Hi Katie,

I've been happily using people per hour for some months and have paid out £780 through the website, but all of a sudden I'm unable to make payments for the two active workstreams I have on the site. Why you would do this without alerting the user to what the problem actually is I have no idea, I thought the payment gateway was simply broken.

After waiting 19 hours for a response from your support team (and being ignored on twitter) I'm now being asked to provide my passport, utility bills, debit card, bank statement, and paypal statement in order to 'verify' me to make payments again. All this on the very thin and incorrect explanation that I attempted to use a different card than the now expired one I have registered on the site when paypal (my normal payment method) failed to work three times in succession.

I would not need to provide this much information to open a credit account in the UK, so why on earth should I provide enough information to forge my identity to someone working over zendesk somewhere in Asia? It is up to my bank or paypal to verify my identity, not your organisation. Support are now saying they will escalate the issue, but are not being responsive over email or twitter and I have two important active projects that I'm unable to pay for!

Why on earth you would block an existing user with good feedback from actually paying for work I have no idea, but you need to sort this out urgently.