I have used Freelancer a number of times. Although...

I have used Freelancer a number of times. Although there are plenty of good freelancers/technicians to do jobs, Freelancer does an extremely poor job of ensuring that they are not gaming the system in how bids are posted.

They seem to market behind the philosophy that once you post a project you will have bids in minutes.

It takes posting several projects to figure out what is happening. Yes you will get bids in minutes, frequently under 30 seconds and I have seen bids arrive faster than the time it takes the page to reload after clicking to post a project - almost miraculously.

If you look into these immediate response bids it becomes obvious that the bidders are using some sort of template process/method to make this happen. The fact is, it's not a race. In posting any project I care about finding a freelancer who clearly read the project description and specifically addresses the project in the bid.

As a result for the most part I ignore the initial batch of spam posts and look to later posts for authenticity. Also to note - I've reported this problem many time to Freelancer through tickets and offered suggestions to improve the system - but nothing changes.