DesignContest.com reviews and complaints
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fake contests to grab both clients and designers' attention
Scam! Totally fake contest and content.. Understand my words which is 100% true and proven but nobody talks.. Even the 5 stars rates are mostly fake! Let me tell you how this website works.. They have less traffic and contests holders by the times.. So what they can do? What they did? They created accounts and started fake contests (guaranteed / no guaranteed) so what can happen? Designers start working hours and hours doing their best to make a living or win a contest.. Then the fake contests holder just disappear.. With no feed back or payments.. Or maybe just little feedback to make it looks legit.. Then designers had to enter the long endless cycle of voting system to win a contests.. Let me say or copy how they deal abandoned contests and how they consider a contest abandoned :
A contestholder has 30 days to decide what to do with their contest once it goes expired. If the contest stays expired past 30 days it is considered abandoned. Sometimes a client will abandoned a contest on purpose other times life gets in the way and the contest was forgotten about.. There are many reasons why a contest will become abandoned.
It's said 30 days right? If there's any option I can upload screenshots of abandoned contests for 3, 4 or even 6 months! After hard working the designers had to wait months to know the results! Let me tell you why.. First of all they misuse designers by creating these fake contests so they start getting too much traffic and trust for both designers and contests holders.. So maybe there will be one or two legit contests monthly which by the time will be much money they can pay for the voted abandoned contest! That's why they can't stick to the rules the put! They don't respect designers anyone talks about this in the forums they ban him for a month or delete his topic and maybe he'll lose his account! Look how dirty designcontest team is! And if they replied they tell you that the clients return after months and say they've stole his money.. So the rules are fake? And all you care about is the contestholders? While your whole website worth nothing without good designers! Telling them not to speak in this topic and work on another contest lol! I know great designers there who entered more than 10 contests and all of them are expired and abandoned! If any designers from there saw my review will relate.. So please both clients and designers don't waste your time or money there it's a fake and not respectful platform to do your business.. And i'll do my best to make this end even suing them and reporting them to search engines and marking it as scam.
unfair treatment
i received several rude and unfair emails from Sharie Voss Sr. Support Specialist DesignContest.com (Formerly DesignContest.net). Their rules and guidelines are such that designer cannot use a clipart eventhough the designer owns the image. I was about to win the contest but unfairly my work was removed for those reasons eventhough more then 10 other work submitted was also using cliparts and those were not removed. I'm not sure what is the purpose of such harassment. Plus they take some points from the designer instead of warning him/her first since they are new users. I am not going to use this design contest website. I do not recommend it! There are so many out there so why bother with rude treatment. It's a shame these people are in business.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
I joined designcontest an won my first week gold $280cnd I had posted a few designs one or 2 after looking at contest owner star attributions I decided to use a bull clipart since all in that contest seemed to be using b my entry was eliminated by CH to no surprise I took less then 5 mins to do a week goes by no messages from DC but as soon as I win top prize for a contest a few days later they give me infractions for bull clipart and In another case a sanction for 2 half circle
As if now 10 days after I uploaded files the contest holder as not released payment or even replied to my messages for minor free edits yet he had 7 days to do so and I had 24 hrs to upload files or I would get infractions seems they treat the paying clients like gold and once they have money in hand with a guaranteed contest the designer is on his own to collect his prize money
Now I decided to give up doing logos for fun I am a retired designer to me this is a hobby but when I see in contest copycat designers bluntly rob someones idea and designcontest does nothing about it it's depressing but what I learned is that some graphic agency that hire dozen of designers actually just do that wait to see what design gets the most stars and flood the contest with similar work or an exact copy
It's sad because graphic designers do not earn much I was lucky for close to 20 yrs I had maybe 4 or 5 regular clients but in Last 5 yrs there is an explosion if talented designer from 3rd world countries will to work for less then $1 per hour and these contests sites are a good mine for them imagine a group of designers getting together and working 5 hrs on a contest compare to me less then on average 15 mins only shows that sometimes experience comes in handy
But so far I believe I was robbed by designcontest.com and now maybe they are looking for a means to disqualify my winning logo to keep revenue since what I saw in last few weeks barely any contest like less then 60 how can you support a staff pay the designers and still make some money and from other testimonials I read I am not the only one who got screwed
S C A M ! ! ! (I also had experiences as a designer with Sharie Voss and other administrators that were extremely abrasive, rude, and unprincipled.) What they do to designers is that they have 'favorites' that they lean toward in their judgements (and are very shady and callous about it). So after they get your free effort and work, they will copy it, and award the money in-house, or to their "shaddow designers", not giving you credit for your work. I totally agree with the above comments: the "contests" (which you at first assume will be fairly run) are not at all! DESIGNERS BEWARE - RUN from this site! The only silver lining is that I figured out the scam after only 20 or so hours of free labor!
Hi Antonio thanks for your post i had some suspicion after reading some posts in blogs and reviews sites. I saw many 5 stars reviews, but in many of them there was something not genuine..i don't know maybe is my 6th sense! hehe:) but i waited before joining them then i bumped up here. Now i'm sure after 3 extra reviews read that i won't join design contest.com, i will stay away from them. Thanks for sharing your experience!
"One angry Designer" the name say it all...
We are designers that have joined DesignContest some time ago and never had problems of any kind.
We are writing here, because we had the possibilities to read what happened in the case mentioned above and your accusations and insults are really inappropriate so we decided to make some light. If you define yourself as a designer with 28 years of experience, you should know that it is normal to happen that some other designer could make a similar proposal and of course, you should know the difference between a copy and the simply utilization of elements related to a specific contest and well, your case was obviously not a copy. You talk about ideas... What idea? To put snow on an a subject related to ice? Please! Have we to call you genius? That is obviously not an original idea because directly related to the subject.
You accuse DesignContest to "protect" the established designers when the designer you mentioned is not in the Top as you have written above. It is very pathetic from you inventing all those things just to push up your ego. Also it is very inappropriate from you to talk about a person, Sharie Voss, which is an excellent person always willing to solve the problems when they can be called problems and not invented like in your case. About the bad publicity, there should be a reason if in all this years Designcontest has received just the few complaints listed above... Ian Doughty, (as you have used real names of persons, should be fair to use yours as well) your attitude has been really bad...As you say, 28 years of experience and you have to use cliparts / stolen images for "your logos" and try to sell to clients like original works made by you?
What a great designer... Luckily, like you say, you got a long term contract and we are all happy for you...You really should concentrate more on your own work instead of complaining without any reason about other people's work... You really need...
Well its 2013 now and Designcontest are still at it, the most unprofessional and rude company I have ever dealt with after 28 yrs in the graphic design business, (and I've worked for some tyrants in my time). Like the person above I was also unfortunate enough to have to deal with Sharie. My problem was that another designer on the site (MJM designs) were stealing my ideas (not just a little bit... whole copies of my work rearranged and passed off as their own originals) I could not believe it.
So I followed their recommended route of getting fellow designers to vote either with or against my claim in their "designers court" I got a 100%vs 0% vote in my favour, but Sharie overruled this and threw it out, I still do not know why or understand how they could disagree. I found Sharie totally abrasive and unprofessional in the process. I naturally questioned this and was told to "get over it and enter another of their contests" ... MJM Designs were one of their top designers, I was new to the site and this was my first ever job through them. I think there must be a sort of office clique going on there, they are obviously keen to hold on to established designers ... but at what cost... well I am posting this here as a result of my experience, and it will eventually cost them in bad publicity ( and I don't usually have time to be bothered with this sort of thing but it bugged me so much I felt I had to warn others). Over the next 4 days of back and forward messages between the two of us I got no actual reply to any of my questions just lots of evasive unrelated answers (in badly written English), Sharie then started calling my reputation and designs into question and after making my complaint I found myself having to defend my actions. Luckily I got a long term contract with a digital media company and I got out.
I entered 3 contests in one week and it was one of the worst weeks of my design career. Any designers out there...
I say to you AVOID THIS SITE! and if you don't, I give you a week and you'll wish you had listened to me.
and ... Sharie if you read this, yeah it wasn't just me. was it? you've done this before.. I've read the above posts. Not great eh?
Hi thanks for sharing your experience about designcontest.com. I was attracted with the idea of registering with them but after reading some yours and others posts i'm worry to join them especially if they treat designers differently form one to another because they have their top designers. On top of that i read in many other posts in trust pilot and other sites that this person Sharie is very rude, so i wonder if i ever have a problem i don't want to deal with somebody that use aggressiveness and doesn't respect people. If these are the "terms and conditions" i'm sorry but design contest.com isn't for me. I will keep reading from different sites but i think i almost got my conclusion; most probably i won't join them. Thanks again.
Hi, I was pretty disappointed with Design Contest, so much so I swear never to use it again or recommend it to anyone. I deposited $400. Created a contest. Gave the contest link out to forums and past designers I have worked with from odesk, 99designs and freelancer - with my skype and email and said to people to submit their designs on Design Contest.
My biz partner is in another country, he logged in and checked out the designs. We found a winner to the contest from the people we shared the link to. He signed up he submitted a logo, and we picked him as winner.
Design Contest sent me an email saying there was fraud on the account.
1. logged into account from 2 locations
2. winning designer signed up and we picked him as winner an hour later
3. designer did submit winning logo in data files.
When I called them, all I said was I submitted a design which was marked as fraud. Without quoting the name of the contest or the contest id, the lady knew exactly which contest, and was very abrasive. I asked her, how could this be fraud if I am the credit card holder calling you?
In my 3 years of using online freelancer websites and spending 80K last year for clients, never have I come across a more unprofessional outfit. This is the first design company who we have had issues with.
Avoid them an go with a more established group.
indeed we do not allow clipart in logo design contests. We believe that our client should get completely original design and not a copy of some clipart done by some unknown designer.
if you find any other designs that use clipart or violate any other DesignContest rules, please, do you the "report" feature.
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Amir_Lotfy Your review is false and slanderous. Your understanding of the crowdsource business model is nowhere near what you write. Threatening to sue? All becasue you are mad you were not voted on as a winner? I have been designer at DC for more than 10 yrs and find this site to be the most fair site out there and VERY protective over designers! Let me ask you... how often do you vote on abandoned contests to clear up the old so new abandoned contests can go up for vote? Never? Instead being part of abandoned contest issue/problem why not work to clear them by simply voting? Designcontest has held designer voting for more than 15 yrs. You have 11 website entries in your profile, of those 11 there are 8 contests, 2 contests are expired and 1 will go up for designers vote on prize winner in the next week or so. Your review is does not hold water, Your review is slanderous. Designcontest.com does not have fake accounts or fake contests. The way DC deals with expired and abandoned contests is right in line with the other crowd source sites. How would like No choice in the matter, no vote abandoned contests just quietly leave? Yes that is how some of the sites deal with abandoned and expired contests. Or how would like 10 dollars compared to 400 bucks? That's right some sites will split a 400 prize among all designers in the contests. You complain in the forums about expired abandoned contests and there is a difference between expired and abandoned contests. Your review shows everyone how much of a bad sport you are and how little you understand. Grow up not everyone's a winner.