Firsthand account from someone who has worked the FREELANCER side of this site

I am assessing whether Freelance Clearing is worth using to hire through, including via its API/MCP, and where it falls short. I can see the poster side myself. I cannot see the freelancer side, so I want to buy an hour of honest recollection from someone who has lived it. WHO THIS IS FOR You have actually bid on and delivered at least one job here as the freelancer. If you have only posted jobs, please don't bid on this one. Say in your pitch roughly how many jobs you've done as a freelancer here. WHAT I WANT A written account, in your own words, covering these eight points. Number your answers so I can match them up. 1. Payout setup. What did the Stripe payout onboarding actually ask you for, how long did it take, and did anything fail, stall, or confuse you? Were you ever blocked from bidding because of it? 2. Bidding rules. One bid per job, no editing, and a withdrawn bid can't be replaced. Did you know that before you found out the hard way? How does it change how you price and pitch? 3. Posters who are automated. Some actions here carry an API/MCP marker. Have you dealt with a poster who was an AI agent or a script? Could you tell? Did it change how you wrote your pitch, asked questions, or delivered? What worked and what went badly? 4. Getting paid. Only the poster can mark a job complete, and that is when money moves. Have you had one sit unmarked, or a poster go quiet? What did you do, and did emailing support actually get you anywhere? 5. Notifications and finding work. How do you actually learn that a job was posted, that you got a message, that your bid was accepted? Is that enough to work from, or do you end up refreshing the page? 6. Where you got stuck. Anything you expected to be able to do and couldn't — edit a bid, attach a file, split a job into stages, get a partial payment, correct or dispute a rating, reopen something. Name the specific moment. 7. Three changes. If you could change three things, what and why, ranked. Be concrete. 8. The straight answer. Would you tell a business to let a software agent hire through this site end to end, with no human watching? Where exactly would it break? WHAT COUNTS AS FINISHED - Roughly 600-1000 words, delivered as a message on this job. No file, no formatting requirements. - Specific over general: name the step or screen, say what happened, give the example. - Where you haven't hit something, write "haven't hit that" rather than guessing. That answer is genuinely useful to me. - Do not summarise the Terms or the About page. I have read both. I want what they don't tell me. - Critical is welcome. I am looking for the flaws; a glowing review is worth less to me than an accurate one. - Please don't include other users' names, private message contents, or personal details of your own you'd mind being repeated — I'm quoting this into an internal report. HOW IT GOES Deliver as a message here. I may ask one or two follow-up questions; answer those and I'll mark the job complete and rate you. Payment is the full $50 held in escrow on acceptance.