Developer Issue, How do I proceed?

[98001988]

Hi everyone

I hired a developer to fix an intermitant problem I was having with a form on my site. Its a 3 step form and certain users would get stuck on one of the parts, (pressing next did nothing and the form wouldn't let them progress).

Anyway not that it should matter but I paid him top money $93.50 an hour to fix this problem and after 5 hours he said he had. And upon having a look it appeared as though he did. 

A couple of days have went by and I have thought nothing of it until one of my sales team mentioned to me that we arent receiving anywhere near the amount of leads we do normally. I had a look back at my website and it seems the problem is still there but now seems to be happening a lot more.

I have tried contacting him but he is unresponsive, its now been 3 hours, granted I dont expect him to be online all of the time so am not blaming him for that. The thing is I need this problem fixed immediately as its costing my company money as we are spending money on ads.

I want to offer him the chance to fix this but obviously time is of the essence so if he doesnt respond very soon I am going to have to hire someone else to fix it.

His money isnt supposed to be paid until mondayfor the contract, do I file a dispute? I don't want to end up paying him and someone else

What do I do?

[bobafett999]

@93.50/hr I am sure he has some sense of pride in his work.  I am sure he would attempt to fix it - I would, but in the mean time if you have not released payment - don't.  I have no idea how this would go if you have already paid him.  In overall scheme of things $500 bucks in not that big.

And you did say," And upon having a look it appeared as though he did. "....may be you ended up buying a lemon.

[98001988]

I think he will try and fix it, the problem is time... I don't have time to wait for his reply as every second that goes by I am losing potential business as the website is broken. If he doesn't reply soon and I give someone else the job, will I win the dispute?

[bobafett999]

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@steven d wrote:

 will I win the dispute?

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 who knows?..I have no way to know other side, but .as others have pointed out that if he has logged in hours he will be paid.  The end results are not guaranteed.  Coding work is not like plopping $0.50 in a vending machine and expect the machine to deliver the can of soda you wanted.

If I were you I would ask him to fix it even if you have to pay extra becasue he knows what he did.  In a worst case scenerio ask him to remove his code and put the things the way they were.  You said you had problems before so whatever you did or some else did was not correct.  I have seen these problems arise a lot in a website.  People forget that the original system (code) was meant to work as a cohesive package.  But then people want to add this and that on top of that in segments - they want to grow arms.  There is an inherent danger when you work in segments.

If I were you then for future I would try to find some one local who is competant - and forget the piece meal approach by having things done by different people.  Yes it may cost you more and only you can decide how much a reliable system is worth to you.

[gerrys]

If you think he made a real effort, give a token payment; else don't pay. (Sounds like it should have been a trivial problem to fix).

I can make my screenshots "interesting" enough so that I look like a genius. UpWork still can't tell what's happening behind the eyeballs.

[imakeinternet]

Sorry to hear about your problems.  If this was an hourly contract he is guaranteed payment under the Upwork hourly protection policy.  In order for the policy to be nulled, the freelancer must be guilty of any of the following in regards to time logged:

• Added manually
• Idle or empty
• Over the weekly limit
• Showing the freelancer engaged in non-work-related activity
• Missing memos or have inadequately described memos

With that said, if you cannot reach your freelancer in due time, and if you're interested in hiring again, **Edited for Community Guidelines**

[kochubei_valeria]

Hi Steven,

Sorry to hear you haven't been able to reach the freelancer you hired. Since it's an hourly contract and the time was logged this week, the dispute option will not be available until Monday. You can find more information about hourly disputes here. Note, however, that on hourly contracts the client pays the freelancer for the time they spend working on the contract not for the final product. Therefore, if the freelancer logged time using Upwork App and their Work Diary shows screenshots related to the contract with adequate memos and activity levels, the freelancer's payment will be covered by Hourly Protection.

I hope you'll hear back from the freelancer soon and will be able to resolve this issue amicably.