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09de08bd
Community Member

Freelancer outsourced the job to someone else? (to a non english speaker, work terrible) money lost?

Hi.

 

I am having a lot of issues at the moment with some work that recently got 'completed'. I am in disbelief at how this has been handled so far.

 

I paid an individual freelancer $400 to complete a webpage. I left instructions and videos on what was required. 

The work was 'completed' numerous times. But ridden with errors every time. It was taking me longer to find and correct the careless errors than it would've done to complete the work myself.

It turns out the freelancer has outsourced the work to non-English speakers that had a hard time reading and implementing what was required.

A month late we still don't have a finished product, and the freelancer outsourced the work wasting time and energy.

Now with the dispute... I have been told that I need to spend $300 for arbitration to have a 'chance' of getting my money back? Spending an additional $300 to get back the $400?

 

This is absurd. The freelancer was a month late, outsourced the work, didn't complete the work and wants full payments plus I have to pay an additional $300 to challenge this?

 

What is the best option here, I cannot believe this whole situation. Freelancer clearly violated TOS by outsourcing right? Plus the work is incomplete after me spending hours on revisions guidance etc.

 

Would love to hear your thoughts. 

 

 

18 REPLIES 18
NikolaS
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Conor,

 

We will look into this further and will get back to you once we have more information.

 

Thank you,

~ Nikola
Upwork
09de08bd
Community Member

Nikola,

 

Hope you are well. 

 

Still waiting, I am here and ready to chat, your help would be appreciated.

 

 

tlbp
Community Member

I believe the policy regarding outsourcing is unclear at best. I have seen many posts stating that consent is required prior to outsourcing, but I'm not sure the language of the TOS fully supports this interpretation. It looks like finding the answer involves piecing together various definitions across the document. 

The person who requests arbitration must put up the $300 along with the request. Has the freelancer done this? 

jr-translation
Community Member

Unless the hired freelancer stated right from the beginning that he will outsource the job to a third party, I think that it is an obvious ToS violation:

Fraudulent or misleading uses or content, including:

  • [...]
  • falsely stating that one Freelancer will perform the work on a job when another will in fact perform the work, including submitting a proposal on behalf of a Freelancer that is unable, unwilling, or unavailable to do the work;


Jennifer R wrote:

Unless the hired freelancer stated right from the beginning that he will outsource the job to a third party, I think that it is an obvious ToS violation:

Fraudulent or misleading uses or content, including:

  • [...]
  • falsely stating that one Freelancer will perform the work on a job when another will in fact perform the work, including submitting a proposal on behalf of a Freelancer that is unable, unwilling, or unavailable to do the work;

OOoh! Finally. I couldn't find it. Where is the provision, btw? 


Tonya P wrote:

Jennifer R wrote:

Unless the hired freelancer stated right from the beginning that he will outsource the job to a third party, I think that it is an obvious ToS violation:

Fraudulent or misleading uses or content, including:

  • [...]
  • falsely stating that one Freelancer will perform the work on a job when another will in fact perform the work, including submitting a proposal on behalf of a Freelancer that is unable, unwilling, or unavailable to do the work;

OOoh! Finally. I couldn't find it. Where is the provision, btw? 


You find it in the Terms of Use  under 4. PROHIBITED SITE USES

I agree! 

 

Feeling stuck. 

AndreaG
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Conor,

 

We've escalated your concern to the team and one of our agents will reach out to you via support ticket in order to assist you further. You can access your ticket from the notification sent to your email address and also here.

 

Thanks!

~Andrea
Upwork
09de08bd
Community Member

Hey Andrea, 

 

This process was started with Shannen, but now she is on vacation so I am stranded once more, please advise.

 

 

Hello Conor,

 

Thank you for your message. 

 

I see that you are already communicating with our team members via support tickets here and here. Please don't hesitate to follow up with them on same support tickets if you have additional questions regarding your concern. On our end, we will also follow up with the team so that they can continue updating you on your support ticket.

 

Thank you.

Pradeep H

Upwork

Could we get a reply on the ToS violation?
If a freelancer subcontracts a job without advising the client, is this considered a ToS violation worth banning a freelancer? I have seen serious data security breaches in the past caused by subcontracting.

Hi Jennifer, 


Please know that each case is reviewed individually and, for privacy reasons, we are not able to share an outcome of a specific review concerning another user.
 
I would like to note that the Section 2.1 of our User Agreement speaks to subcontracting on fixed price contracts:

 

"You further acknowledge, agree, and understand that ... unless otherwise agreed with their Client, Freelancers may use subcontractors or employees to perform Freelancer Services by delegating work on fixed-price contracts or by agreeing with their Clients to have hourly contracts for Freelancer’s subcontractor(s) or employee(s)."
 
It's best practice for the client and the freelancer to discuss any terms and arrangements before the contract starts, including whether the freelancer is planning to subcontract and whether the client disallows subcontracting on the contract. 

~ Vladimir
Upwork


Vladimir G wrote:

Hi Jennifer, 


Please know that each case is reviewed individually and, for privacy reasons, we are not able to share an outcome of a specific review concerning another user.
 
I would like to note that the Section 2.1 of our User Agreement speaks to subcontracting on fixed price contracts:

 

"You further acknowledge, agree, and understand that ... unless otherwise agreed with their Client, Freelancers may use subcontractors or employees to perform Freelancer Services by delegating work on fixed-price contracts or by agreeing with their Clients to have hourly contracts for Freelancer’s subcontractor(s) or employee(s)."
 
It seems to me that it is quite ambiguous.
It seems that, by default, a freelancer can outsource since, if he does not tell the client, he cannot be against it, right?
On the other hand, there is point 4.1 EXAMPLES OF PROHIBITED USES OF THE SITE which says:
"falsely stating that one Freelancer will perform the work on a job when another will in fact perform the work, including submitting a proposal on behalf of a Freelancer that is unable, unwilling, or unavailable to do the work;"
I think that, when talking about this topic, both data should be given.
 
It's best practice for the client and the freelancer to discuss any terms and arrangements before the contract starts, including whether the freelancer is planning to subcontract and whether the client disallows subcontracting on the contract. 
 
I think that, to avoid all the problems of this type that are appearing, it should not be a "good practice" but rather it should be mandatory that it be stated somewhere that it will be outsourced or not.
And that the subcontractors can be known to the client.
Only mi thought.

 

prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "What is the best option here? ... Would love to hear your thoughts."

 

From a business perspective:

My opinion is that you should be very mercenary-minded about this.

Put yourself and your project first.

Don't try to treat this freelancer "fairly." And the main thing I mean by that is this:

You probably feel that there is a "fair amount" of money that this freelancer should be paid. You probably want the freelancer to be paid that amount. Maybe that amount is zero. But my advice is to say "who cares." You don't owe that freelancer anything. You don't owe it to that freelancer to help balance his karma be ensuring that he doesn't get away with money he doesn't deserve.

 

If YOU work for ME, and it is YOUR job to get this website up and running, here is the conversation I have with YOU when I invite you into my office and ask you to shut the door:

 

"What is the name of the freelancer you hired?"

 

"Darrin."

 

"I don't care about Darrin. Forget about Darrin. His work sucks. I don't care if he did the work himself or outsourced. This is over. We spent $400 on the site. We are never again going to talk about Darrin, try to communicate with Darrin, or try to get money from Darrin. What we are going to do now is hire other people. We will give them the work that Darrin provided us with. If they can use it, great. If they don't want to use it, that's fine. Let's move forward and get this site built the right way. And this time: We're not going to let any freelancer rack up $400 in payments while billing for work we don't like. We're going to hire a few people to work on this and if we don't love anybody's work, we fire them. The people who do a great job for us? We continue assigning tasks to them."

Preston is  correct. I often use subcontractors who are less expensive than I am, or who can do the work better or faster than I. I  identify what parts of the final deliverables will be completed by which contractor. I  offer the client the chance to interview any member of the team before we start work, and if there's a substitute make the same offer. All cards on the table and no surprises are the hallmarks of good freelancing.

Hello Bill,

On Upwork, you are listed as a Community Guru, so I hope I am contacting the correct person.

My apologies if not.

Question:

Is there a way for me to search if someone has been posting or working on UpWork recently?

 

On Upwork, I hired**Edited for Community Guidelines**, a young guy of 25,

and he did some great work for me, and I haven't paid him yet.

He has disappeared. The last message he sent me was he had Covid and a fever and would be out for a few days.

That was a couple of months ago, I am really worried.

So I tried to search other areas in UpWork, but I'm not so good at it (I'm 63).

Can you point me in the right direct to search for him, if he has other UpWork jobs etc?

Thanks, Peter

re: "Is there a way for me to search if someone has been posting or working on UpWork recently?"

 

Search? No.

 

But you can look at a freelancer's profile page and get an idea of his recent work by looking at his job history.

 

re: "he did some great work for me, and I haven't paid him yet."

 

If you have a contract with a freelancer, you may click on your contracts page to find the contract, click on the Three Dots icon and then select Pay Bonus or a Send Bonus option. You can pay him any amount of money that you want to, whether the contract is still open or closed.

 

re: "That was a couple of months ago, I am really worried."

 

I don't think you need to worry. But if you are worried, that is something that must be done on your own. There is no way to express that worry officially through the Upwork user interface or by contacting Upwork Customer Support.

Hi Peter,

 

Our team reached out to you via ticket and email to assist you further with your freelancer. You can access your tickets on this Link and follow up directly there with any additional questions you may have. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork
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