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86f46781
Community Member

Fraud

There is more than just academic fraud - there is straight up fraud!

I recently hired someone to create some content for an online course I am creating and specified I was looking for someone with native or fluent in English, they provided their proof of work which was a thesis in perfect English.

I hired them because they had a masters in Psychology and that is along the lines of the work I do.

I asked them to read 3 pages of a document and summarise it for kids to understand and I got half a page of bullet points with images so small they couldn't be read and emoji's (in a professional document) and it was completely off topic and all in broken English.

My 6 year old son could tell the sentances didn't make sense!!!!!!!

 

I was vchared 10 hourse to find and resize 10 images - when I agreed to 1 or 2 and to convert a word doc to a PDF.... 10 hours???

She also continued to bill me after I told her I didn't want her to continue as I was unhappy with the work and then agaon after I cancelled the contract.

I have been told that upwork can't decide to refund or not, it is at the complete discression on the hiree - why would someone conducting fraud refund money?

 

I was billed 35 hours in total = $525

Do you think that is a reasonable price to read 3 pages and summarise them into half a page????

I think not!

 

Upwork your operating processes and extremely questionable and unlawful!

I am under the impression that a company cannot willingly allow someone to conduct fraud within their business - regardless of the T&C's - the law trumps your T&C's.

 

Unfortunately it was only after I used your platform, that I found a number of fraudulent complaints about you online and most of these have gone unresolved.

 

You need to start taking these things seriously, what you are doing is illegal!

5 REPLIES 5
JoanneP
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Jodi,

 

I can see that you already have an open ticket regarding this issue. One of our agents will update your ticket and assist you further. 

~ Joanne
Upwork
prestonhunter
Community Member

Jodi:
You have used the word "fraud" and "illegal" in your post.


But you have not provided any examples of anything that was fraudulent or illegal.

 

I DO BELIEVE that you are disappointed by your experience using Upwork. The problems you have described can be attributed to the client or project manager using the Upwork system improperly.

 

If you have questions about how to use Upwork effectively, then please feel free to ask your questions here in the Forum. You are also welcome to ask questions about your specific situation, in order to better understand what you did wrong and what you could have done more effectively.

 

When you (as a client) hire a freelancer to work for you, and the freelancer works for you and logs time doing so, but produces unsatisfying results, that does not mean that anything illegal or fraudulent happened. This is an example of hiring the wrong person and failed project management.

 

Your account of events only presents your side of the story. We have not heard from the freelancer. There are many things in your post that don't add up. For example, you claim that you asked the freelancer to produce a summary of writing targeted for kids, yet you complained about the presence of emojis in the summary - calling their presence unprofessional. I can easily envision another freelancer providing a summary without emojis, and another client complaining about the lack of emojis, because kids like emojis and any summary without them is clearly done incorrectly.

 

I suppose the biggest question I have is this:
If you were not satisfied with the work that this freelancer was doing, why did you let the freelancer continue to work for you for 35 hours?

 

Upwork clients can pause a contract at ANY TIME. Upwork clients can end a contract at any time, for any reason.

 

 

If you are not satisfied with this, and would like to appeal to outside agencies or organizations, you are welcome to read more about doing that here:

 

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Clients/problem-solve-here-no-FTC-BBC-FBI-PD-etc/td-p/678783


Preston H wrote:


But you have not provided any examples of anything that was fraudulent or illegal.

 


OP probably provided it to support already, and if she did so here, chances are moderators would redact it anyway. But OP implied strongly that the freelancer misrepresented their English proficiency and perhaps their academic credentials, and either of those things would be fraudulent, IMO.

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

We don't know all the details. We are only hearing one side of this, and that side is being relayed by a client who is frustrate by the amount of hours she let a freelancer log while working on her project. Not a disinterested, objective third party.

 

It is entirely possible that the freelancer misrepresented herself, but the original post gave no evidence of that. If the freelancer posted or provided her real Masters thesis, then there is nothing fraudulent about doing so. No different than if you wrote a Masters thesis and then posted it in your own portfolio. If the freelancer wrote a Masters thesis and worked hard to standardize the English, either on her own or with the help of proofreaders and editors, that is to be expected.

 

The client said that the freelancer she hired has a Master's degree in Psychology. Not English.

 

The original poster makes clear her opinion that the freelancer she hired doesn't have perfect English. But her example is a document - which she did not provide for our examination - that the freelancer provided which was intended to be for kids, which used "bullet points", "emojis" and "broken English."


A summary written for kids may indeed contain emojis, bullet points, and incomplete sentences (something that the client may have misinterpreted as "broken English").

 

The document provided by the freelancer may be excellent. It may be horrible. We don't know. Even if it is horrible by our standards, that doesn't mean that anything fraudulent or illegal took place.

 

I have not read the document that the freelancer provided. It may be the work of someone who struggles with English. Or it may be the work of someone with complete mastery of English who made stylistic decisions that the client did not fully understood.

 

I want to be clear that I am not defending any freelancer's bad behavior,

 

I only pointing out that the original post levied accusations of fraud and lawbreaking without actually providing any examples of such.

 

Upwork allows clients to find, hire and pay freelancers. The client hired the freelancer with a contract. But Upwork itself was not party to that contract. Upwork made the correct decision, and operated in accordance with its stated policies, when it explained that any refunds would need to be something that the freelancer would need to agree to, and would need to be a matter between the freelancer and the client. Not something that Upwork itself could directly implement.

 

Moreover, and this has nothing to do with the original poster's situation, but is a situation that I am imagining: If Upwork provides me with effective tools to prevent me from losing money. And I decide not to use those tools, or I never learn about those tools in the first place... and then I spend over $500 on work that I can't use... and then I can't get that money back... then the amount of money that I wasted is the same regardless of the number of people who agree with my characterization of Upwork as "illegal" and/or "fraudulent."

The client wrote:

"I asked them to read 3 pages of a document and summarise it for kids to understand and I got half a page of bullet points with images so small they couldn't be read and emoji's (in a professional document) and it was completely off topic and all in broken English. My 6 year old son could tell the sentances didn't make sense!!!!!!! I was vchared 10 hourse to find and resize 10 images - when I agreed to 1 or 2 and to convert a word doc to a PDF.... 10 hours??? She also continued to bill me after I told her I didn't want her to continue as I was unhappy with the work and then agaon after I cancelled the contract. I have been told that upwork can't decide to refund or not, it is at the complete discression on the hiree"

 

The client indicated that the freelancer misrepresented her English language skills and that the document she provided uses English which is so bad that it is fraudulent and illegal.

 

I would need to see the freelancer's work for myself in order to know if the freelancer's work product really does use English poorly. I can not make that determination based on the client's original post.

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