'm not against their vision, but they REALLY need to work out the bugs, and I think it's going to take a considerable attitude change for them to move from a loose confederation of "hacks" to a more professional services offering that I could with confidence recommend individuals, small companies, and large corporations consider for services.
Until then I would currently discourage anyone from using their services at the moment.
However, I still occasionally pick up little side work bits, do my technology talk show, and I'm always learning and working with new technologies.
I can't help myself I guess I'm more than a little bit of a techno-junkie.
Recently some friends and family asked me to help out with clients who other technicians were unable to help. That's pretty much my
modus operandi these days. I'm the guy folks call when no one else can resolve the problems.
I was asked to sign up with OnForce.com in order to go through a corporations method of paying their technicians.
I signed up back in May but didn't do anything with it.
Onforce has a long, slow, manually processed, seemingly very inefficient process of verification.
They also are very limiting and restricting in their scope of choices. They only list a few certifications, and if you have any that are not listed, they will NOT allow you to list them anywhere. It's ridiculous. And upon requesting increasing their list, they are extremely slow to even respond, but so far still have not made any such changes.
Even some straight forward certifications they are onerous and in efficient about processing.
Their web-based forms are very amateur in scope and design, and lack the usual directives to reduce the need of repeatedly going back to correct entries that are not compliant with whatever rules their obviously very limited database design can handle. And then on the redirect to the page they force you to re-enter some of the fields (such as the EIN - Employer Identification Number) because their scripting is not carrying it over. It shouldn't be surprising that their site feels so "hacked" since it is only written in PHP rather than a more mature, stronger developer community from other languages. The whole site feels a lot like the "phpnuke" type sites. Their forms with lists are in non-sensical/non-existent order (non-alphabetical for product names, etc.).
They don't let providers list more than $200/hr. This is ridiculous. There are many times I've charged $250-$350/hr and the clients have been more than happy to pay for it. This is just more proof that their target audience is low-end consumers, and inexperienced "newbie" service providers and "buyers", rather than more serious corporate and enterprise level, or high quality experienced technicians.
They only allow linking to one bank account for depositing funds (I have 3 banks and 7 accounts myself).
To top it all off their phone support was condescending and down right rude. Very unprofessional indeed (and it sounded US/East Coast, not some other country). Again, very startup like.
Overall the entire company feels like the "bad old days" of the .com VC (Venture Capital) funded startups. It does not "Feel", look, smell, or act like a professional operation. You'd think after their supposedly being around for 3-4 years they'd have things a little more smoothed out. This feels like a first year company.
Also if you make the mistake of registering with your nickname instead of your full legal (for privacy reasons) or business name, you're out of luck trying to use the web interface to make changes. They "allow" the change, but on clicking the "submit" button, it remains the same. Solution, start the whole process over by creating a whole new account. Definitely a long ways they have to go yet.
They provide a background check service, but if your name is like mine (VERY LONG) they don't give any option to enter the lengthy name, thus it will likely cause a background check to fail because of a "name mismatch" to SSN on the 7 year check. They only have fields for First Name and Last Name, nothing for Middle.
Event their password policies are terrible! They do NOT allow using other characters as part of your password, only numbers and digits!
All the criticisms being stated, I like the CONCEPT of what they are trying to accomplish, it's just that their implementation is far too clunky. I don't know how well it's going to scale over time if they do not improve and better automate and streamline their process.
Of course, I'm also not your average newbie, green, wet-behind-the-ears-just-out-school techie, which seems to be the majority of their providers. The site is definitely geared for a less experienced, more basic, narrow expectation of what a technician looks like. It is not geared for a broader, deeper, extensively experienced more computer science oriented provider.
Hopefully over time they will smooth things out, but for now I am VERY frustrated with their service the whole 2 times I've used it.
Again, I'm not against their vision, but they REALLY need to work out the bugs, and I think it's going to take a considerable attitude change for them to move from a loose confederation of "hacks" to a more professional services offering that I could with confidence recommend individuals, small companies, and large corporations consider for services.
Until then I would currently discourage anyone from using their services at the moment.
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In addition to all the above hassles, here's some more.
They took more than a week to get around to "authorizing payment". And that only after repeated messages and phone calls.
Then their payment policy restricts to a maximum "pay out" from their "Account" to your own bank of only $999.00 per day! And that payment is expected to take at least 3-5 business days to process! And don't try even $999.99 it won't allow even the extra .99 cents. How ridiculous to put such limits. What is the reason with restricting the daily payout amount at all? Are they putting the "end user" payments into a high interest bearing account and trying to make money off it like a bank so they want to hang onto it as long as possible?
So, this means, from my experience of 2 clients through onforce.com so far, that it has taken between two to three WEEKS MINIMUM to get paid from when I finished the work with the clients.
If onforce would at least be honest and list payment terms as net 15 or net 30, that would be something, but they are completely misleading about the payout time periods. Maybe others have had smoother experiences? Since I do not know a single professional who has (or would likely) try out such as service, I have only my (annoying and time consuming) experience to base my review on.
Since I'm retired the actual time to be paid is the least of my issues. What I am most annoyed about however, is all my wasted time jumping through all their hoops and dealing with their (obviously incompetent and) rude support staff. They have a long ways to go in improving their model and especially implementation before I could recommend a single entity use their services, whether they are a service provider, buyer, or end user. I would strongly recommend everyone stay away from onforce.com except to help them with their alpha/beta testing. Do NOT use their service for anything professional. The end users were VERY annoyed by the process as well, and stated they would rather never use the service again too. They found it too cumbersome and time consuming compared to more direct service models.
I'll continue to test it out from time to time (since they seem to be in a frequent development release cycle, thus very Alpha or at best early pre-beta quality) to see if they make any better progress, but I will definitely avoid recommending any of my clients begin using their service, as well as dissuade all the other providers out there that I know over the years from using it other than as a testing basis.