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b83c7c08
Community Member

Freelancer Fraud?

I believe a freelancer has committed fraud against us.  Being new to UpWork, I mistakenly entered a new contract in the site when I meant to send this freelancer a message. He took it as a contract, and contacted me.  In his first message he was snippy that my not responding immediately to him would hurt his rating (I was traveling).  We had one phone conversation, in which I outlined our project, and he promised to send me a proposal for services. A week later, after no contact from him, I received an email from the UpWork site saying that he charged us more than $1,000! There was no proposal, no pre-approved fees, and certainly no work submitted to us. I have cancelled the contract, but that appears to have made my ability to demand a refund from him go away.  How do I get a refund in this situation?  Thank you.  

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Ron, 


It looks like you already have an open ticket regarding the same concern. While waiting on an update from the team handling your support ticket, you may want to pause the contract and discuss this separately with the freelancer. I feel that this may have been a miscommunication between you and your freelancer. Just the same, I'll follow up with the team so that they can reach out to you sooner. 

Since you are new, I definitely recommend that you read up on the client section of the resources we have compiled to help you familiarize yourself with Upwork. 


~ Avery
Upwork

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13 REPLIES 13
a_lipsey
Community Member

Was this an hourly contract or fixed price? It seems odd that you sent a contract instead of a message. As a client I have done both, and I'm not even sure how you would mistake a contract for a message.

 

If it was hourly, you should be able to dispute the hours. For them to have billed you for $1000 fixed price, you would have to put the funds in escrow, which it does not sound like you did. I believe you can still file a dispute and take it to arbitration if necessary. Hopefully a moderator will chime in and address your concern directly,  as it sounds like you need direct customer support rather than feedback from the community. 

I know, it was a beginner mistake. I explained that to the freelancer and he understood. How do I pursue with UpWork? Thanks
AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Ron, 

Please give me some time to review your case, and I'll get back to you with more information on how you can move forward with your concern. 


~ Avery
Upwork


Amanda L wrote:

Was this an hourly contract or fixed price? It seems odd that you sent a contract instead of a message. As a client I have done both, and I'm not even sure how you would mistake a contract for a message.


As a freelancer I've had several clients, new to Upwork, who've clicked the Hire button instead of the Invite button, and so they've sent me a job offer immediately. Since the default job type is Hourly, these have been hourly job offers. And I believe the default time limit is 40 hours. So if I was unscrupulous I could have immediately accepted the offer and clocked up 40 hours on the time tracker before the end of the week, and before the client was aware of what was happening. I suspect this is what happened to Ron.

 

P.S. I think clicking the Hire button should bring up a warning screen telling the user they are about to enter into a contract, and that it's usual to invite the freelancer to an interview first.

Richard wrote: 

 I think clicking the Hire button should bring up a warning screen telling the user they are about to enter into a contract, and that it's usual to invite the freelancer to an interview first.

 

 Richard I very much hope that the mods have seen your suggestion, and will see that it is implemented. I also hope that if the OP does not get his money back, the freelancer has his account removed. 

[ETA: sorry about the name mix-up if you saw it! ] 

Thank you. With the help of UpWork’s team, the freelancer has made a full refund.

Ron


Ron W wrote:
Thank you. With the help of UpWork’s team, the freelancer has made a full refund.

Ron


That's good to hear. Often we hear negative outcomes. 

petra_r
Community Member


Amanda L wrote:

Ron W wrote:
Thank you. With the help of UpWork’s team, the freelancer has made a full refund.

Ron


That's good to hear. Often we hear negative outcomes. 


It's a negative outcome for the freelancer if (!!) he's done $ 1000+ worth of work that he won't get paid for...

 

To be fair to the freelancer, Ron must have clicked on a button called "Hire Now" and gone all the way through the not insubstantial process of setting up a contract, including Title of contract, Terms, Description,  rate, weekly limit, a confirmation and another "Hire XYZ person" button, plus plenty of info on the same page. There will also have been an email that the contract started.

 

Most people would notice that this is a little more than just sending a message...

a_lipsey
Community Member


Petra R wrote:

Amanda L wrote:

Ron W wrote:
Thank you. With the help of UpWork’s team, the freelancer has made a full refund.

Ron


That's good to hear. Often we hear negative outcomes. 


It's a negative outcome for the freelancer if (!!) he's done $ 1000+ worth of work that he won't get paid for...

 

To be fair to the freelancer, Ron must have clicked on a button called "Hire Now" and gone all the way through the not insubstantial process of setting up a contract, including Title of contract, Terms, Description,  rate, weekly limit, a confirmation and another "Hire XYZ person" button, plus plenty of info on the same page. There will also have been an email that the contract started.

 

Most people would notice that this is a little more than just sending a message...


Thanks for reminding me of this, Petra. When I  initially responded, having just sent a contract to someone, I recalled it not being as easy to mistake.   So I am still curious as to why that didn't raise a red flag for the client. Recently when I was trying to send a job invite to one person that the job was for specifically,  it seemed very clear to me that Hire Now means exactly that - setting up a contract. Whereas  Invite to Job is the place to begin the discussion.   

 

However, it sounded like the freelancer was charging for work that hadn't been discussed yet? The whole situation is confusing. 

 

 

Thank you everyone for your replies. I’m posting this out of respect for the community and having the ability to get input as I have in this situation, which is valuable. But, this will be my last posting on this topic, and I sincerely hope it brings closure for all who read it.

I was the Client in this situation and it was a humbling lesson for me; “focus, don’t go so fast”. As I stated, I was new to the platform, and made a simple mistake of clicking “Hire” instead of “Invite”. Unlike what some have suggested, I actually do recall it being that simple, and I don’t recall there being multi-steps and clicks involved beyond that. No excuses, totally my mistake, and when the Freelancer pointed that out in his first contact back to me, I admitted it and apologized; he recommended I leave the status as “Hired”, saying if I changed it, it would somehow hurt his rating. I certainly didn’t want that, since it was my mistake, so left it as that.

We initially had a nice dialogue, and then spoke directly on the phone. Near the end of that call, we agreed that he would submit a simple proposal estimating his time, fees, and deliverables. In my more than 20 years of owning a company, I’ve always operated that way, almost never just saying “yes, let’s do it”; I want to understand timelines, deliverables and costs first. The following day, per his request, I sent him some of our background materials to review.

Then, I didn’t hear from him until I received a system email from UpWork that we had been charged more than $1,000. Surprised by that, I tried contacting him immediately; he was initially not nearly as responsive as during our first contacts. When he finally did respond, via text and not through the UpWork system, rather than address the issue directly, he deflected, and immediately starting call me names, accusing me of hiring people in India for $5 (I have absolutely no idea where that came from), and threatening lawsuits and splashing our company all over the press as disreputable and unethical. Whoa. He seemed unstable, and because the conversation was not productive or going anywhere positive, I blocked him on my phone.

Thanks to this community’s input to my message, and UpWork’s great and quick-to-respond support team, I figured out how to submit a dispute through their platform. Ultimately, a full refund was issued, and we are very happy with the outcome. Again, the initial clicking of the wrong button was completely my fault, I have no excuses. I do agree with the gentleman who suggested adding a click or two to confirm that clients actually intend to “Hire” someone would be very helpful and prevent this in the future, and I hope UpWork read that and will consider it.

Thank you again to the community for being there, for the input you gave, and the perspective on this situation. It all has helped me know how to better handle things going forward.

Ron:

Thank you for returning to share more about what happened.

This kind of insight and additional perspective benefits all of us.

 

For what it's worth... Clicking the Hire button to immediately hire somebody rather than invite them to interview may be relatively rare, but it is an allowable action. And it is never an excuse for fraudulent behavior.

 

I have hired over 100 different freelancers on Upwork, including direct hires. I have never had any experience like the original poster described. So I like to think that something like this is rare. But I know (due to my reading of Community Forum threads) that things like this happen. All of us (especially freelancers) benefit when we can remove bad apple freelancers from the platform.


Richard W wrote:

Amanda L wrote:

Was this an hourly contract or fixed price? It seems odd that you sent a contract instead of a message. As a client I have done both, and I'm not even sure how you would mistake a contract for a message.


As a freelancer I've had several clients, new to Upwork, who've clicked the Hire button instead of the Invite button, and so they've sent me a job offer immediately. Since the default job type is Hourly, these have been hourly job offers. And I believe the default time limit is 40 hours. So if I was unscrupulous I could have immediately accepted the offer and clocked up 40 hours on the time tracker before the end of the week, and before the client was aware of what was happening. I suspect this is what happened to Ron.

 

P.S. I think clicking the Hire button should bring up a warning screen telling the user they are about to enter into a contract, and that it's usual to invite the freelancer to an interview first.


I like this suggestion too. 

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Ron, 


It looks like you already have an open ticket regarding the same concern. While waiting on an update from the team handling your support ticket, you may want to pause the contract and discuss this separately with the freelancer. I feel that this may have been a miscommunication between you and your freelancer. Just the same, I'll follow up with the team so that they can reach out to you sooner. 

Since you are new, I definitely recommend that you read up on the client section of the resources we have compiled to help you familiarize yourself with Upwork. 


~ Avery
Upwork
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