Anyone with oDesk experience PLEASE help me (got ripped off)

Paying anyone 30 cents an hour to do anything in today's day and age is despicable. Cough up the $7 and do it yourself if "anyone could just do it" or pay someone a decent wage to get it done.

/rant

So your upset slave labor did not go the way you wanted?

lol

The OP is probably one of most terrible people I have heard about. 0.3$ per hour and then he is afraid of being swindled 7$ or something. If she logged the time she logged the time. You pay her super low wage she works supper slow sounds fair(not really) to me.

Just dispute it and see what happens. Next time you should use freelancer dot com, they have a "milestones" feature, you put the money there and write all the requirements, and you only release the money once they deliver the work or show proof right there on the milestone thing, disputes are easier that way. Amazon mechanical turk seems good for slave work too, it used to be super cheap, not sure right now.

You know what I find very amusing ? All the people posting on this topic about how the OP is terrible etc etc. Has anyone bothered to consider the fact 0.3$ per hour and 7$ may seem like very small amount of money but when you convert it into their local currency ( I believe that is Taka ? ) , its quite a respectable amount, especially considering the job it was paid for.

Instead of ranting and hurling abuse at the OP , why don't any of you answer the bloody question he is asking ? Seriously I understand your thinking . No one likes to see such wide disparity in economic conditions between different areas but taking it out on some bloke on the internet isn't going to help them.

On topic though , I have no idea mate . I don't even know what oDesk is . It seems unlikely you'll get your money back. Why did you employ someone without any feedback ?

You failed to give your labor the illusion of freedom while secretly forcing a work onto them. Oh, and despite what you say, it costs $15 monthly for 10-15 kbps internet. 64 kbps is $65. The cost of a pretty terrible residence is $80. $7 is not that much. (Based on averages, maybe her living conditions are worse).
With that said, I was being perfectly honest in my first statement. There's a reason Chinese managers don't tell their workers, "Do whatever you want". Either deny human rights or pay more, your choice.
And it isn't worth it to make a huge fuss over $7. You'd probably waste a lot of time. But if you absolutely want to, try this

"oDesk gets 10% of the money she earns and I'm afraid that they will side with her."

What a lack of trust in others...

I haven't ever used oDesk, but on elance, the money goes in to escrow, and if you agree the work has been done to a high standard, you "release" the money. If not, and the worker disagrees, it gets sent back to elance to look over. I think you can trust elance and odesk to be fair because if they keep siding on the worker in order to get a 70c cut, then they're cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Your biggest issue here is that you left reasonably high feedback? without checking the work?
If so, they'll likely side against you due to that fact alone.

I'm not going to moan about how much you paid them, because I am a freelancer that uses elance and also a business owner that, like you, use hired help to advertise for me. As a freelancer, it's up to me to choose a good work rate. If I rate too low, which I have done far too fucking many times, that's my fault, not my client's. In my opinion, you should file the complaint, but overall expect nothing.
Hiring people is a learning curve and to be honest, $7 is not a big loss overall - I once got ripped off for $300 of work on a different website and that's why I use elance now over anyone else, they seem fair.

elance and odesk are merging too, so if you're lucky enough to get the elance support, give it a go. But as I said, expect it to be a loss, put it against your taxes and forget about it. I know that's easier said than done, but it's the best option for your own piece of mind.

This website is steamgifts.com. On the forums almost everything can be discussed. I think you are asking the community questions that can only be solved by asking 'oDesk'. Do you expect people to tell you about how they changed the star level ? Do you think anyone from the steamgifts community changed the amount of stars and is willing to share their experience ?

The replies are farther from a response to your question and are all pointing towards your business ethics.

Damn.. Bitches ruining country's image.

Btw, $7 is still too low for 23 hours of work. Too bad she agreed to get paid so low