Location Selection Expanding to UK Clients

[Bojan S]

Thank you for reaching out to us, Rachel.

One of our team members will reach out to you directly via a support ticket to assist you with your verification process. 

[Alexandros C]

I live and work in London but I am not a London citizen. Therefore, I cannot provide the documentation asked by upwork to verify my location in UK. Is there another way to verify for us, non UK citizens?

[Bojan S]

Hi Alexandros,

We'll have one of our agents reach out to you via a support ticket to assist you with your verification process.

Thank you for reaching out to us. 

[Helen F]

I understand that this may be a desirable feature for clients who wish to limit bids from UK-only freelancers, and I'm not against it in principle. Personally I don't find it useful at all, as there are only ever 3 or 4 jobs that appear in my UK only feed and they don't change very often. But whatever – this may change given time, and although it seems like a pretty useless feature for freelancers (in my case at least), it doesn't bother me very much to give that option to clients.

However, it's REALLY annoying for freelancers to have the default Find Work feed be set to UK only. Every time I go to search for work I have to click to go to the second tab. The vast majority of my clients come from outside the UK and so I don't foresee a time when I'm likely to only want to see jobs from UK clients. I'd suggest one of the following, in order of preference:

1) Give me an integrated feed as the default containing all jobs relevant to me, with an option to filter to UK only if you must. But please don't make the filtered list the default. 

2) Allow some customisation of the Home feed so that individual freelancers can choose which feed they'd like to see as their default. 

3) Failing either of the above, I'd actually prefer to unverify my location so that I remove the possibility of seeing UK only jobs. Is this possible? I'm aware this would possibly restrict the jobs I see, but for the moment, that doesn't seem to be a problem for me (i.e., there's still more than enough work without a location requirement). Indeed, many of my clients are from the US which seems to suggest that many clients are also happy to hire freelancers from across the world. 

[Tiziana L]

Hi again. I am still confused about the verification process. It is supposed to verify the location, but it looks more like it verifies UK citizenship, by requiring a proof of ID rather than a proof of address... am I right? Is this only for UK citizens living in the UK?

And in case it's actually meant to verify the location, isn't this prone to exploitation by, let's say, a person that has a UK passport/citizeship but doesn't actually live in the UK?

As I said before, when you live in the UK and have to prove your location (for example to open a bank account or get a doctor) they ask for both an ID and a proof of address such as an utility bill or other official letters that prove it...

[Vladimir G]

We apologize for the confusion Tiziana. We are working on making the process more flexible and including more acceptable documents to verify freelancers' location beyond the UK passport and driver's license.

Regarding the concern you shared, we require that the address listed on your Upwork profile be your real, permanent address. However, our location verification process allows for periodic travel, so if we’ve been able to confirm you are in the U.K. you’ll still be able to submit proposals for jobs where the client is requesting U.K. freelancers only. It will then be up to you and your client to determine whether your travel schedule affects your ability to meet their job requirements.

[Tiziana L]

Thanks Vladimir!

However, as an Italian citizen living and working in the UK since 2016, registered with HMRC and everything, it's still unclear to me what my situation is. I have no driving licence and my passport is Italian.

I can provide proof of my address, but apparently this is not accepted by Upwork...

[Goran V]

Hi Tiziana,

I`m sorry about the delay.
I already escalated your concern to our team and one of our team members will assist you further with your verification via ticket. Thank you.

[Tiziana L]

Hi Goran, thanks. However, something weird has happened.

I received an email with a link to submit my documents, and I did so. It looked more like an automated letter than a member of the team reaching me. However, I submitted my passport and a proof of address (bank statement) as requested.

Well, apparently it has been rejected...it says that my ID type in not accepted. It is a regular, valid passport.

Now I am really really confused. And concerned.

[Bojan S]

Hi Tiziana,

I checked and saw that you already updated your ticket with this information and your documents, we appreciate that! Please allow time for our team to carefully investigate all facts you provided and once they do they will reach out to you with more details. Thank you for patience!