Nightmare project: possible refund past deadline?

[petra_r]

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Elliott F wrote: I saw he has created firewall rules to allow a foreign IT firm to have access to our AWS environment and source code.

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 It sounds like he outsourced the work.

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@Elliott F wrote:

 But also curious whatour options are within upwork to recoup the money paid to the freelancer would be?

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 Limited, to be honest. Didn't you look at the work diary on a weekly basis at least initially?

You can dispute last week's hours and possibly request mediation for the work done up to 30 days ago but if the work diaries show the freelancer working on your project with adequate activity and meaningful work memos it gets complicated.

That said, hour after hour of the same screen without ome evidence of work being done could warrant a dispute.

However, recouping what you paid is a different matter if the money has already been withdrawn.

I'd be inclined to pause the contract and contact Upwork directly to initiate whatever process you can.

[AveryO]

I'm sorry to learn about your experience, Elliot. 

Upwork Hourly protection allows you to file a dispute on unrelated hours that are logged on your contract. You may read more about it here. I will go ahead and check with the team if there is something we can do from our end. 

EDITED TO ADD: The Upwork Desktop App can be set to take screen grabs of multiple screens, or the active screen at the moment the screen grab was taken.