Not happy with freelancer job & got misled by switching to hourly rate

[3a9371cf]

I agreed $100 with a freelancer. He asked to move the job to hourly rate because he wanted to improve his stats. Now I am not happy at all with the job he is doing and he is even going outside of the agreed budget without informing me.

Now Upwork is asking me to pay $28 already, but why should I pay if I am not satisfied with the work and think I got misled by this person?!

**Edited for community guidelines**

[BojanS]

Hi Davide,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with this freelancer. We'll have one of our agents reach out to you via a support ticket to assist you with this concern. 

Thank you for reaching out to us. 

[prestonhunter]

Davide:
I think there may be some confusion about how Upwork actually works...

You can close a contract AT ANY TIME... for ANY REASON.

If you are not happy about the work that a particular freelancer is doing... You DO NOT NEED to continue working with him. You can just "close the contract." (That is a polite way of saying you can fire him.)

You don't actually need to justify your reasons to anybody or get permission from anyone.

re: "Now Upwork is asking me to pay $28 already, but why should I pay if I am not satisfied with the work and think I got misled by this person?"

Why should you pay the $28?
You should pay because you hired the freelancer using an hourly contract and the freelancer logged $28 worth of time. When you hire freelancers using an hourly contract, you pay for their time, not a specific deliverable.

But if the freelancer logged time manually, or if his time doesn't qualify for payment protection in any other way, then you can dispute the time and Upwork will automatically remove it and you won't need to pay for it.

If you have ANY QUESTIONS at all, please freel free to ask them right here in the Forum, including in this very thread.

[3a9371cf]

I have filed a dispute as I do not think it is fair that he gets paid. We asked a very specific job and he keeps saying "Please check" with stuff that is very different from what we asked, while logging more and more hours.

Furthermore, he is not even fluent in English at all (despite the fact that he listed "Fluent" on his profile).

Thanks

[prestonhunter]

David's: Maybe it is not fair that the freelancer gets $28 he doesn't fully deserve. Why do you care so much about him? He doesn't deserve your concern.

I advise you to put yourself first and put your project first.

You are not the freelancer's father, coach, pastor or rabbi. You are not obligated to make sure that he doesn't sin by getting paid money he doesn't deserve.

Forget about him and move on.

[ladyelexia]

The first thing you need to do is PAUSE THE CONTRACT, do it now, before you read further. 

Great. 

Now that you have done that, no more hours can be logged without your permission and you taking manual steps to restart the contract and allow it. 

With any hourly contract, ALWAYS set up a week max hourly limit, for the purpose of an example, let's say you place a limit of 2 hours. That stops any extra billing past what you specifically want each week.

While this contract is paused, review the work provided and get corrections or whatever to meet the guidelines you laid out during your hiring process. 

It is not your job to boost the stats of a freelancer, it is their job to do the work for which you hired them. If you prefer a fixed price model stick to it with clear milestones and properly laid out directions for deliverables.