OCUS Reviews 436

Agilidad y metas claras en su concepto de negocio

It comes easily to start, but then issues appear when what seems and is supposed to be arranged does not appear to be :)
Just like in regular services ;)

Gut gewesen

Sent a photographer who didn't speak any English, then weeks later, I still have not received my photos. I feel like we've wasted a lot of time and money. We had to prepare 20 plates of food, with an average cost of $25 per plate.

Leider ist der Kontakt sehr schwierig, Wenn sich Termine mit den Kunden ändern oder verschoben werden müssen passt das oft dem Unternehmen nicht.Das Qualitätsmanagement ist viel zu langsam. Wenn was schief läuft soll immer der Fotograf Schuld sein. Geht überhaupt nicht.

It's getting harder and harder to communicate with Ocus every day. With every travel fee request, I get a negative response saying the ID is incorrect, but that's not true. I check several times and see that everything is correct. On Monday (July 28th), I received an email from the team asking how they could help me. I responded the same day, but to this day (August 1st), I haven't received a response. The total amount I receive has been significantly impacted by the lack of travel assistance, as I end up spending part of what I receive on fuel and tolls.
Anyway, i still have hope that this will be resolved.

The company is not adjusting its prices to the rising cost of transportation, gear, communication with the restaurants/clients and also time. if you would like us to continue taking more assignments even the one that does not guarantee a booking then things have to adjust to the cost of the times. support should also be provided specially for real time concerns or updated procedures should also be listed or have a landing page or like a bulletin

As a photographer, we face a lot of problems on sites, but it is really difficult to contact customer support. The new platform in Austria is not visible to most customer care agents, and they ask for the project ID, but it was not visible anywhere on the new platform. They contact us even with email after reading the request, but still, they have no idea how they have to respond. You guys may have categorized problems in the customer care link, but we cannot explain most of the problems in those categories. It's really difficult to chat with an agent; it connects again and again.

Personally, when I have a problem, I have to write an email to the project manager personally to sort things. Not like earlier, when you go to a project site, you need to take a selfie to start. But when you don't have a good internet connection, you couldn't reach the portal. After a couple of minutes, it doesn't allow you to upload. When you couldn't contact customer care, you have to stop everything and wait for customer care to respond.

tres bien, très bon support

I suggest Ocus to make a stellar portfolio

La agencia esta muy bien pero a la hora de cambiar la cita con el cliente, no me responden, solo me manda al chat y ningun agente se comunica conmigo. tengo varias sesiones que he ido y tampoco me ofrecen remuneracion por haber ido al local, es mas sigo esperando que me responda. Con el tema del pago pagan puntual. Pero si ellos quieren crecer y yo tmbien deberian solucionar a los fotografos estos inconvenientes, y ademas en mi ciudad nunca hay una sesion de foto a un restaurante y eso que vivo en un pueblo bastante turistico.

I've been working with OCUS for a few years now and I can say that the support for photographers has really improved lately for helping with things like cancellations and travel fees for example.

It's still a good way to fill your schedule and hopefully more opportunities will be coming in the future.

Ease of booking shoots and the process of how to export images is straightforward.

I had a great experience with ocus overall. It helps me to turn my hobby into side hussel for the last 2 years.
Here are some of compliants
-Very low pay on cancellation and scheduling fees
-Travel fees
- Arranging appointments with onsite persons are extremely difficult, as photographers, we shoud be responsible for the image not on arranging complex appointments.
- very rare to get matched with the internal email offer assignments never been assigned.
Thank you for your continued partnership!
-

After few years with OCUS. rates are still very low with no signs of ever giving better rates for photographers. No other opportunities and growth. No transportation fees. No other types of projects. Still appreciate the effort of some people.

Eficiente, el sistema de trabajo me da margen para mis proyectos personales.

They give me task I make it they pay easy. Afocurse I try to be precise with their needs and they pay well for my work. Very profy.

Update. If I could change it from one star to zero stars, I would.

Ocus have changed their dashboard and procedures, without any notice or help for photographers. Only learned about it when I got a message saying I hadn't "checked in" to a photoshoot. So basically they want to keep tabs on you to make sure you've arrived. Bearing in mind it's usually the shop staff that aren't there and ready when I arrive, it's a rather insulting.
The new system makes it hard to find or book in jobs (things just disappear and the map will suddenly zoom to Paris) and you have to call people before you can claim the job, meaning several photographers can all be bothering the same restaurant, wasting EVERYONE'S time.
Worst part is they've lost the jobs from before they changed the system and so I haven't been paid for them. I contacted support and nobody has been in touch for over a week.
Today I got a message that the new system has changed the currency to USD and so they can't pay me for the new invoices either. I've tried to change it but the system won't allow, and if course support will just ignore because they'll be inundated with problems from their broken system.

Absolute farce. Final straw. Just don't work for these people. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Original review:

Low fees, so I only do these if they suit me and I'm not busy. There isn't much work from them, and those job offers that do come through are usually a waste of time, as most places don't want the photoshoots, so you are harassed by Ocus to get appointments booked but the restaurant doesn't reply, and eventually you have to give up. Of course, none of this is paid work until you do the shoot.

There is little to no support from "Support". They seem to rely heavily on AI or bot responses in their webchat, sending you in circles, or just leaving you hanging. Send them an email? Don't expect a response.

Some jobs are pre-booked but often you can turn up and they won't have a clue why I'm there, so I only accept nearby jobs where I have actually spoken with a human about.

The systems keep getting updated for the the worse Now, if the restaurant contracts me to change a date, I can't do it. Photographers aren't allowed. Ocus are happy for us to do the cold-calling to try to book the appointments, but to amend things? No, we cant be trusted. Instead of just a click on the assignment page, we now have to find the correct link to contract support, full on all the job ID, details, and write them a nice message and ask them to do it, it worse still ask the restaurant to fill in the form.

I've spoken to several restaurants that have not been told when appointments are cancelled. Probably because Ocus pre-books some appointments and THEN they offer it to photographers. If no photographer takes the job, they don't tell the client (or don't make a big effort to ensure they know), so the food is made and nobody turns up. Wasted food and time. Not a happy restaurateur.

If a job gets cancelled by the restaurant, you have to jump through hoops to make a claim for a cancellation fee, the value of which seems to be at someone's discretion (or a random number generator). Example 1: I was asked to do an out of area job requiring a one hour drive (so had blocked out the entire morning), and it was cancelled as I was on my way. They gave me a minimum fee (£15) for my troubles. Example 2: job cancelled half hour before appointment, and they refused to give ANY fee. Decision was made by someone/thing and chatbot shut down any further conversation about it.

Lastly, travel fees are laughable, offering a job needing a >3 hour round trip for an extra 18EUR

In summary, you may be kept busy, calling and texting potential jobs, calling to check they haven't forgotten the appointment, driving around for hours, but you won't make much money.

Over two weeks since i first posted and nobody from support has "reached out" like they say in the their copy&paste response. No surprise there.