Never pay to get work
No job, gig or person on CreativeUs may ask you for money to be considered for work.
Not to register, not to audition, not to be listed, not for training, and not as a deposit — refundable or not. If somebody asks you for money, they are not offering you a job. Say no, and report them.
What it usually sounds like
These are the ones crew in India are shown most often. If a message you have been sent looks like one of them, it is one of them.
“A registration fee to be added to our database”
There is nothing to register for. Being on CreativeUs is free, and no hirer runs a list you have to buy your way onto.
“An audition fee, or a screen test fee”
Auditions are how somebody decides whether to hire you. Nobody charges for the chance to be considered.
“A portfolio shoot with our photographer, ₹3,000”
A real hirer looks at the work you already have. Being told to pay for new pictures before you can be booked is the oldest one there is.
“Training or grooming before the job starts”
Training you are asked to pay for, by the person offering the job, is not training. It is the job being sold to you.
“A refundable security deposit for the equipment”
Refundable or not makes no difference. Kit is insured by the production, not by the assistant carrying it.
“Send ₹500 to confirm your booking”
Money moves from the production to you, and never the other way. A booking you have to buy is not a booking.
“Pay the coordinator who got you this job”
A cut of your fee to whoever passed your name on is the same fee with another name on it.
What is not a fee
Being careful is not the same as being suspicious of everything. These are ordinary.
Buying your own kit
Plenty of crew own their kit and charge for it. That is yours to decide — and nobody offering you a job may tell you where to buy it.
Paying for travel and claiming it back
Ordinary, as long as it is agreed before the day and written on the gig. If it is not on the gig, ask for it in writing.
Working for nothing on a collab
Fine, and it has to say Collab on it. No money either way is different from money going the wrong way.
What to do
- Do not pay. Not a small amount to see, and not to be polite.
- Do not send your Aadhaar, PAN, bank details or a photograph of a card to get a job. Nobody needs them before you are hired.
- Report it. There is a Report this gig link on every piece of work here, and a report on a person on their profile. Every one is read by somebody, and you are told what was decided.
- Say no to the person. You are not being difficult, and you do not owe them an explanation.
What we do about it
- Every business is checked by a person before it can post anything.
- The first piece of work anybody posts as themselves is read by a person before it goes live.
- Work that asks crew for money is blocked, and the account that posted it is looked at.
- Unpaid work has to say Collab on it, so it can never be mistaken for a paid job.
If you have already paid
It happens to careful people. Do these three things, in this order.
- Report them here, so the account is stopped before it reaches somebody else. Keep the messages — do not delete the conversation.
- Report the payment on India’s cybercrime portal at cybercrime.gov.in, or ring 1930. The sooner a payment is reported, the more often it can be stopped.
- Tell your bank or your payment app. Say it was a fraudulent transaction, and give them the reference.
Then write to us as well, on the complaints page. We will tell you what we did.
This is also rule one of the community rules, and it is in the user agreement.