Do You Work without an Agreement?

Tweet

I haven't accepted an assignment from these people for almost a year and one day, on a whim, I took some tests and posted some samples and the interviews/work have had a decent flow. Last year, eLance or oDesk sent a long memo to contractors about doing work outside of their system. No problem complying with that one 'cause I'm not the only one with bills to pay. Anyway, I responded to a post by a some female who wanted something like one 400-word article per hour for up to 8 hours. Now she's paying minimum wage - from 1986 but she seemed OK until she wanted a "sample". Her idea of a snippet (which she claimed she would pay for) was a set of articles that totaled 1500 words. Lots of time, energy and she wanted to do this outside of oDesk. I didn't mention it to her but I got burned 2x before (once on oDesk) for something like 300 words. Anyway, when I turned it down with a quick explanation as to why, she was cordial but snippy at the same time. What's laughable is the fact that she said that if I didn't trust her, I should have asked. Yeah, right and the guy selling DVDs out of his Ford Escort really has permission from Hollywood to do so. This person was full of commentary and by looking at her feedback, many people have worked under her terms. Though I hope to never hear from her again, should I report them for soliciting work outside of the system?