🐈
» Forums » Clients » Re: Fraudulent Work Diary: Freelancer charged...
Page options
bac68faf
Community Member

Fraudulent Work Diary: Freelancer charged us for 4 months without doing any work

we have a freelancer who charged us more than $8,000 dollars over the past 4 months on a weekly basis, without doing any work. We have so many freelancers with tens of thousands of dollars of charges and it just fell through the cracks. 

The person never started working for us, but also the contract was never ended. I know, quite dumb not to check, yet highly illgal and fraudulent action by the freelancer. 

 

Upwork so far has not been willing to refund it, despite taking 20% of the transaction fess. 

 

Any experience with a situation like this?

Will proceed with a credit card chargeback if upwork does not protect the clints, and move over operations to freelancer.com, but want to avoid that if possible. 

 

Thanks for the help. 

14 REPLIES 14
prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "we have a freelancer who charged us more than $8,000 dollars over the past 4 months on a weekly basis, without doing any work."

 

I am sorry to hear this.

It is your project manager's job to make sure that something like that doesn't happen.

When you asked the project manager about why he continued to pay a freelancer money when that freelancer was not doing any work, what did he say?

 

re: "Upwork so far has not been willing to refund it, despite taking 20% of the transaction fees."

 

Freelancers working with hourly contracts are paid based on the time that they log.

The time to dispute a freelancer's hours begins as soon as the work week ends. When the work week ends, the client has 5 days during which they can dispute the freelancer's hours.

Based on what you said in your original post, Upwork has acted in accordance with its policies in this matter.

 

re: "despite taking 20% of the transaction fees."

 

As you know, Upwork doesn't take 20% from you. Upwork takes 20% from the fees paid to freelancers. But only for the first $500. After the freelancer earned $500 working for you, Upwork was collecting 10% of the money you paid to him.

 

re: "Will proceed with a credit card chargeback if Upwork does not protect the clients, and move over operations to freelancer.com, but want to avoid that if possible."

 

It is a violation of Upwork ToS for clients to file a chargeback request with their credit card company. A client who files a credit card chargeback will almost certainly be terminated from the platform.

 

I do not doubt that you feel disappointed by what has happened.

I wish that this had not happened.

But you are asking Upwork to send you money that it doesn't have. The money that you paid to this freelancer has already been withdrawn by the freelancer. You may wish to pursue this matter with the freelancer.

2a05aa63
Community Member


Nova H wrote:

The person never started working for us, but also the contract was never ended. I know, quite dumb not to check, yet highly illgal and fraudulent action by the freelancer. 


There's is a system how things work. You didn't learn about it before using it. All you can do is close the contract, leave a negative feedback and dispute last weeks hours.
What the freelancer did is unethical. But you gave them access to a specific number of hours per week. You left the contract open even if you didn't have any work for them.

If you leave money on the desk and give someone the key to the room. And not only do you take their key away after the first time you see them steal the but keep restocking the money each week, well who would be responsible for taking away their key and firing them?

They have a responsibility to document that work in a specific way:

The following cases do not qualify for payment protection:

  • Time segments in the Work Diary that don’t meet all of the qualification criteria above. For example, we exclude segments that are:
    • 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
yofazza
Community Member

"Don't leave money on the table, the thieves will be the good person?"

 

Upwork should put more effort to educate the Clients because in 2022 we are not oversupplied with them. Someone should start a top red flags for scam freelancers thread and Upwork should make clients read it before doing anything else.

JoanneP
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Nova,

 

I'm sorry to hear about what happened. 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
6ed25d3a
Community Member

The fact that people are making excuses for freelancers behaving unethically, and no response from Upwork about the safety of their platform and the wish to make it right, is mind-boggling to me. I have seen all I need to see here. From what I see, in Upwork's docs:

The following cases do not qualify for payment protection:

  • Time segments in the Work Diary that don’t meet all of the qualification criteria above. For example, we exclude segments that are:
    • 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
  •  
AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Lalonie, 


Thank you for participating in this thread. I'd like to note that this is a thread from 2021 and I can see the team assisted OP. If you need help with your open dispute, it would be best to continue communicating with the team through your open ticket as they are very equipped to assist you. If you need further help, don't hesitate to follow up on your open ticket. 


~ Avery
Upwork

Yes, all of that is correct, but the client needs to review the work diary and dispute within a week, not four months later. How can Upwork know that something has gone wrong, if the client doesn't say anything? Once the freelancer has withdrawn the money, it's difficult, if not impossible, to get it back.

f1785f8c
Community Member

Sorry to hear that. Integrity is at an all-time low.

 

c3cf1dee
Community Member

  • Time segments in the Work Diary that don’t meet all of the qualification criteria above. For example, we exclude segments that are:
  • Added manually
  • Idle or empty
  • Over the weekly limit
  • Showing the freelancer engaged in non-work-related activity
  • Missing memos or inadequately described memos
f0d00719
Community Member

Matter of sorrow

tlsanders
Community Member

It seems odd that you think Upwork should pay you $8,000 out of its own pocket because you failed to manage your freelancers effectively. Upwork didn't scam you or record fake hours. Upwork didn't fail to check work diaries for four months (16-18 weeks of emails inviting you to review them). Why do you feel Upwork should be financially responsible for either the freelancer's fraud or your negligence? 

bobafett999
Community Member

This is more than a year old thread

fbb367e0
Community Member

Sorry to hear that.Try to get support from upwork.

Latest Articles
Learning Paths