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Felix's avatar
Felix B Community Member

I got scammed

Hello guys,

 

I got scammed by a guy that was meant to make a scraping job for me. The payment was per datarow in excel. Due it´s not possible to regulate this in a jobposting I made a project price and wrote inside "payment per row, projectprice is symbolic"

 

He worked, delivered totally invalid data. While negotiating the payment was released on it´s own. Now he´s not answering anymore. 

 

I made a refund request, but no response.... He got way to much and the delivered data is far from what we have agreed on.

 

What can I do?

8 REPLIES 8
Preston's avatar
Preston H Community Member

re: "What can I do?"

 

Hire someone else.

 

You don't owe the first freelancer any more of your time or energy. Forget about him.

 

re: "I made a refund request, but no response"

 

Waste of time. I strongly advise clients to save time and money by proactively deciding to never ask for refunds. Plan to never ask freelancers for money, no matter what. The idea of "refunds" is illusory, and rarely works.

 

Instead: Monitor a freelancer's work, especially early on, and if you don't love his work, end the contract and stop paying him money. Much safer to stop paying a freelancer money than to pay him money and then try to ask him to give thst money back.

Felix's avatar
Felix B Community Member

Thank´s for your advice. That really helps, due I´m new to upwork and I feel many times poeple want to draw me outside of Upwork. I´ll put your advice into action 

William T's avatar
William T C Community Member

Hey Felix, businesses have 14 days have the work has been submitted to either request a revision or approve the payment. Otherwise the escrow payment is released. Thanks!

Pradeep's avatar
Pradeep H Retired Team Member

Hi Felix,

 

Thank you for your message. I am sorry to hear about your experience with a freelancer. Could you please share the contract ID so that we can better assist you? 

 

Thank you,

Pradeep

Felix's avatar
Felix B Community Member

Hello Pradeep and thank´s for your help in advance. This is the ID: 31857756

 

Kind Greetings,

Felix

Felix's avatar
Felix B Community Member

Hello Paradeep, awayting your feedback

 

Mahmoud's avatar
Mahmoud A Community Member

Payments can't get released on their own except after passing 14 business days. However, since you asked for a refund, it shall take maximum 6 business days and he will have to either fund it or go to a dispute where you both provide the evidences and Upwork community will decide the best for you both 🙂 

While I agree with Preston, that you shouldn't waste your time but to be honest I wouldn't let someone scam me off and take my money and run but I will stay and defend it!

Last but not least, scraping tasks are quite painful and a lot of scammers apply to them, make sure you pick the right one and fund it correctly because if you took cheap people, they will provide cheap results. I have been as Web Scraper and automation engineer for 3 years and I know this profession well 🙂 

 

Anyways, hope your money is returned to you and you found another trustworthy freelancer 🙂 Don't let this please force you to give the next freelancer rough time, remember he has nothing to do with it! 

Best,

Mahmoud Amr

Felix's avatar
Felix B Community Member

Thank´s for your insights and advices. Really helps a stupid beginner 😉