Speechpad Transcriber Reviews

Pros

Great staff. Easy to work with.

Pros

Ample and steady quantity and quality of work. I've been to and through a number of online, work from home gigs trying to be similar to what Speechpad pulls off, but all miss the mark. This includes Amazon's mturk gigs (there are a few decent gigs there, but very seldom and with no consistency,) Rev, Castingwords, and a few others. Speechpad allows you to preview a clip of the audio before ever accepting the job (nice for a quick overview of what you're looking for,) and if you decide not to finish it, you can return it (they offer a list of reasons to click through that includes "I just changed my mind" and "other", so whatever your reason, it's there,) and you are not penalized for this (I should note you cannot accept THAT particular job again. For jobs you've accepted you have the choice of using their web-based transcription suite (which is actually quite impressive and what I typically use unless I need the audio amplified or the video is too large to stream properly on my outdated internet connection,) or downloading both audio and video (when there is one) to use in your choice of transcription suites or audio/video players. The site autosaves your work while you're transcribing on site and there are a couple options to quickly save process on the fly otherwise. The staff is quick and courteous with any questions or issues that come up. For instance, I had a handful of short jobs that were rated quite low by the reviewers that received them - Part of my score was that I was new to Speechpad and slipped up on a few points in their style guide but another part was the reviewer in question had not followed the guide. I emailed support with a screenshot of the corrections made by the reviewer and pointed out the section of the style guide that addressed the issue. The information was relayed to the reviewer (I was told, and have had no further issue from any reviewer on this grammar rule,) and the poor scores were negated. Pay is great and always on time (sometimes early.) Rates go from $0.20 per audio minute up to (that I've seen and worked on) $0.75 per audio minute. These rates absolutely blow away most, if not all, of the competition. Payment is made directly to your PayPal account. I run my own transcription service both locally and online. I have a very small and unsteady clientele and rely on Speechpad to fill the gaps between jobs with said clients. From what I've seen, I could easily make a solid living off the work they offer on site on a regular basis if I needed to. The style guide is quite detailed without being overbearing. It is formatted neatly and covers almost everything you'll run into. Anything I've run into that wasn't covered I simply did the way made the most sense to me and followed up with feedback regarding any issues that might have come up during review. To date I've had no serious tiffs or disputes with anyone and have had little trouble maintaining the rating required by the site. The only complaints I've found online on various forums and review sites I have to think were made by individuals who either didn't understand or refused to adhere to the Speechpad style guide.