re: "I requested a refund for the second milestone, I don't think he wants to refund."
You may read more here:
https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211062058-Get-an-Escrow-Refund
https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211062088-Request-a-Refund
re: "I paid for the first. I asked him to release the first milestone, he said no until I pay for the second one."
Moronke:
You made a mistake. This is GOOD NEWS!
It means that you can learn from your mistake and not make the same mistake again in the future.
It is always good that we, as clients, have an extremely large amount of CONTROL over Upwork contracts.
We have the POWER.
Next time you hire a freelancer using a fixed-price contract, you will not release money for a second milestone until you have received and reviewed the first milestone.
You now know that the freelancer you hired was not a genuine professional. The freelancer you hired was simply a scoundrel.
A real Upwork freelancer will NOT ask you to violate Upwork protocol by asking you to release money for a second milestone before you have received and reviewed the work for the first milestone. Only a scoundrel or scammer does that. So if you run into that, you can avoid funding a second milestone and the most money you could possibly lose is the money for the first milestone.
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Here is what I did, which is different from what you did. Note that I (hypothetically) hired THE SAME FREELANCER:
- I hired a freelancer for a project.
- I have never worked with this freelancer before. I do not know if I can trust him. So I set the first milestone for only 10% of the project.
- The freelancer said he did the work and asked for payment. I explained that Upwork's protocol is that he send me the complete work. He said "you need to release payment for the second milestone first."
- I realized that this wasn't a true freelancer; he was simply a scoundrel.
- I closed the contract, while editing the amount of money to be released to be zero.
- The freelancer didn't do anything after that, because he knew he had been caught; he worried that if he disputed my non-release of funds that Upwork investigate him further and kick him off the platform. I received all of my money back.
AND: Even if the freelancer DID dispute my non-release of payment, there was not much for me to worry about, because the initial amount was small. Maybe I just forget about the dispute and release all the first-escrow payment to him. Then I don't need to deal with the situation at all. It was not a large amount.
I then hired ANOTHER freelancer who did a great job.
With the OTHER freelancer, I started with a small fixed-price milestone, and he turned in his work and it was great. And I created increasingly larger milestones, and saw that each time, he provided honest, quality work.
====================
But that's what I did when I used the Upwork tool properly.
When I did not release money to a freelancer for milestones that he hasn't even done yet.
What should YOU do NOW with the current situation?
You requested a refund for the second milestone payment?
How much is the payment?
If it's not a large amount, then just let it go.
If you want to try to get some or all of the money back that you paid to this freelancer, or just get the current escrow money back that you used to fund the second milestone, then follow the directions in the links at the top of this post.
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Discussion about hiring low-cost freelancers:
I REGULARLY hire freelancers while planning to PAY some of them for poor quality work and then not use it. That is a key to success.
I don't have time to play games, or act as a mentor for underperforming freelancers. So I hire multiple freelancers to do the same task, and I can then pick from their submissions which ones I want to use. I can pay all of them who actually do any work. This way I don't need to spend time with disputes.
Look at how this technique can save money:
a) I could hire 1 high-level freelancer to do the task for $1000.
b) Or I can hire 5 lower-paid freelancers to do the task for $100 each.
I used option (b).
Three of these freelancers turned in unusable work.
But one of them turned in work that was quite good.
And one of them turned in work that was excellent.
So I obtained the work that I needed, in a short amount of time, and I saved $500.
