| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Geoworkz Thread poster: Ali Bayraktar
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| Subscription policies compared | Nov 12, 2010 |
“If you do not cancel, you will be charged on a monthly basis for your subscription. If you don't change to another plan, you will be charged 10€ ($14) per month for the Basic Translator Plan. There is a 3 month cancellation fee if you do not cancel before the end of the Free Trial. “
Quoting from elsewhere: "With these subscription policies, you have already fallen beneath the standards of the porn and gambling industries."
Plain and simple.
| | | | Krzysztof Kajetanowicz (X) 
Poland
Local time: 20:33
English to Polish
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| Marcus, how serious are you? | Nov 17, 2010 |
Marcus Casal wrote:
As for cancellation fees, many subscription models—think of many mobile plans or pay television—have startup fees, long term commitments or both.
Yes, and you get to own a cell phone that somebody must pay for.
However, there is a cost to us in terms of creating and maintaining your private workspace in Translation Workspace, storing your assets and providing the support and training to help you accelerate your business.
How much does "creating your private workspace" cost on a marginal basis? Isn't it a click by the user that you charge $42 for? Everything else is a periodic expense and as such can (should) be covered by the periodic fee. There is no way that opening a new account will add a one-off $42 expense to your costs, and once the client is gone, the periodic costs are gone.
We have found that most Translation Workspace customers continue their subscription because of the value they get out of it, such as the GeoWorkz Directory, which helps translators find new clients, as well as new colleagues, on a shared platform. They find that Translation Workspace is the real alternative that the localization market needs.
Where exactly did you get this feedback? How about a different theory: that 99% of the users only use TW because they want to work on Liox projects. That can be easily verified if you look at the median chargeable wordcount per user per month. Since wordcount is only chargeable for non-Liox projects, I suppose it is something close to zero.
[Edited at 2010-11-17 18:07 GMT]
| | | | Inger Wolf
Denmark
Local time: 20:33
English to Danish
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| My experience with this tool | Nov 18, 2010 |
This is a comment I posted somewhere else - but the more people who know it, the better.
Some time ago I translated quite a big manual from English into Danish. The word count was approx. 25% new words, 50% fuzzy matches, and 25% repetitions. It was about some medical equipment which can be a bit tricky but I thought what the heck – there are plenty of fuzzy matches, meaning an extensive TM, I could use for concordance/terminology search. Since I have many years of experience, loo... See more This is a comment I posted somewhere else - but the more people who know it, the better.
Some time ago I translated quite a big manual from English into Danish. The word count was approx. 25% new words, 50% fuzzy matches, and 25% repetitions. It was about some medical equipment which can be a bit tricky but I thought what the heck – there are plenty of fuzzy matches, meaning an extensive TM, I could use for concordance/terminology search. Since I have many years of experience, looking at an analysis gives me a good idea of how long it’s going to take me. Not so. It didn’t take me long to find out that the TM was actually empty. All the fuzzy matches were some I generated myself during the translation. When Trados calculates fuzzy matches, it’s ONLY based on the existing TM – not something that is created along the way. That means that those fuzzy matches in TW would have been paid as new words in Trados. When I confronted a global project manager at Lionbridge (who I know personally), his answer was that it was correct that the analyses were different and something like “we did that to be able to give our client a better price”. Sure – but I’m the one doing the work here. I got this translation through a subvendor – not Lionbridge directly, and I ended up having a huge fight with the PM about this. She kept saying “yes, but you are paid for the fuzzy matches – what’s the problem”. I explained and explained, and she just didn’t get it. They don’t care – they are just redirecting the work.
Of course you could argue that those fuzzy matches are actually NOT new words, and that TW is just more precise than Trados. But to me it’s just another way of pushing the price down. And why on earth would I want a tool that I make less money with than Trados?
So that’s where they make the money – and I wish each and every translator would know how that crapware works. And that’s on top of their fees. When I cancelled the subscription recently, I had a cancellation fee of 75 EUR.
People just have to stop using it – that’s the only way to teach them.
On top of that I have had serious issues with TW. Tool not responding, and sometimes during my own review, when I corrected a segment, the correction didn't come up from the TM in a subsequent repetition as "different match" as it should. I... had crashes in heavily formatted Word documents, copying of previous target segment into new source segment - weird bug. I made a long complain list to Geoworkz - and they asked to see the files I worked on - but I never heard anything except something like "we'll have a look at it". So when they charged me the 75 EUR cancellation fee, I referred to the issues, I have had - and that I was not satisfied with they product. Then they just said that if I was not satisfied, I could just complain again to the support team ▲ Collapse
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Inger Wolf wrote:
This is a comment I posted somewhere else - but the more people who know it, the better. ...
Hi Inger, I'm just a "specator" here (since I don't use TW and don't generally work with the company that provides it), but after reading your story, I wanted you to know that I agree with you 100% that "the more people who know it, the better" - I think you should keep passing the message on wherever you can.
You have my deepest sympathies for everything you went through, and if you ever do receive word back from the company, do let us know. In the meantime, let's hope that prospective (or even current) TW users out there find your posts and think twice about what they're getting themselves into.
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locard
Ireland
Local time: 19:33
Italian to English
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| definetly not clear and misleading | Dec 13, 2010 |
Hi all,
I join the amout of people complaining about Geoworkz Terms and Conditions.
I was more than surprised when I clicked on "Cancel Subscription" and found out I had do pay €30.00.
Nobody in the big agency I work for occasionally as freelancer even thought of reminding me this part. Ok, I agreed with Terms and conditions when I subscribed, that's right and it's my fault if I didn't read till the very bottom of the list of conditions. BUT I still find it unfair so ... See more Hi all,
I join the amout of people complaining about Geoworkz Terms and Conditions.
I was more than surprised when I clicked on "Cancel Subscription" and found out I had do pay €30.00.
Nobody in the big agency I work for occasionally as freelancer even thought of reminding me this part. Ok, I agreed with Terms and conditions when I subscribed, that's right and it's my fault if I didn't read till the very bottom of the list of conditions. BUT I still find it unfair so I thought it was good to give them a feedback. The answer from the customer service was:
"...a cancellation fee equal to 3-months subscription is applied when a subscriber opts to cancel their plan. Note that Translation Workspace annual plans are not subject to the cancellation fee."
FIRST: Rather then saying, you'll pay only €12.10 a month you'd better add up that 30€ and CLEARLY say, the monthly fee is : €22.10.
The way Geoworkz does it is quite misleading. They are not making me a gift if I pay €12.10 and then ANYWAY I have to pay €30 to shut down...
SECOND: It's true the annual plan has no cancellation fee, but ONCE AGAIN they forgot to say CLEARLY what's written in Terms and Conditions as follows:
"...Your cancellation will take effect at the end of your current billing cycle—monthly or yearly".
Which means that I would have to wait till the end of the year to cancel...
THIRD: I had to set up a paypal account because the Direct Credit Card Option NEVER worked.
FOURTH: What's the story of $0.01 fare??? That is not written anywhere?
I would like to tell to the managers of GeoWorkz, be clear and you'll get good feedback, happy customers means good advertising: word per mouth is still the most powerful way to share opinions.
And, I will never use Geoworkz tools again.
[Edited at 2010-12-13 17:28 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Marijke Mayer
Netherlands
Local time: 20:33
Dutch to English
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| I cancelled right away after seeing I had to provide my credit card | Feb 28, 2011 |
I took a look at the site, subcribed for the 'Free trial", saw a job I was interested in and found, contrary to what was said, that I could not bid, unless I provided my payment details. That was it for me. I cancelled right away by e-mail quoting their conditions. From what I belatedly read from your comments, it looks like they make money all around from us. I will put a warning out to my other forums.
Marijke Mayer
| | | | Alex Lago
Spain
Local time: 20:33
English to Spanish
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| This just isn't right | Feb 28, 2011 |
First of all I would like to say I think Marcus would have done his company a better service by staying away from this discussion, not because they aren't entitled to speak here which they obviously are, but because by doing so he has given us an even better insight into his company's "mindset" and as most of us on Proz can attest his company's mindset is focused on greed, squeezing the translator for every penny they can.
Though I should say that anyone that's joins a "Free" servic... See more First of all I would like to say I think Marcus would have done his company a better service by staying away from this discussion, not because they aren't entitled to speak here which they obviously are, but because by doing so he has given us an even better insight into his company's "mindset" and as most of us on Proz can attest his company's mindset is focused on greed, squeezing the translator for every penny they can.
Though I should say that anyone that's joins a "Free" service and needs to provide any payment details should see this as a waring sign and do like I do, stay away from them, you can only be scammed if you let them scam you and by giving them your payment details you opened that gate. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Frank Hansen
Denmark
Local time: 20:33
Member (2006)
English to Danish
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| How to cancel the free trial? | Mar 10, 2011 |
I just created a free trial profile but after looking through comments here and the whole idea Im running away, but there is no place to delete the trial account....
Best,
-frank
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Frank Hansen
Denmark
Local time: 20:33
Member (2006)
English to Danish
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| Impossible to cancel - please help | Mar 10, 2011 |
Hi everybody, please help me to cancel my free trial account.
Its says:
"At the end of the Free Trial period, Your subscription will automatically convert to
a paid monthly subscription unless You cancel Your subscription through the “My Accounts” section on or before the expiration of Free Trial period"
I can not see this place!
Best,
-frank
| | | | Frank Hansen
Denmark
Local time: 20:33
Member (2006)
English to Danish
+ ...
| Impossible to cancel - part 2 | Mar 10, 2011 |
They write
"How do I cancel my account?
You can cancel your account via a Cancel button in the Translation Workspace tab of the “My account” section at GeoWorkz.com. Your cancellation will take effect at the end of your current billing cycle—monthly or yearly. When your account is cancelled, you assets will be deleted, and your tenancy deleted, so export any assets you need to keep prior to the cancellation date. Annual plans have no cancellation fee. Monthly plans have a cance... See more They write
"How do I cancel my account?
You can cancel your account via a Cancel button in the Translation Workspace tab of the “My account” section at GeoWorkz.com. Your cancellation will take effect at the end of your current billing cycle—monthly or yearly. When your account is cancelled, you assets will be deleted, and your tenancy deleted, so export any assets you need to keep prior to the cancellation date. Annual plans have no cancellation fee. Monthly plans have a cancellation fee equal to 3 months of the subscription fee."
BUT ITS NOT THERE!
I did not proceed to install the client and I can not see this the Cancel button. I just want to delete my profile but its impossible.
Be careful with these guys...
-frank ▲ Collapse
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They are just punch of thieves,
Go a way of them
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Anything to do with Lionbridge is a No-no for me.
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| Dear Henry, did you get any clarifications from the offending advertiser? | Apr 23, 2011 |
It is more than a few months since your posting on this subject. Did you get any clarifications from the offending advertiser?
If not, is it not time that you ban them?
To read anything connected with Lionbridge leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
A bunch of cheaters, they seem to be.
Regards,
N. Raghavan
Henry Dotterer wrote:
imatahan wrote:
I wrote them complaining that I've entered for a trial and they told me they wouldn't make it again but that they had no mechanisms for sending my money back!
I don't even remember having used it.
And they took off from Paypal 14 USD twice.
I've put a call in to Lionbridge, since they are an advertiser and it would appear that there has been some confusion in this promotion of theirs. I will see if I can have them clarify.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 20:33
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Marcus Casal wrote:
However, there is a cost to us in terms of creating and maintaining your private workspace in Translation Workspace, storing your assets and providing the support and training to help you accelerate your business.
So, what you're saying is...
* creating a private workspace can't be automated
* maintaining a private workspace is a lot of work (particularly if it is never used)
* storing assets is expensive because hard drive space isn't cheap these days
* support and training must be paid for, particularly if would-be users don't use it, and who better to pay for it than people other than those who've bought into the deal?
Look, I'm not saying you have no right to have this business model, nor do I question your motives. I'm just saying that these reasons of yours don't fly.
| | | | apk12
Germany
Local time: 20:33
English to German
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| Doubts as to core business | Jun 16, 2011 |
John Rawlins wrote:
Such private marketplaces can be seen as attempts to dehumanise translators and turn them into disposable objects that are nameless and faceless. They are marketplaces in the same way that street corners in the sleazier parts of many cities also serve as marketplaces.
(source: http://www.proz.com/forum/business_issues/195472-geoworkz_marketplace_is_it_any_good.html )
Sure and definitely. However, my doubts refer, aside of that, also to the question whether you can call a company still a translation company when their business practices seem to obviously aim to another markets. When such a service is not able to live, work and function with the normal, typical business methods in the industry (part of the total payment stays with the agency, translator gets the rates offered, we could describe that as "fees" that stay with the agency: a percentage, deducted from the entire payment. Translator gets his/her rates.) - so, when such a marketplace is not able to work and function with the percentage from successful projects, there might be reasons to doubt. In the given case, we see the concentration on another business model, that aims on another market: active search for people working in that industry as service providers. Search for those who hope for more projects. As soon as you have them, find those who are ready to pay for that hope (instead of being paid for their work, as you usually would expect) and if they are not, find other methods forcing them to pay even if they are not willing (getting caught by the free trial, cancellation fee).
This is not translation business anymore.
[Edited at 2011-06-16 14:13 GMT]
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