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99316ccb
Community Member

I have been scammed by a bogus developer

I started working with a freelancer in October. I interviewed lots of other coder but she stood out with her portfolio and reviews. She was more expensive too but I really needed this flagship project to go well for me so I awarded her the job. She then built me a terrible website all with raw code and no CMS. The website was a mess - it was nothing like the design. After lots of changes and late night to get the website at least live. It was a piece of **Edited for Community Guidelines**and it kept breaking as well as being hacked none stop because of her code and not securing properly. I gave her a fair review but she agve me a whole story about feeding her daughter and how she would fix the site so begged me to change the review. I did. 

 

She then charged me more to maintain the site because it kept breaking all the time and my client could use it as it was all raw code and not the wordpress cms she had sold me. 

 

I have had to get another developer to rebuild the website as it was such an important project to me. It has cose me so much money and time and my reputation. 

 

I would like to get some compensation or refund as upwork surely had a responsiblity to vet the scammers. 

9 REPLIES 9
prestonhunter
Community Member

I am sorry that you had a disappointing experience while using Upwork.

 

There are some important questions that need to be asked, though:

 

Why did you only hire one person for such an important project?

 

Why didn't you hire an independent project manager?

Why did you continue to work with this underperforming freelancer after she repeatedly disappointed you?

You don't actually need to answer these questions here. I suspect that you did not use these "best practices" because you didn't know that you should do these things. Nobody is born knowing how to effectively use Upwork as a client.

 

I suspect that you had some inaccurate ideas about what Upwork does and does not do. Upwork certainly does not vet freelancers with regards to their skills. Upwork does not provide free project management or guarantee outcomes.

 

I hope that you will have continued success with your future projects. I think that you have now learned some important lessons.

 

For one thing, you are a business owner. So there are no "starving daughters." You already contribute to causes you believe in and you contribute to your community in meaningful ways. You should not feel obligated to "contribute" by facilitating a freelancer's manipulative behavior on Upwork ... a freelancer who is probably being dishonest.

 

re: "I would like to get some compensation or refund as upwork surely had a responsiblity to vet the scammers."

 

I am sorry that you are disappointed by this freelancer's behavior and by your own actions in relation to her work on your project.

 

You appear to have misunderstood what kind of services Upwork offers. Upwork does not vet freelancers.

 

Nothing you have said in your post indicates that there is any basis for receiving a refund.

 

You may ask the freelancer for a refund. But there is no button you can click to automatically receive one. And there is no specific policy violation indicated here. Basically you hired a freelancer whose quality of work was insufficient for the needs of your project. And rather then firing her, you continued to work with her. Eventually you DID realize your mistake and you started working with freelancers better suited to your needs. That is a good thing.

I am freelance web designer and digitial project manager - I undertake projects of this nature all the time. I have hundreds of projects under my belt and none have gone as catistrophcally wrong as this one did. 

I used upwork as I thought it offered better talent than other platforms. 

Let's be clear this was a one page website - it did not need a team. 

I continued to work with her because she made me believe she was going to fix the issues and I was under obligation to complete the website by a certain date for my client or they wouldnt recive some funding for the project. I had such little time to hire someone else and start again and I'd already paid and commited to this person. I had a choice for sure but when you've gone so far into a project and you have little budget or time left I had to continue. 

Yes upwork don't have a responsiblity vet people (maybe that was sloppily worded) but they should help me resolve these issues with the developer to get a partital refund as she hasn't delivered the work outlined in the contract. And I have paid another developer now who produced the project in two days and to a very high standard. I am just a .one person operation so this has come out my own pocket. 

She also claims to be a "top notch" dev - she little is the worst dveeloper I have ever worked with. Her reviews are misleading and bogus and Upwork surely has responisblity to verify claims and reviews. 

 

re: "I used upwork as I thought it offered better talent than other platforms."

 

Now you know that Upwork has freelancers who range in skill from unbelievably talented and professional, to completely incompetent.

 

They are very much not vetted.

 

Based on your original job post, I did not know that this was supposed to be a very simple one page project.

 

I would not generally recommend hiring multiple people and a project manager for such a project. But I WOULD recommend firing a freelancer quickly from such a project when you see that her work does not meet your needs.

 

The most damaging thing you could do now is to dwell on these past problems and elevate the importance of one underserving freelancer. As a businessperson, I would strongly suggest that you put yourself and your project first. Pursuing a refund when there is little likelihood of receiving one in this case seems like a waste of your valuable time and resources.

 

re: "Her reviews are misleading and bogus and Upwork surely has responisblity to verify claims and reviews."

 

I know that it may seem this way to you, but it is entirely possible that her reviews and claims are all legitimate.

 

It is possible that there was a bad match between the kind of work that she does, and the kind of work that you needed. She could very well have significantly pleased former clients. Also, maybe the quality of work that she did before was better, but she was "off her game" for your project.

 

Keep in mind that you have said she did not provide a true CMS for your one-page project but instead provided a raw source code solution. Many developers would assume that a single-page web project would be best handled by a raw source code solution rather than a CMS-based solution. Which would mean that this freelancer's approach was the correct one, although her execution was deficient.

re: "Upwork surely has responisblity to verify claims and reviews."

 

Upwork does not verify claims and reviews.

 

Nor does it claim to.

 

You would have a difficult time finding any website that does so.

 

All of those reviews on Amazon.com? And Yelp? And Uber?

None of them are verified.

Hi Louiza,

 

I`m sorry to hear about the bad experience you had, and the inconvenience this had caused you. 
One of our team members will reach out to you via ticket as soon as possible and assist you further. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork

really cuz ive had just the most terrible devs on upwork who try to hack me and scam me constantly, i am unable to get a good developer on your platform and i am unable to get help when people havce commited fraud thru upwork, like usiong fake Canadian passports to sign NDA's and disapear into the night. I literly harte Upwork and think they are a form of barracks for hackers and scammers.

Upwork goes out of its way to not help thei rpaying clients, that is how they keep making money on jobs that are just devs hacking the persoin who is paying them. iguess you can try to censor me or hide these facts but everyone is gonna know the truth oiver time unless you actually do something to stop these phycos from abusing and manipulating the platform.. there is a group on indian developers that have mannged to get top recomendation spots on Upwork, so Upwork is pushing you towards thieves of the worst kind who stalk you and harrase you. and again Upwork dosnt care at all and goes out of their way to not answer support tickets or make efforts to put an end to these type son Upwork... its disgusting

Gerison:

There is no doubt that you had a disappointing experience while trying to hire developers on Upwork.

 

It is absolutely true that it is possible for a client to come here and encounter incompetent, mediocre and even fraudulent developers.

 

But it is also true that it is possible to hire excellent developers who will help you achieve your goals and exceed your expectations.

 

You are not familiar with Best Practices for hiring developers on Upwork.

 

If you - or any client- would like to receive help, all you need to do is ask. This is your first post on the Forum. You did not ask for help here before. I wish you had done so. We could have saved you a lot of aggravation.

 

Do not ask Upwork Customer Support for help to manage your freelancers and projects. That is not their purpose. But feel free to ask for help in the Forum. There are numerous people here who can help clients hire and manage freelancers effectively.

Yes, there are bad freelancers here, but it goes both ways. Plenty of freelancers who get bad clients, too. And I believe Upwork does in fact look out for clients more than they do freelancers. It's much easier for a client to get their money back from a contract than it is for a freelancer to force a client to pay.

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