Freelancer cheating with hourly contract

[#1]

That's not my first time in upwork.

A good reputation (>4.8 stars rating) and >10K spent on the platform are good enough to prove that I'm a good client and upwork user.

Nevertheless I've been cheated. 

Well it happens. No matter how hard you try to avoid scammers and cheaters.

They always come.

Nevertheless I'm really surprised of the basically no-action taken from upwork to protect the client.

To make it short:

I had an agreement with a freelancer for 1.000$.

Deliverables where:

1) A full completed business plan

2) An executive summary

3) A pitch deck

for those who don't know what these things are: basically when you're presenting your company or your product to an investor, you want to show them financial projection and market analysis (business plan), a super sammary of the project (executive summary), and a verbose/graphical presentation of 10 slides (pitch deck).

Well, this freelancer insisted a lot to have an hourly rate contract rather than a fixed price to 'increase his worked hours' in the counter. Of course for the same amount.

I wasn't super-happy. 

I hate not being able to verify and check what am about to buy before giving my money out.

By the way this guy sold himself really well, looked professional, he has a decent reputation (87% success).

I trusted him.

Now, just to make a comparison, it's like if you're asking someone to you build a car.

He needs to create the project first, work with some numbers, buy all the needed accessories and then, at the end, you'll have your deliverables: the car.

What he did was tracking hours showing that he was doint market research here and there for the Business Plan.

HOW IN THE WORK COULD I DISPUTE THESE HOURS ? Please UpWork, tell me HOW! 🙂

Well, when he reached 950$ charged in 2 and half weeks, he started to deliver one and half badly drafted page of the executive summary.

Ok, I don't mind.

I made a review, and sent back for amendments.

The day after the freelancer closed the job for "Other reasons" and just vanished.

I immediatly contacted upwork support telling the story.

Out of the 3 pieces which are the deliverables (whose weights are something like: 70% Business Plan, 20% Executive Summary, 10% Pitch Deck) I had a draft-not reviewed and amended version of the Executive Summary. All the rest was entirely missing.

I mean, it seems to me that it's my clear right to have ALL my money back, isn't it?

Nevertheless I proposed upwork to leave him 100$ or so for the bad draft.

He had to spend some time writing it so it seemed fair as a compromise.

Guess what?

I've been able to dispute just the last week hours (167$) but for all the rest UpWork said that I had to dispute that timesheets before it was too late... 

Really?

Are you kidding me?

I paid for something that I don't have and the cheater is safe?

On top of this I made a deep check on this freelancer feedbacks.

Strangely, all the hourly contract ones have "no feedback given"...

I'm seriously tempted to escalate this issue to the upWork management team.

Freelancers like this one and this kind of support is seriously compromising the entire platform.

Best,

Alex

[#2]

Sorry to hear you weren't satisfied with the work the freelancer delivered, Alessandro. It looks like you were able to dispute last weeks payment and it was refunded to you since the hours the freelancer logged didn't meet the requirements of Upwork Hourly Protection.

Clients are able to review the delivered work and dispute payments on hourly contracts during the review period. Once the review period is over the payment is sent to the freelancer. Please, see this help article for more information about the process. The support agent you are communicating with has also contacted the freelancer to inform him about a refund you'd like to receive.

[#3]

That is tru but the review period to get refund is way to short and freelancer use that. So before you realize it it is too late to do anything.

[#4]

re: “That is tru but the review period to get refund is way to short and freelancer use that. So before you realize it it is too late to do anything.”

Sounds like a project management problem.

[#5]

Please - yes it is a project management problem but from Upwoks side because
you have taken away the possibility for us to define when we want to pay. It
is us paying so it should be in our hands do decide. That is the problem not
just for us but many other clients.

[#6]

Upwork offers clients a tool they can use to find, hire and pay freelancers.

Upwork does not provide project management. Upwork does not claim that it provides project management.

This is a mistake many clients make: thinking that Upwork provides project management.

I don’t think that clients who make this mistake are bad people, or foolish people. I wish Upwork had better messaging to clients, so that clients didn’t get into unfortunate situations like this.

[#7]

It is possible to succeed as a client commissioning a complex project on Upwork.

A key to being successful is understanding how the tool works.

Which may be different than how other tools work.

It may be different from how we think the tool should work.

It is perfectly fine to advocate for changes to be made. But such changes will be made in the future.

For our current work, we need to understand how the tool actually works in the present.

[#8]

Hi Jesper, 

I'm so sorry to learn about your experience with this contract. I can see that this went to dispute, and it was closed in your favor. I can also see that an agency was hired for this contract. When you're hiring agencies for big projects, a team of freelancers will likely work on the contract. However, take note that only the agency freelancer hired can log time on an hourly contract. If you would like to work with agencies in the future where a team of freelancers will be working on the project, you may want to set up fixed-price contracts. Here's more information on the difference between freelancers and agencies. You may also want to read up on the Hourly Protection program to help you understand how you can stay protected on hourly contracts on Upwork. 

If you would like to give it another try, I can ask the team to connect you with our Talent Specialists to feel you hire the right freelancer for this project. 

Let us know, and our team will assist you further.

[#9]

This is a good example that you do not understand the problem or are not
really listening. What do you mean by " . the dispute, and it was closed in
your favor ?" We did not get all of our money back but only some of them, so
this is simply not true!

There is a flow in your system that makes it easy appear to be , top rated
with high hourly rate without actually being true. You keep neglecting this
flow where agencies can use cover profiles to prevent the real freelancer to
be rated - and for that matter going down in hourly rate. You can see that I
replied to another client that had the same experience!

We did go for a fixed priced - I wrote that! But the freelancer was very
good to talk and trick us into an hourly rate contract promising it would
not change anything and the price would still be fixed.

[#10]

re: “But the freelancer was very good to talk and trick us into an hourly rate contract promising it would not change anything and the price would still be fixed.”

Now you know that an hourly contract does not provide a fixed price.

I doubt that any freelancer will be able to trick you in this way again.

[#11]

---

Jesper S wrote:
There is a flow in your system that makes it easy appear to be , top rated
with high hourly rate without actually being true. You keep neglecting this
flow where agencies can use cover profiles to prevent the real freelancer to
be rated - and for that matter going down in hourly rate.

---

That really doesn't make any sense.,  no matter how often you repeat it. You rate/give feedback to the freelancer you hired. 

The problem of agencies switching freelancers is best avoided by avoiding agencies altogether and working directly with experienced and carefully chosen and managed individual freelancers.

[#12]

It is clear to mee that you are not going to take any responsibility for the
flows in your system, so I will not waste any more time on this. But I makes
me angry to know that**Edited for Community Guidelines**did the job - and did I awfully - and he can still appear with 100% success rate in your system because of this flow in
your system - and there are no way I can worn other clients so they do not
end up in the same situation as we did. I know now from others now that we
cannot really rely on these success rates, because lots of freelancer are
cheating with them.

But thankfully there are many other places we can communicate and hopefully
prevent some clients ending up in the same situation.

[#13]

This kind of incident totally saddens me as a contractor. Sorry to hear about that. I always prioritize clients satisfaction than what payment he gives. I consider these type of cheaters as a fool. He is not fooling out the clints but i think he is is fooling himself to great extent. Hope this person isnt someone from my country(Bangladesh).

[#14 · Accepted solution]

Alessandro, sorry to hear what happened. Looks like you got taken to the cleaners by a repeat offender (since he has a number of hourly contracts with no feedback).  As you noted, 87% success is just 'decent', not great, and that's probably because of all the hourly contracts -- too many no feedback contracts lower Job Success. I hope Upwork can pressure the freelancer into refunding more than just last week's payment.

[#15]

Valeria,
One thing is being unsatisfied with the quality of work delivered.

A complete different issue is complaining for a work NOT DELIVERED.
Is that clear enough?
I paid for something which wasn't done.
Looking into the hourly log screenshots I paid for him surfing the web actually.

That's it 🙂

[#16]

---

@Alessandro L wrote:
Valeria,
One thing is being unsatisfied with the quality of work delivered.

A complete different issue is complaining for a work NOT DELIVERED.
Is that clear enough?
I paid for something which wasn't done.
Looking into the hourly log screenshots I paid for him surfing the web actually.

That's it 🙂

---

 The problem is that when you hire someone on an hourly basis, you are not paying for a deliverable--you are paying for their time. You DID receive what you paid for, if you believe the freelancer was actually working on your project during the hours billed--all you paid for was time.

If you didn't believe the freelancer was actually working on your project during those hours, the time to challenge them was during the review period. The screenshots that you are now looking at are provided specifically so that you can use the several-day review period to determine whether or not the freelancer actually spent that time doing what you were paying him for. 

[#17]

On top of the not delivered work: can you please explain how in the world one can dispute something which is ongoing?

The hours that he logged were part of the initial researches needed to complete the job.
How could Inever know that he wanted to cheat?

You are implicitly telling me that the hourly system is full of flaws for scammers and cheaters.

[#18]

---

@Alessandro L wrote:
On top of the not delivered work: can you please explain how in the world one can dispute something which is ongoing?

Just as one example, you could have looked at the screenshots and discovered that he was surfing the web on the clock in a timely manner. 

The hours that he logged were part of the initial researches needed to complete the job.
How could Inever know that he wanted to cheat?

Are you saying that it seemed reasonable to you that he burned through $950 of the $1,000 cap you set without having produced anything? Most clients would have seen red flags if the freelancer was running out of allocated hours with no apparent progress.

In addition, your initial description of the situation suggested that you were unimpressed with his research efforts from the beginning, which could have triggered a discussion, some benchmarks, or even termination of the contract.

You are implicitly telling me that the hourly system is full of flaws for scammers and cheaters.

No. They're telling you that the system has safeguards that you opted not to use, and you can't have a do over.

---

[#19]

Dear Tiffany,
I'm sorry to say that you have absolutely no clue of how the hourly contracts works in real world.
And that's a shame since you are supposed to be a "Community Guru".

Let me try to explain with simple words so that it's easier to understand.

Fixed Price:
You pay for a deliverable which is provided to the customer in the agreed time and with the agreed specs.
No matter how long the freelancer will have to work on the deliverable, no matter how many reviews the customer asks for. That's the price. Pay/not pay and that's it.

Hourly based:
The complete shape and effort of the project is hard to evaluate and/or the freelancer is not keen to have infinite (unpaid) reviews to have the milestones released.
You both agree on a price range, a price x hour and you start working.
Either way the final outcome of what you are paying for is A DELIVERABLE not the time.
What changes is how you obtain it but not the final goal.

I did checked ALL the time tracking during the hiring period and seemed in line to what the freelancer was supposed to be doing in order to produce my deliverable (market researches).

Very close to the end of the formally agreed price (950$ out of 1k), he closed the contract for "Other reasons".

I don't have my deliverables but the time tracking looked in line, therefore it wasn't disputed.

Are you really telling me that this is what UpWork is offering?
It's a clear and easy way to cheat.

No one will ever pay for "The time" 🙂
This is really funny 😉

I hope you misunderstood some of my posts!
No hard feelings, I'm trying to clarify an evident problem that could help other users preventing cheaters like the one I'm talking about.

Best,
Alex

[#20]

Alex: I am very sorry that you had a negative experience while using Upwork as a client.

I don't think anybody here will argue with you about your assessment of the work done by the freelancer. I don't believe this was a quality freelancer who had your best interests at heart.

I personally work primarily as a freelancer, but I have also hired over 70 freelancers as a client.

The Upwork tools are geared primarily for clients, not freelancers. Upwork does NOT consider freelancers to be its customers. As a result, the power in the contracts is fairly one-sided, being principally on the client's side.

These are some important things for everyone - freelancers and clients alike - to keep in mind.

None of that negates the fact that you had a negative experience.

I wonder if you simply weren't aware of how much power and control you have as a client. You can pause or cancel a contract at any time, for any reason. One of the wonderful things about Upwork when you are a client is that you have this power, and you don't need to justify your reasons for anybody. You don't need to have a reason at all. You don't need to explain yourself to Upwork or to the freelancer.

Unfortunally it appears there was some confusion about the difference between fixed-price and hourly contracts. You said that you had an agreed upon "price" of $1000. This conflation of fixed-price and hourly contract concepts can often lead to problems.

Ideally you should have been receiving usable work far earlier in the process, rather than waiting until $1000 had been billed. When hourly contracts are used as intended, with weekly evaluation of the work freelancers deliver, clients should not lose money even if they hire freelancers who are completely wrong for the project.

It also appears that you hired only one freelancer for this project. I wish you had hired 3 or 4 for an hour or two to start, and then chosen the one among them who were clearly delivering work to you that you can use and who demonstrated that they were the best value. If you only hire one person, you have no way to evaluate their work in comparison to other freelancers.

[#21]

re: "I'm sorry to say that you have absolutely no clue of how the hourly contracts works in real world."

In the real world, hiring somebody with an hourly contract means you pay them for time, regardless of the outcome.

If you hire a server at your restaurant, you pay him for his time even if he turns out to be terrible and you end up firing him the next day.

If you hire a lawyer, you pay for hours billed, even if you lose the case.

If you hire a veterinarian to perform life-saving surgery on your thoroughbred horse, you pay for her time even if the patient dies.

This is the difference between hourly contracts versus fixed-price (contingency) contracts.

Part of being a successful business is hiring the wrong people and paying them for their time and evaluating their work and firing them. That is not as pleasant as hiring the right people. But only very mediocre, unsuccessful businesses never hire the wrong people.

[#22]

I'm sorry you have to go through all this. 

Currently, I am facing the same issues but this time is I'm the freelancer, and the employer went MIA. 

Before I agree to use the hourly trekking, I have checked and confidence with the system which is: 

1. trek the hours

2. invoice out every Monday.

3. The employer can check to amend or dispute / if not check just let it be.

4. auto payment on every Wednesday. 

Pretty clear right?

what was not told is that the employer can cancel the auto billing!!! which happened to me, it was cancelled on Monday morning where the invoice is out. And today Wednesday I did not receive payment, and just got to know all of this. What frustrating the most, they keep advising me to use the milestone. if I know what I have known today, how vulnerable you so-called super trustworthy hourly tracking system with auto payment every Wednesday, I would have used the freaking milestone. 

I have worked for 40hours last week. Research and writing 20 articles like crazy as the time frame is 2 hours for each. and not getting paid. 

so I do get what you feel. but at least good to know you can stop auto-billing on Monday in case you encounter such a useless worker again. 

[#23]

---

Mega R wrote:

I'm sorry you have to go through all this. 

Currently, I am facing the same issues but this time is I'm the freelancer, and the employer went MIA. 

Before I agree to use the hourly trekking, I have checked and confidence with the system which is: 

1. trek the hours

2. invoice out every Monday.

3. The employer can check to amend or dispute / if not check just let it be.

4. auto payment on every Wednesday. 

Pretty clear right?

what was not told is that the employer can cancel the auto billing!!! which happened to me, it was cancelled on Monday morning where the invoice is out. And today Wednesday I did not receive payment, and just got to know all of this. What frustrating the most, they keep advising me to use the milestone. if I know what I have known today, how vulnerable you so-called super trustworthy hourly tracking system with auto payment every Wednesday, I would have used the freaking milestone. 

I have worked for 40hours last week. Research and writing 20 articles like crazy as the time frame is 2 hours for each. and not getting paid. 

so I do get what you feel. but at least good to know you can stop auto-billing on Monday in case you encounter such a useless worker again. 

---

If you did everything by the books you get paid by Upwork.
https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211068288-Hourly-Protection

[#24]

---

Mega R wrote:

And today Wednesday I did not receive payment, and just got to know all of this. What frustrating the most, they keep advising me to use the milestone. if I know what I have known today, how vulnerable you so-called super trustworthy hourly tracking system with auto payment every Wednesday, I would have used the freaking milestone. 

---

Using milestones is much riskier than using hourly with the time tracker. If you have used the time tracker, shown high activity, and made good notes, Upwork will pay you if the client does not. If a client disputes a milestone and you can't come to an agreement, your only options are to refund the money or pay $291 to go to arbitration.

[#25]

---

Mega R wrote:

so I do get what you feel. but at least good to know you can stop auto-billing on Monday in case you encounter such a useless worker again. 

---

Clients can not "cancel auto-billing"

How did you work 40 hours last week when your account was created on the 17th of April - as was your post? How many accounts do you have?