I recently received a comment from someone on one of my make money online articles complaining about Microworkers payment problems and not being able to get his Microworkers earnings transferred over to his PayPal account. He was upset and said he couldn’t understand why Microworkers insisted on mailing a PIN number out to him, which he’d not received, and he also implied (at least this was my interpretation) that the whole thing was a Microworkers scam.
As this was not the first time that I have seen complaints made against Microworkers about payment problems online, I thought it merited me writing a blog post. I figured that I could also give you my own experience of what happened when I asked to transfer my Microworkers earnings from Microworkers to a PayPal account for the first time. Before that though, I will go through the complaints about payment problems one at a time and provide some possible explanations.
Why do Microworkers send out PIN numbers by mail?
You would have to ask them that. Although, often though it is done by companies for tax purposes, when they are attempting to show the IRS that they know who they are paying and sending out PIN numbers is a way of verifying someone’s address.
Is it in Microworkers interest to scam people?
I personally don’t believe that it is. They are a small company with a relatively small online workforce, certainly when compared to a giant like Amazon and their Mechanical Turk (MTurk), their main make money online rival. I can’t see why they would want to alienate workers or get a bad reputation just for the sake of a few dollars. (I have been critical in the past that Microworkers seem too lenient when it comes to some dodgy tasks being advertised on their website, but that is not the same as saying that Microworkers themselves are not legit!)
My own experiences of transferring my earnings from Microworkers to PayPal
Here's what happened with me back when I first requested a Microworkers payment of earnings to my PayPal account online. I made a request to transfer $10 from my Microworkers earnings to my PayPal account and noted the date that I’d done this. Within a few days, a message appeared in my Microwokers Account saying that the PIN number had been sent out. I waited. After a week had gone by, I began to get a little nervous. After 10 days of waiting, I began to wonder if there really was a Microworkers scam. After two weeks, however, I did receive my PIN number and guess what, the letter with the PIN number in it had come all the way from Slovenia (I live in the USA), so I guess that is a big part of the reason why it took so long!
Anyway I entered the PIN on the Microworkers website, which was accepted. I then had to wait 4 more days while my Microworkers earnings were “pending withdrawal”, according to the Microworkers website. All in all the process took just under three weeks from me initiating the payment to receiving it in my PayPal account.
So my advice would be to anyone who is seeking to access their Microworkers earnings for the first time, if my case is anything to go by, you will get your money, but don’t expect it to happen quickly!
