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8e5a0925
Community Member

Beware of *edited*

Hi,

 

I want to share my experience with one of upwork's freelancers over the last months to prevent other clients from making the same mistake. Here is what I also wrote to the upwork support:

 

 

 

Spoiler

In May 2018 two friends and I created an offer on upwork for a software development project. We wanted a piece of software that gathers information from one source, processes that and outputs automated clicks and commands in another software.

 

We quickly got a few applications from which we chose **edited for Community Guidelines** after some interviews. He offered the job for 1.000$+fees as you can also see from both of our account histories I imagine. We also agreed on how those 1.000$ would be structured: 4 steps with 250$ payments paid out at 1. Start of the project 2. Delivery of proof of concept (POC) 3. Start of acceptance testing and 4. Completion of acceptance testing and final delivery.

 

We also asked **edited for Community Guidelines** if he can sell us the source code of the finished product to which he agreed but he wanted 100% (another 1.000$) on top and he wanted payment via a different way than Upwork to circumvent fees. He convinced us that this was a fair deal and began programming.

 

With a bit of delay but after a reasonable amount of time, **edited for Community Guidelines** delivered the POC-stage of the project which looked promising. We released the second step of payments, but then the trouble began. **edited for Community Guidelines** complained that it was more work than anticipated and demanded more money. We made a step towards him and told him that we would have a follow-up project (the serverization of the current project, i.e. getting inputs from one PC, outputs on a server and then communicating those outputs back to the original PC) and would be prepared to pay more if he would do that as well.

 

At this point **edited for Community Guidelines** told us that he was already underpaid for what he had done up to that point and that he wanted all future payments via other services than Upwork, again to circumvent fees. However, he also agreed on the new project (finishing the old one and the serverization of it) for a higher price, if we would finish the Upwork project and do all future business directly. We reluctantly agreed since **edited for Community Guidelines** seemed competent and the POC looked promising.

 

So, we paid out the two last steps of the Upwork project (although we still only had the POC at that point) and even gave him a five-star-rating that he asked for (“to motivate him for the next steps of the project”). If you would like to investigate that, the requirements stated in “Roadmap 2.0” in our Upwork project are not met and you are very welcome to ask **edited for Community Guidelines** about that.

 

Instead of first finishing the old standalone-version of the project, **edited for Community Guidelines** wanted to leave that at the POC-stage and start with the serverization right away. We were again sceptical at first, but **edited for Community Guidelines** convinced us with some technical arguments which we believed, as he was the expert.

 

After quite a few weeks with various excuses by **edited for Community Guidelines**, he demonstrated a first version of the server-client-infrastructure and again wanted to be paid. At this point we had agreed on a step-by-step payment with an overall budget of 5.000$ for both projects including source code. **edited for Community Guidelines** told us that he needs to get somewhat close to his hourly rate and we paid 1.750$ for the demo-version of the server-client-infrastructure at that point (including source code), so that there was 2.250$ left in the budget for the completion of both half-finished pieces of code.

 

At this point, **edited for Community Guidelines** disappeared almost completely. Every one or two weeks he would come online and write us an E-mail or Skype message of how he is sorry, but he has “domestic issues”, “end-of-month-work to do” or that some Microsoft update broke his development software.

 

In the meantime, one of the guys in our team tried developing the project on his own, using **edited for Community Guidelines** code as the basis. He discovered that many functions that **edited for Community Guidelines** demonstrated as working logic of the program were actually just broken pieces of code that could not withstand any further testing than what **edited for Community Guidelines** demonstrated to us to fool us into believing it was working software.

 

It is hard to argue with domestic issues (I believe he even talked of his sick wife), but we got really angry when we discovered that **edited for Community Guidelines** was applying to other projects on Upwork two days ago. We confronted him, demanding an explanation and a refund for the broken pieces of software he delivered and that he clearly had no intention of finishing or fixing.

All we got were answers like:

 

**edited for Community Guidelines** (as explanation for why he put our project on hold for months while searching for other projects on Upwork. Not only did he not offer us any alternative, but he was also explicitly searching for projects with fixed price on Upwork)

**edited for Community Guidelines** (as stated above, many functions of the “deliverables” were just for “show” and demonstration purposes while not working in reality. Of course, we also paid for interim steps with the final product in mind, which he now is clearly not willing to deliver)

**edited for Community Guidelines**

 

We of course understand that you have no way of mediating or getting us a refund here as the Upwork project is officially completed and **edited for Community Guidelines** successfully screwed us by conducting all future business directly.

 

However, we would advise you strongly to prevent **edited for Community Guidelines** from applying for further work on your site and getting other customers into our situation. This really does not shed a good light on Upwork at all.

We would also like to edit our five-star rating (see above how that came about in the first place), if possible.

 

Best regards

 

 

 

Unfortunately, according to upwork guidelines there is no way to go back and dispute payment, e.g. for step 3 and 4 of the project that were never delivered. Even the 5-star-feedback can not be cancelled.

However, it is disappointing that upwork does not seem to care the slightest about mediating this conflict. While live chatting with the support they offered a mediation "to bring the project to an amicable end" but after that nothing has happened since and support is just ignoring further inquiries. They do not seem to care about customers.

 

Hope you dont make the same mistake and avoid this freelancer at all costs!

11 REPLIES 11
versailles
Community Member

Johnny, you meticulously followed the two of the golden rules that are the best way to get scammed:

 

- You failed to review the code produced by the freelancer in a timely manner.

- You accepted to circumvent Upwork.

 

He will be banned from Upwork but the damage is done. His behavior was sneaky from the beginning and, unless I missed something, it also seems that did two things backward:

 

>4 steps with 250$ payments paid out at 1. Start of the project

 

- You don't pay anything in advance on Upwork.

 

We also asked **edited for Community Guidelines** if he can sell us the source code of the finished product to which he agreed but he wanted 100%

 

- If somebody does something for you and is paid for doing so, this something belongs to you. You don't need to buy it from him or from her. All source code done by a developer paid by you belongs to you.

 

Johnny, Upwork has payment protection in place so clients and freelancers don't get scammed. You never circumvent Upwork. When you do, this may happen.

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

Johnny, I hope some of the discussion with the freelancer you mentioned was in Upwork messaging because that might be the only proof Upwork will accept of your version of events. It’s also a shame you didn’t post here earlier, say with the first mention of payment outside Upwork, when you would have been advised that the freelancer was behaving in a highly improper manner.
__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
8e5a0925
Community Member

Hi John,

 

unfortunately nearly the entire conversation took part in a Skype group chat, sometimes even in a call and not even in writing. I of course sent screenshots of the conversation as well as the receipt for the direct payment to the Upwork support (they do not seem to care however).

 

The support also advised me to flag his profile for wanting payments outside of upwork. The profile was blocked for 2 days (I guess until **edited for Community Guidelines** promised to not do it again which is of course easy to do) and then back online.

 

I guess our entire story is at least a prime example for every other client of how not to do business with freelancers. It is also our first experience on upwork and with freelancers in general; shame we had to find a scammer right away 😞

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

I"m sorry to learn about your experience, Johnny. I checked your account but was unable to find the support tickets you were referring to on your post. 

Was it filed by a colleague? I wanted to review it further and see if there is something else I can do from my end.


~ Avery
Upwork
8e5a0925
Community Member

Hi Avery,

 

thanks for your reply! I opened the ticket via live chat and it was closed up until a few minutes ago where I just asked again for the "amicable resolution" promised by one of the support staff. You can find it under the ticket id #22067015.

yitwail
Community Member


@Johnny C wrote:

Hi John,

 

unfortunately nearly the entire conversation took part in a Skype group chat, sometimes even in a call and not even in writing. I of course sent screenshots of the conversation as well as the receipt for the direct payment to the Upwork support (they do not seem to care however).

 

 


I was afraid of that. The smart scammers move you out of Upwork messaging right away, so there's no direct evidence of their shenanigans. 

 

ETA: now that almost all clues to the identity of the scammer have been redacted by moderators, as they're required to do, it may be worth noting for the record that the freelancer under discussion does not live in a developing country and does not advertise a low hourly rate. Scammers come from all socioeconomic strata.

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce


@Johnny C wrote:

Hi John,

 

unfortunately nearly the entire conversation took part in a Skype group chat, sometimes even in a call and not even in writing. I of course sent screenshots of the conversation as well as the receipt for the direct payment to the Upwork support (they do not seem to care however).

 

The support also advised me to flag his profile for wanting payments outside of upwork. The profile was blocked for 2 days (I guess until **edited for Community Guidelines** promised to not do it again which is of course easy to do) and then back online.

 

I guess our entire story is at least a prime example for every other client of how not to do business with freelancers. It is also our first experience on upwork and with freelancers in general; shame we had to find a scammer right away 😞


 Why did you agree then to working outside of upwork, knowing full well it's not allowed? There are tens of thousands of freelancers offering the skills you needed, why did you not cease the business relationship immediately? You not only ignored a huge red flag, you encouraged it.  

Hi Rene,

 

yes, in hindsight of course you are right! We were way to generous, especially regarding timing of the payments and even gullible in believing **edited for Community Guidelines** was doing the best he could and would not scam us.

 

I would hope Upwork agrees with you and bans him; however from what I have seen so far I do not believe they will. They do not show signs of doing anything beyond the absolute minimum of what they offer in their guidelines and I suspect that they will just let **edited for Community Guidelines** continue to do his thing, maybe until he scams one or a few more other clients.

martina_plaschka
Community Member

You violated upwork rules by paying outside the platform. Now you are disappointed in upwork?

Just on a human emotion level, I am hardpressed to see how a person (and yes, upwork has human persons working for them) that you scammed would now be scrambling to help you in any way. 

Instead of being openly indignant, you should have quietely faded into the woodwork, as now you face suspension of your account too.

Martina,

 

in hindsight you are of course right.

 

However, try and put yourself in our shoes for a second. You are hiring a freelancer for the first time and using upwork the first time.You start your project with a reputable guy, an English national living in Germany who has 24 or 25 reviews with only 5 stars. Things seem to be going well and he delivers a promising POC for a project you are very much looking forward to and that has some time constraints. Now he says he is underpaid and will not continue working if you do not beef up your offer (+ circumvent upwork). The two choices you have are: Firing him and starting from 0 (which is what we should have done in hindsight) or make a step towards him and meet his demands. With the information we had at that point and the upwork ratings playing a big role in his reputation, we decided to go with the latter at that point in time and it obviously blew up in our faces.

 

We do not expect any compensation or "delayed escrow" from upwork. Of course it would shed a great light on the company if they at least tried to help and mediate or maybe let us at least edit our rating (and not such a great light if they let the freelancer in question continue as if nothing happened), but we understand if that is not possible. All we want to achieve with this thread is to prevent other clients from making the same mistake.

 

I hope that makes some sense.

Don't worry Johnny, it's Ok. You made an honest mistake, which, unfortunately, cost you money. Let's hope Upwork bans the scammer fast.

 

Upwork is a great tool, now that you have learned how to use it properly, I hope you'll get the best of it.

 

From now on, if you have any question or any doubt while hiring and working with freelancers, just come here and share them with this community. You will certainly receive a great deal of advice from Upwork agents and seasoned users.

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless
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