Trust your gut with these shadowy people - Field Photographer Velocity REOs Employee Review

Velocity REO / BPO Photoflow are a curious bunch. I can't say anything definitive because they are shadowy and mysterious. I only know what I experienced. First and foremost they don't want to communicate with you and if they do, they don't answer your questions directly. It's as if they are pasting from a FAQ page. I found them on Craigslist in mid-July as they claimed to have a need for field photographers in my area. I immediately took sample pictures for them and received the "welcome aboard" email that day. The Craigslist ad was only up for about 2 hours (is thatvsuspicious? Were the deluged with applicants or keeping a low profile?). I received my first assignment 5 weeks later, wondering all that time to whom I had given so much of my personal information required to make an account. But at last I was given an assignment. They will not tell you in what area the work is plentiful, in case you are willing to travel across town. They only ask you where you live, then give you a hard time if you try to be active in regions more than 10 miles from where you live. By "they" I mean the webpage they set up, not personal interaction. You must accrue a minimal amount of pay (close to $30) before they will pay you, so you must do a few jobs before you get paid. My second assignment came near the end of September. During these weeks I noticed that they have a few informational shell games going. They have a Website Login, a mobile-friendly page, SMS availability as well as direct EMail and maybe a few others. Information is not shared unilaterally across these methods. Mind you, they want you to check in every 2 hours, which is pretty rough when you go six weeks between assignments. As soon as they give you an assignment, their Bot starts frantically Emailing you like an ex-girlfriend to see if you are going to respond. On your Account webpage, while you are passing the weeks (by checking your Job postings every 2 hours), waiting to accrue 30 bucks in order to get paid the following month they keep a running tally of how much you've made so far-until they don't. One day it will read "so far you've made: $17.22". The next day it will read "so far you've made: $0.00" If you EMail them to ask "why the change? am I still getting paid" They respond in the styling of ee cummings: "all payments are released on the 1st friday of the month Please do not reply back to this email. We will not receive it and it will only confuse your computer. Thank You" With some digging around, I find that my pay information is still available, just moved somewhere else. As Autumn was in full swing I got my third or fourth assignment. At this time of year, I found myself in a situation where the ambient light I was seeing by was not agreeing with what the camera was picking up and I knew the photos would just be too dark, and rejected, but it was too late in the day. I still submitted the photos with the note "these are probably too dark". Sure enough, they were rejected. Since they don't communicate directly with you, I spent the whole next day checking my mobile-friendly page to see if they would just re-assign the job. The job was still there but I couldn't tell if it was current or the original and if I clicked on the link, it merely opened my mapping app. I re-took the photos on the way home from work the next day but by the time I got home, my account had been closed. I have no idea at this point if I will be paid for the work I've done. I have no problem believing that most people who work with them are quite happy-just don't screw up or they will dump you. I also have no problem believing that they have a business model based on getting 10-20% of their work done for free by rejecting people right before they reach pay-out, and they wrote their own positive reviews here. But there is no way for anyone to check their methods as they work in secret. If a check shows up, I will amend this review.