Is upwork a genuine platform to do business as it claim ?

[#1]

I want to raise a serious issue with upwork and for the interest of the people who generate revenues here . As a service provider who has done 600 projects( with 93% succes rate ) here and generated millions of revenues in 12 years , I feel cheated because of the flaws in the service agreements of upwork. I want the investors and the share holders of this website to look into this issue before trying to grow this paltform

Around a year back one of the customer  contacted here for a fixed price project . We agreed on a fixed price and deliver the first phase , customer was happy after seeing the results and paid 1500$ for the work delivered. work was approved and the payment released from escrow . As a well reputed agency who employs 200 people , we payed the contractor who worked on the project . We agreed on second phase customer funded escrow and we started next phase , this time customer started increasing his demands than we agreed and we stopped working with him and the escrow fund was given back to him .

The customer then contacted his credit card company and asked for the refund of the funds which he paid to upwork for the work he got which he agreed and payed . For our surprise the credit card company approved it after one year and upwork refunded the money from us . Its a very alarming situation for all the people working here . The customer support never contacted the business owner and refunded the fund stating some complex terms of agreement that there is no security of payment for fixed price projects . As the freelancers and agencies we want an assurance from upwork that upwork will not take away funds from clients who contacts credit card agencies in future . Its a serious issue and it should be covered undered the terms of service that , if a customer agrees to release payment after reviewing work it wont be reversed . Consider a situation a customer customer pays 100 k for a fixed price project and after getting the work he contact his bank and reverse it . How can it be reasonable in a professional platform like upwork . I would expect a reply from the CEO of upwork to clarify on this issue .

Thank you

[#2]

Hi Joby,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I shared your concern with the rest of our team and one of our agents will reach out to you directly via a support ticket to assist you further.

Thank you.

[#3]

Thanks Aleksander .  I was so disappointed yesterday that this post was removed and marked as spam . Glad to see it live again. This is a serious issue which effect lot of business like us .

If there is no security of the money we earned in this platform( where client approved and payed) and upwork can take it away anytime , even after years .  It should be stopped . The contract is over and money have been spend on people and resources , it can never be reversed .

My suggestion is very simple , once a client approves work and pay a milestone from escrow , it should be never reversed . He have the rights to check work and decline it . No where in this planet,anyone can take back money after paying the contractor after an year . Update your user agreement immediately which give security to contractors and agencies .

All other agencies who are seeing this post , please take this matter seriously .

[#4]

Here is the update ,

The customer support claims upwork team tried to defend the charge back from bank but failed so they have the permission to take money ,unauthorized from our account . It clearely states in TOS that , claiming charge backs from credit card or bank are against TOS for the clients , so if upwork fails in that its their failure, not freelancers

If your policies and rules cannot protect the payments made in this paltform , stop stealing money from agencies . Our legal team is reviewing and we will take this to a court ,if upwork try to steal money from our account.