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elenafavaroviana
Community Member

Canadian Dollars

Hello, I just posted a job with a budget of $40 dollars. I then hired someone who is also located in Canada to make sure the exchange rate would stay in Canadian dollars. Turns out everything on Upwork is in USD and I am now being charged 56 Canadian dollars. This was not clear to me as a new user of this site. This is over my budget. Do I have any recourse? 

15 REPLIES 15
prestonhunter
Community Member

You were expecting to pay $40 Canadian dollars, but you ended up paying $56 Canadian dollars.

You want to know if there is some way you can get Upwork to refund $16 Canadian dollars back to you.

 

Sorry, there is no such provision.

 

But you DID post your concern in the Community Forum, which is monitored and reported on by Upwork employees. This is the best place to record suggestions and concerns. Perhaps Upwork will look at their messaging on this topic and see if it can be improved.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Elena, 


I'm sorry if the charges have confused you. For your convenience, Upwork will default to charging Visa, MasterCard, or American Express credit and debit cards in local currency for clients billing addresses or issuing banks listed in this help article, one of which is in Canada. 

 

As noted in the help article, prices on Upwork are always in U.S. Dollars (USD). Only the billing to your card will be converted to your local currency. You may opt-out if you prefer to pay in USD. Please refer to the help article I have linked above to know how you can pay in USD. 

I would also like to clarify that you don't have to hire a freelancer from Canada to make sure that the charges will be in Canadian dollars. I would recommend that you discuss your issue with your freelancer, and check if they can issue you a partial refund. In the meantime, I'll share this with the team in case they have other recommendations. 

 

ETA: We just noticed that you have only funded the milestone for this contract, but haven't released it yet to your freelancer. When you release the money in escrow to your freelancer, to pay for the work that they have submitted, you have the option of releasing a partial amount instead of the whole amount. You may refer to this help article for more information on how you can review, and release a paymet for a milestone. If you have other questions, please don't hesitate to post a reply on this thread. 


~ Avery
Upwork

Avery, I don't think that it's fair for the freelancer to get paid less money just because the client misunderstood.

Obviously it is not fair to ask the freelancer to accept less payment due to the client's confusion over the exchange rate.

 

The Forum Moderator did not say that this would be a fair thing to do. I think the Moderator was simply pointing out something for the sake of providing "complete" information.

 

The client appears to be a thoughtful, fair person. I seriously doubt she would ask this of the freelancer.

 

That field can ALWAYS be edited by the client to request that the freelancer allow the client to pay less than the agreed-upon milestone payment amount. A client "could" edit that amount and request to pay less money due to confusion about exchange rates. The client "could" edit that amount and requst to pay less money because she doesn't like people who have vowels in their name. That doesn't mean the client "will" or "should" do so.


Preston H wrote:

Obviously it is not fair to ask the freelancer to accept less payment due to the client's confusion


Upwork have been asked, no, BEGGED for years now, over and over and over again, to make it obvious to clients outside the US, especially those who use a form of Dollars, that the prices are all in US Dollars, without having to wade through a thousand difficult to find help articles.

 

The client was not "confused" (typically patronising but no surprise there) - she simply wrongly assumed that like any global / international site that is on the technical level of a gnat will either display rates in local currency, or make it clear which currency is being used.

 

 

 

I agree.

 

Anything that can be done to make this more clear would be an improvement and would help not only clients who pay on the platform, but it would help Upwork itself.

Exactly what Petra said... Upwork is an international service. My assumption is not even misplaced that my budget amount would reflect my own currency budget. 

 

I do feel like Upwork should take some responsibility for this. 


Elena F wrote:

Exactly what Petra said... Upwork is an international service. My assumption is not even misplaced that my budget amount would reflect my own currency budget. 

 

I do feel like Upwork should take some responsibility for this. 


Elena, in all fairness, it's a paltry $ 16 (CAN)

 

I agree Upwork should make it clearer and have argued this ever since 2013, but $ 16 (CAN) is not worth getting into a state over.

 

I agree it's only $16... but because it's such a small amount, I do feel Upwork can absorb the cost. It's not like I am asking for hundreds or thousands of dollars back. I also agree it is not fair to penalize the freelancer and ask him to do work for a lower cost than agreed upon.

I am just surprised at the lack of customer support for clients on Upwork- especially first time users. Since the general feedback is that this has been a problem for years it just shows that Upwork doesn't value their customer, and honestly, I probably will not use the service again.

For example, if I were to contact Uber with a similar problem, that the driver was stuck in traffic or took a poor route and I had to pay more. No questions asked Uber would reimburse me and absorb the cost. That is good customer service and it is fair.

Hi Elena,

 

I`m sorry about the inconvenience this had caused you. I would also like to confirm that our team has followed up on your ticket with additional details to assist you further.
If you have any additional questions feel free to post them on your ticket and our team will assist you further as soon as possible. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork

Sorry, Upwork's CS is close to non existant, at best you'll get some "template" answers until you give up. They even ignore the existance of CX -I spent 5 (five) years trying to convince them UX wasn't the same as design. CX is part of UX and still doesn't exist in UpWork, so they'll hardly apply it in their daily operations when they ignore it exists, maybe in 5 years-.

 

You're talking about companies like Uber with CS and CX specialized departments, but it's not the case here. I wish you luck on this, but honestly doubt it will ever be resolved as you expect it to be resolved

Hi all,

 

Thank you for answering. I also do not see it fair that the freelancer has to even be involved in this discussion when clearly it was my mistake. I was not aware that Upwork was strictly USD and if anything I feel like I am being penalized for this error by paying a price out of budget. 

My question more so for Avery (or any customer service representative) was if Upwork could reimburse me or absord the difference? Especially since I am a new user I feel like there should be some kind of policy to cover this? 

 

Elena


Preston H wrote:

Obviously it is not fair to ask the freelancer to accept less payment due to the client's confusion over the exchange rate.

 

The Forum Moderator did not say that this would be a fair thing to do. I think the Moderator was simply pointing out something for the sake of providing "complete" information.

 

The client appears to be a thoughtful, fair person. I seriously doubt she would ask this of the freelancer.

 

That field can ALWAYS be edited by the client to request that the freelancer allow the client to pay less than the agreed-upon milestone payment amount. A client "could" edit that amount and request to pay less money due to confusion about exchange rates. The client "could" edit that amount and requst to pay less money because she doesn't like people who have vowels in their name. That doesn't mean the client "will" or "should" do so.


Don't be ridiculous. If a client posts a problem in the forum and a moderator suggests paying the freelancer less money (and this was the only solution that was suggested), then obviously the moderator DOES think that this is a fair solution and is not merely posting a theory in the interest of "providing complete information".

 


Avery O wrote:

 

ETA: We just noticed that you have only funded the milestone for this contract, but haven't released it yet to your freelancer. When you release the money in escrow to your freelancer, to pay for the work that they have submitted, you have the option of releasing a partial amount instead of the whole amount. You may refer to this help article for more information on how you can review, and release a paymet for a milestone. If you have other questions, please don't hesitate to post a reply on this thread. 


Is that really a suitable way for Upwork to suggest fixing this issue? Presumably the freelancer knows how to use the system and has taken or quoted on a job based on either the budget offered or the price they have submitted. Why should the freelancer be financially penalised for the combination of a client not knowing the rules properly and upwork not providing adequate information to ensure newcomers understand key points?

I liken this to another situation we encountered over the past many months: Files transferred through Upwork were being silently modified, often crippling functionality or changing the files significantly, because Upwork was using a malware-checking system without informing users.

 

This really caused confusion and problems for a lot of users, such as freelancers who edit Word files, and saw those edits stripped out of the files they sent to clients.

 

It was kind of a ridiculous situation. It was discussed quite a bit in the Forum, and Upwork DID MAKE MAJOR CHANGES to their system. Upwork added entirely new functionality that lets users know that files are being changed, and lets users choose to download un-changed versions of files.

 

These changes were made because there was a lack of transparency that was causing real problems for freelancers and clients.

 

So although the currency rate used to charge clients is a seemingly unrelated topic, I see this as very similar because once again there are potential problems caused because users don't know how the system works. And this could be fixed simply by making it more clear.

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