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935d0ef0
Community Member

BEWARE, of Upwork INC’s unamerican business tactics, THEFT THROUGH DECEPTION

BEWARE, BEWARE, BEWARE, BEWARE, of Upwork INC’s unamerican business tactics, false advertisement an intentional THEFT THROUGH DECEPTION assault on its clients.

 

After 3-days of going back and forth and explaining in detail exactly what kind of site was needed to my freelancer **edited for Community Guidelines**. On 10/21/2021 I hired freelancer the self-proclaimed Senior Full-Stack Software Developer, Laravel and Vue.js Specialist to build me a custom website.

 

For three months the freelancer would stringing me along, are agreement was simple, every Friday morning we have a conversation and by December 15th, I would have a playground to test the website and by January 1st I would have a website.

 

Unfortunately, it never came to fruition. I have been robbed of my time and money according to Upwork$4,210.00.

 

During this process I was shown a cheap real estate template with a cheap unauthorized logo that I specifically stated I didn’t like, buttons that didn’t work, No pages or back end work. This is not even close to the structure, milestones and details laid out at the beginning. My understanding was mediation was meant to help a minor communication situation move things a long, not turn it in a mutiny or result in a canceled contact by Upworks. At no time was it explained that a mediation would result in them closing this contract. I asked for help to simply communicate with the freelancer because it became, harder and harder to reach him. Then the personal excuses became more frequent and more personal as time went on.  

 

On 1/15/22 Upwork closed the contract, I did not. Upwork claims I did not respond to a link when in fact all are communication were via email and so that is how I responded on two separate emails on 1/13/22 and within the time frame they allowed and on two separate occasions. Upwork’s decision to close the case has resulted in essentially giving the freelancer a free pass to not for fill his commitment and obligation “No services were rendered”.

 

After several emails later and despite Upwork asking the freelancer to give me an update after they have closed the contract. YTD it has not been given, at this point he is only responding to Upwork. Prior to Upwork getting involved the freelancer and I had some kind of communication and now we have none. I hold Upwork and the freelancers accountable. The freelancer erroneously inflated his hours of work. Upwork allows freelancers to manually input hours by default and will approve and payout the request from the freelancer without your authorization.

 

I had no idea Upwork was going to give away my time, money and most importantly not hold the freelancer accountable for not producing what I’ve paid for, after he contractually promised when I hired him via Upwork website. This is definitely a clear-cut case of THEFT THROUGH DECEPTION!  

 

Between 8/21/2021 and today 2/23/2022 I was never provided with a playground or website as promised. In fact, after but yet; around the same time frame 8/30/21 to 1/11/22 another project was completed by the freelancer **edited for Community Guidelines**.

 

Unfortunately, Upwork still will not and has not address and answered the main issue at hand. but yet it was still approved by Upwork. I have posted a negative review on the account and it has not been posted to there are account.

 

Upwork claim the freelancers

  • Why was he able to manually input hours with me knowing about it? 
  • Why was I not able to approve or unapproved manually input hours before it went through? 
  • Why was the manually input of hours set to default?
  • What was said and done when he said he uses Toggle instead of the Time tracker you had in places?
2 REPLIES 2
prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "For three months the freelancer would stringing me along, are agreement was simple, every Friday morning we have a conversation and by December 15th, I would have a playground to test the website and by January 1st I would have a website. Unfortunately, it never came to fruition. I have been robbed of my time and money according to Upwork $4,210.00."

 

Corey, I genuinely am sorry to hear about your experience. I believe you are sincere in what you wrote here.

 

But after reading through your post, I can't identify anything that Upwork itself did wrong. It seems like the person you should be upset with is your project manager. And there are things that the freelancer did which disappointed you.

 

Why didn't the project manager fire this freelancer and assign his tasks to another member of the team?

 

It appears that there is some confusion about what services Upwork actually provides. Upwork allows clients to find, hire and pay freelancers.

 

Upwork doesn't provide websites, freelancer management, freelancer vetting or project management. But your post makes it seem like you think Upwork provides such.

 

re: "Why was he able to manually input hours with me knowing about it?"

 

If a contract allows manual time, because that is how the client sets up the contract, then a freelancer is indeed able to log manual time. But a freelancer can not log and get paid for manual time without the time and billing information appearing on the client's Upwork console. A client may look at that information at any time.

 

If a client disagrees with a freelancer's manually logged time, the client may click a button to dispute that time, and then the client does not need to pay for that time.


re: "Why was I not able to approve or unapproved manually input hours before it went through?"

 

Clients are automatically billed for hours logged by freelancers. Clients have five days after the work week ends during which they may review and dispute hours logged, using the work diary.

 

A client may dispute any manually logged time and not pay for that time.

A client may dispute any time not spent on his project, according to the screenshots, and he won't need to pay for that time. A client may dispute any time with insufficient mouse/keyboard activity, or without written memos identifying the work  being done, and he will not need to pay for that time.

 

re: "Why was the manually input of hours set to default?"

 

It does not matter why the default setting was chosen to be that way. A client may change the setting when he creates a contract. And a client may change the setting at any time.

 

re: "What was said and done when he said he uses Toggle instead of the Time tracker you had in places?"

 

I do not understand this question. Toggle is a third-party time-tracking tool. It is not used by Upwork. A freelancer's use of Toggle can not cause an Upwork client to be billed for the freelancer's time.

 

Do you have any others questions?
Is there anything that you want help with?

tagrendy
Community Member

  • Why was he able to manually input hours with me knowing about it? 

I assume you meant with you not knowing about it. Manual hours are enabled or disabled from client side. When you created the offer to start the contract, you might've missed it, but there was an option to allow / not allow the freelancer to add manual hours, and you can also set a limit of how many hours per week. These settings can also be changed at any point even after the contract starts. My guess is that you might've been unfamiliar with the interface of Upwork and didn't notice those settings to use them, so they were set to default and never changed ( default is 40hrs per week ).

 

  • Why was I not able to approve or unapproved manually input hours before it went through? 

You can't approve / disapprove them before you're charged on Monday, but from Monday to Friday is 'review' period, during which you can contest the hours, and usually in this case all manually logged hours get returned to the client. That said, you're fundamentally confusing hourly & fixed contract logic. When you hire someone hourly, you pay for their time, regardless of the quality of work. For fixed projects you pay for results, and can approve / disapprove milestones before they are paid. In this case, either you should've used a fixed contract, or disabled manual hours, or limited them.

 

  • Why was the manually input of hours set to default?

Well, they are set to default by default, you likely you did not see to change them.

 

  • What was said and done when he said he uses Toggle instead of the Time tracker you had in places?

I'm not sure I understand this. Either way, I do understand spending 4k and not receiving the result you want is frustrating, but it's important to understand how the system works before using it. If you're hiring someone on hourly terms, you pay every week, you should have set the terms with the freelancer that every week he will update you and show you progress. Then you could've estimated whether you're on the right track with the project or not, to know if you should continue working with them or hire someone else. If you've allowed the freelancer to keep tracking and only show you the result 2 months in, then what happened can happen, it's risky.

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