thebigword Arvostelua 55

This business pockets £95 out of every £100 charged to their customer; the interpreter gets hardly ££12 per hour; since the customer pays around £280 per hour, you can see that the interpreter acts as a SLAVE to the business, no more, no less. Disgusting business model, helping the modern/contractual slavery to grow.No spine here, at all. Avoid!

Awful company to deal with. They have cancelled my interpreter 24h before my theory exam. I now have to wait another month before I can retake the exam and all they can say is sorry we can give you the money back. They should be accountable for causing inconvenience to people and offer discounts if they cancel their interpreter service at short notice.

The Big Word try not to pay for the jobs done at all cost.
They take over 2 months to pay the first invoice.
They take 2 months to pay any invoice including the transportation costs if the interpreter had to paid for it in advance to go to completed the job.
They have low rates.
Their "call centre" is based in India and it is a nightmare to talk to these people in English over the phone.
There is not a direct number for HR nor the invoice dept., the only communication is via email, which they take many days to answer one email.
The Big Word should be investigated for their labour malpractice and mistreatment to their freelancers.
This company should not have contracts with the minister of justice, NHS and any other company that is subsidised by the taxpayers.
To cut it short, they are the worst company ever and avoid to work for The Big Word.

They outsource and pay £10.00 per 1000 words to some translators who do not live in the UK. They should be investigated for not employing interpreters and translators in the UK but instead outsourcing to make more profit.

Na drie opdrachten voor thebigword te hebben uitgevoerd, wacht ik inmiddels meer dan twee maanden op betaling van mijn facturen. Ondanks tientallen telefoontjes en e-mails worden beloften herhaaldelijk niet nagekomen. Iedere keer werd mij verzekerd dat de betaling direct zou plaatsvinden, maar deze beloften zijn nooit waargemaakt.

Gezien deze aanhoudende problemen en de onbetrouwbare communicatie, heb ik besloten nooit meer samen te werken met thebigword. Ik adviseer anderen om zeer voorzichtig te zijn bij het aangaan van opdrachten met dit bedrijf.

De communicatie met medewerkers van thebigword is teleurstellend en hun beloften worden niet nagekomen. Dit is uiterst frustrerend en maakt het moeilijk om vertrouwen te houden in verdere samenwerking. Ik raad anderen aan om voorzichtig te zijn in hun zaken met thebigword, gezien deze onvervulde beloften.

I have completed three assignments for thebigword but unfortunately I have been waiting for payment of my invoices for over two months. Despite repeated phone calls and emails the payment has not been made. Although I have been repeatedly promised that payment would be processed immediately, these promises have not been kept.

The communication with thebigword staff has been disappointing and their promises have not been kept. This is extremely frustrating and makes it difficult to maintain confidence in further cooperation. I would advise others to be cautious in their dealings with thebigword given these unfulfilled promises.

DO NOT WORK FOR THIS AGENCY. This is the worst agency I have worked with. Reasons not to work for them:
They won't pay you unless you invoice them within 60 days - if not, your jobs will be zero valued.
If Service provider don't attend the booking, YOU need to ring them every 20min or so check if there has been any update on the other side.
Their customer service is terrible.
Their invoicing system is terrible.
The onboarding process was a nightmare
They force you to do 3 hours training on Ministry of Justice but won't smoothly take you through to the on boarding step by step - you need to keep chasing them.
You won't get a response unless you chase and chase or send a formal complain.
I have not been paid for 3 jobs I did because it went over 60 days but I was not aware of this at all as no one has has a policy like this. I have now left this agency and will never work for them again!

Hello,

I wish I could give them no star, I am writing this with great regrets for those who are currently working with the Big word or thinking of becoming free lance interpreter, Translator or transcriber.

Please read my short journey with the Bigword so far.

I have recently started to transcribe calls and successfully completed 29 projects and then raised invoices 20 days ago but I haven’t been paid, I have also sent emails to invoicing team no reply, I have complained to recruiter and had no answer and on top of that I have sent numerous emails to their “so called” Project Managers, who have no clue whatsoever, how their own system works.

Please note all their language titles are incorrect and which is kind of a deception. I happen to know few Asian languages which wasn’t difficult for me identify the language and transcribe.

The Big Word National operational manager admitted that they don’t have the language identifier, so the calls are titled on the basis of one’s ethnicity or the sound of it.

The interpreter/transcriber pick up the project if it is not relevant to their specialised language they notify the project manager and receive no reply, system then automatically start sending you deadlines for the project you informed the project managers.

I have so far received awful customer service from IT department to Peoject managers and also invoicing team. So if you are thinking of doing this part time or full time you better of working for language line solutions, or online freelance platforms where you can raise the invoice yourselves to the organisation to take the middle man out.

I strongly recommend not to waste your time and energy into the bigword false promises and do not waste your time sending them emails, which seems to be not monitored.

Lastly, I do not recommend the Big word, please refrain, if you care about your time.

After all we all invest our time into something like this to earn money to support our families, which the Bigword doesn’t seem to understand or the people that are working for them because they get paid monthly.

Those are not paid for months should contact ombudsman.

Tolk aangevraagd voor CBR examen.
De tolk zat vertaling op haar telefoon te zoeken.
Vertaalde een vraag op 3 verschillende manieren.
Uiteindelijk met gebaren taal gesproken.
Belachelijk voor het geld dat je moet betalen.

Zeer slecht ik moest een tolk hebben voor theorie examen heb gereserveerd en betaald maar hoor niets meer terwijl de examedatum in zicht is dus moet het examen afzeggen en een nieuwe inplannen, blijkbaar hebben ze geen tolken.
ze zouden mij terug bellen maar niets meer en geld en examen kwijt schande

This company is awful! They never paid me when they said they would pay me, now I’m waiting on payment for over three months work of work. Nobody responds to emails asking where my pay is. I’d avoid them at all costs.

Customer service has improved recently. They respond quickly and now there is an improvement. The leadership must look after their employees well. Interpreters are working for them. In return, they must look after them.

The bad reviews are fully justified BUT since the last of the reviews, about May 2023, all the UK based co-ordinators were sacked and all the admin was transferred to India. Making things A LOT WORSE.
For over a decade interpreters had to tolerate ZERO increase in pay scales, then Covid gave them the pretext of a 15% REDUCTION !

I find that the customer service from the staff who work here is great - extremely positive and have been satisfied with the communication I have received.

I felt like a fool working for them for a short period but never got paid. We should have a joint claim and take them to court.

I asked thebigword for an increase of my telephone interpreting and they refused. After having insisted, they added 3 pence and deactivated my profile. Clients and customers complain to me about the lack of interpreters, yet presumably 3 pence is more important to thebigword than the customers who are kept on hold.

No face to face interpreting available the last five times I've tried to book one.
Today, no telephone interpreter available at the time I needed one.

So what's the point of advertising an interpreting service when you don't have interpreters available when required?

Als het zou kunnen zou ik GEEN ster geven. Wat een slecht bedrijf zeg. Voor vertalers amper bereikbaar, betalingstermijn wordt gewoon genegeerd. Je houdt je als vertaler netjes aan alle deadlines maar The big word komt zijn eigen afspraken niet na, en niet één keer maar steeds weer opnieuw. Waardeloos.

I have been an interpreter with the Bigword and have dyslexia and I need extra assistance on some occasions with the invoices and updating my details. The Bigword does not care about the disabled employees.
Secondly there is so much disorganisation the I contact them for a simple query and no one knows how to deal with it. They do trial and error, which makes it ten times worse. To make it worse for the duration of weeks I am not allowed to work and earn any money. The Bigword is only concerned with the money, doesn't care about the employees.
AVOID USING THE BIGWORD, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT AN ETHICAL COMPANY

The Bigword refuse to pay interpreters even after invoicing clients for interpreting services👇🏿 they refuse to pay me for 3 years. Leaders aren’t responsive. Nobody responds to emails and no customer services phone calls either. I’ve been truly trying to get paid for services I offered to UK border agencies in Somali, Swahili and Oromo but they don’t want to pay me. Their log in system is intentionally disabled for several reasons to ensure interpreters miss narrow deadlines to invoice in order for the company to collect funds from clients like Bolton Practices for language services and keep funds for the company

The worst company I have ever worked for. Currently in a large automation push and outsourcing roles to India - this means making a lot of current UK staff redundant (I was not one of them) but I can see there is a lot more to come and the loyal and hard working employees are let go without a second thought. In my experience the board of directors and senior management are thoughtless and selfish and only care about one thing. Ofcourse they have to prioritise the commercial direction of the company but the work environment and employee experience should be equally as important - for them it’s not and they do not care. This company has become so badly morally and ethically compromised I would advise to stay far away. They do not care about the customers and just have a main focus on meeting pointless targets and don’t evaluate the actual service delivery they are providing. I am not a linguist but they treat all linguists very badly. There is a lot of pay discrepancies for people in the same role. If you are a current employee I would advise you to leave as soon as possible. If you are a prospective customer or employee look else where, do not go for the big word. You will be disappointed. The one good thing is that I had a good and supportive manager at one point, but apart from that everything else has been terrible.