Contractor doing a bad job and has disappeared with 5 hours booked.

[4af0ad90]

Howdy! Having a really tough time with a contractor on here. He's tracked 5 hours, but hasn't done anything that worked. In fact...the opposite. He's been altering core WordPress files and I'm having to replace them again with the files. Now he's ghosting me and won't respond at all. There's no way I'm going to pay him for the work he's done, but I don't want this contract open until the end of time. What can I do? I've never had a bad experience on Upwork, so this is new to me. Thanks much! – Charlie

[prestonhunter]

Put your project first!
Don't put so much of your own energy and thoughts and resources into an underperforming freelancer like this.

Close the contract and work with other people. My advice: Don't even give this freelancer the undeserved attention it would take to try to get money back. To do so elevates his importance more than he deserves.

But: If you want to put some effort into getting money back, there are two main options you have:

First, you can simply ask him to refund money back to you, or remove hours from his time log if is during the current week. The week changed over an hour ago, so removing time segments is probably no longer an option, but you can still ask for a refund.

OFTEN it is possible to get a freelancer to refund money if he knows his work was not usable.

BUT, if he is not communicating with you at all... this probably won't work.

Second, you can dispute time he logged. If any of his time segments do not meet ALL of Upwork's criteria, then Upwork will automatically remove them and you won't be billed for them.