I could only tell him about a comment I'd browsed on HN that referred to it as a "ghetto" of poor paying assignments. He went ahead with it and now seems to be doing quite well as one of the top 5 providers of marketing and writing services.
It is entirely possible that elance is great for non-technical jobs.
The issues I ran into were providers who have great ratings but who can't do the job! Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. So you're not getting the full story when you look at a provider's history.
elance doesn't really care about this. So you have a huge portion of freelancers on elance who cosmetically pump up their ratings to get more jobs and then either farm them out to others or do a shoddy job themselves. when/if the job goes into dispute or is cancelled it disappears from their history. if the client is dumb enough to be happy with the crap work, they get a nice rating in exchange for turning over the final code.
That is not correct.
You can dispute a project and as long as the freelancer received a single dollar for any work, you can leave feedback. Why should you be allowed to leave feedback if there hasn't been any payment made?
There are just as many clowns on the client side, as there are on the freelancer side. Many projects never get off the ground because the client has no money or is just an idiot. People like that should be allowed to leave feedback?
If you're having trouble finding quality help on Elance, try creating a private project and invite only those in your geographic region. So if you're in the US, that means US freelancers.
In the end, you get what you pay for. Don't expect miracles from India.
I won't even touch the non sequitur about India.
The mistake many clients make is to request "cancellation". You should request a refund instead (and in the common case where a contractor goes silent, you will get back 100%.) Then mark the job as "complete" and leave feedback, which will be visible in their history (though it will not affect their average star rating.)