Scam or Legitimate? This freelancer wants me to work outside of Upwork.

[348e14c7]

I will be editing this post for privacy protection. I am receiving private messages from people on Upwork about this project and frankly it's making me very uncomfortable. I will leave this thread up so the posters can still keep their comments. I recently viewed the other party's profile and it seems it's been deleted. I believe the Upwork staff has already jumped in and taken care of this. 

[yofazza]

Just saying that the proposal looked very generic (the ones where you could send without actually reading the job description). I thought clients don't like these kind of proposals. Am I doing this the wrong way? 😁

[348e14c7]

Well they started arousing my suspicion after "DK" required down payment for the project. This was my first ever experience with someone asking me to "work outside of Upwork" to which I laid out would not be a good idea. But they insisted like it was normal, even providing a detailed explanation of how 'working outside of Upwork works'. I'll admit, it was JAGK's proposal that appealed to me. What made me irritated was that he kept repeating his advertising to every question I had about the project, which didn't make any sense to me.

[yofazza]

People are different but the repeated advertising and even holiday explanation is indeed not very useful (if not irritating) to me. Also, not a talking about your project, maybe it's not included in the screenshot I don't know but those are the kind of proposals that I thought will be skipped in an instant.

About profiles, I'm not saying that they're not to be trusted but I think clients should not put a 100% trust in it. I've seen clients complaining here while mentioning the perfect profile their failed freelancers had.

For language, if it's about computer programming or similar then a perfect English is not required.

> Are these people/company a scam?

Again, people are different and I'm with the ones who don't like those kinds of proposals. I've seen it everywhere including in the offline world. Not a true scammer probably, but I highly doubt that they could do quality work. Might even provide you with a "useless" work.

[348e14c7]

Thanks. I'm still new to Upwork. Guess I'm not that smart to be easily fooled by these types of proposals. 

Your reply really helped, thank you.

[the-right-writer]

It's not that you aren't smart; some of these freelancers are close to or scammers themselves and have had practice. They will steal profiles from other freelancers and all sorts of tricks to attempt to appear as professionals. You can't always trust profiles. Look at the entire picture and if something is out of place, investigate before establishing the contract.

[prestonhunter]

re: "Well they started arousing my suspicion after he required down payment for the project."

Yeah... he is just trying to steal your money.

As clients, we never pay down payments. That is not how the system works.

[348e14c7]

Thank you. I learned something from this. I assumed "outside work" involved some form of down payment. Now I understand this is false.

[penngrp]

"As clients, we never pay down payments. That is not how the system works."

I have done more than 70 projects on here and I always ask for a deposit. I have only had 2 individuals that had an issue with it. I thtink it mainly depends on the type of project. Deposits are typical for what I do, so there is really no pushback from clients.

[348e14c7]

My job listing requires a software to be built from scratch. Because many freelancers said it would be a difficult task and a few have decline after invitation, I assumed a down payment would've been some type of standard negotiation for this type of task. Being that I haven't worked on a huge project like this before, so I was completely unaware how exchanges here would work.

[yofazza]

I'm part of people who think that down payment isn't necessary here.

Milestone system is sufficient for assurance. For paid partly/early, I'd still use milestone let's say "initial brainstorming + rough wireframe" which just have to be funded and released after the task is done.

> Huge project

You might need a project manager. Someone with good management skill but also have at least basic understanding about technicals. Don't spend $10k for something you can't use (discussed here a few weeks ago).

[348e14c7]

There's no way I would hire a project manager for such a task. I find it a waste of money. That's literally hiring somebody to repeat words to a freelancer that you already told the freelancer. That's just thousands added onto the $10,000 I would've already spent on the project. Sorry I would never throw out money for something like that.

[prestonhunter]

W S:

A client is never required to hire a project manager.

A client never needs to hire a project manager, if the client performs the task that a project manager does.

The problem comes when a client does NOT act as project manager. Then the project is doomed to fail.

If a software development project fails, it is NOT the developer's fault. It is NOT the client's fault. It is not Upwork's fault.

If a software development project fails, it is the project manager's fault.

If there was no project manager, then the reason the project failed is because the client neither hired a project manager nor acted as project manager.

[prestonhunter]

re: "Sorry I would never throw out money for something like that."

Project owners don't hire project managers because they want to waste money. They hire project managers mainly so they can save money.

[yofazza]

---

W S wrote:

That's just thousands added onto the $10,000 I would've already spent on the project.

---

But it's still better than spent $10,000 for something you can't use which is not uncommon (and no help/refund from Upwork). This posted yesterday, no nominals on this one but basically like that.

If we're talking software dev, there's a great chance that you can't hire someone else to fix or continue developing the something you can't use, because doing it from scratch is faster and better (because it's "better-structured" from the start which is also not so uncommon in software dev which doesn't have to be caused by a bad programmer). There were also some example cases here.

As explained by Preston, you don't need to hire someone, you can learn to correctly manage projects yourself. This place is a good start. You can ask anyting and people will provide insights.

[PradeepH]

Hello W S,

Thank you for your message. I am sorry to hear about your experience. I have shared your report with the support team and one of our team members will reach out to you via a support ticket as soon as possible to assist you further.

Thank you,

Pradeep

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

W S:

For the record:

Upwork Customer Support personnel may indeed create a help desk ticket so that they can investigate the scammer "freelancer" further.

But that has nothing to do with your project.

Nothing that you encountered requires help from Customer Support. You simply need knowledge. You can and should ask questions in the Community Forum. You do not need to contact Support.

As a client, I have hired over 180 freelancers.

I don't need Customer Support ever in order to deal with freelancers and projects. Because I know where all the controls are in the client-side user interface.

I strongly recommend that you learn where the controls are, so you can manage your freelancers and projects on your own without needing to wait for anyone else.

[348e14c7]

I'll vote yours as best answer since you helped me out the most. Thanks for all the tips and advice. I specifically came to the forums seeing how helpful the community was with other posts and wanted to hear their inputs. Support would mostly handle the problem, but not provide an explanation, which would've been more helpful as it helps me understand how these scammers work. Thanks for everything, best of luck to you as a fellow client.

[prestonhunter]

W S:

I am very sorry that your time was wasted by that scammer.

I hope that you understand now that this was not a real Upwork freelancer, but it was a scammer. He only only wanted to steal your money. He never had any plan to work on your project.

[348e14c7]

There were a few red flags with these two, however their main agency account has a very high rating, earnings, and hours worked, which threw me off. That's why I couldn't understand if they were legitimate.

[bobafett999]

W S: working out side of upwork is a no no.  You should never do it.  You would lose the protection you have staying on the platform. 

Asking for down payment is not that unusual.   Many would argue that on upwork it is not necessary.   However, freelancers on this platform have virtually no protection against scammers.  Often, on foxed price contracts they end up working 'more' than what was agreed. By asking down payment they just want to protect themselves.   In real world no contractor would do any work without a down payment.  So I personally don't consider that as unethical. 

[348e14c7]

Yes, I've worked with contractors who required down payment, but never for software development, so that was new to me. Especially being that Upwork already had its own payment protection in place, I found it off that they would've required down payment. 

[bobafett999]

Upworks payment protection is a joke for fixed price contracts.  Many excellent freelancers would not work on fixed price contracts. Their protection for hourly jobs is not based  but one must follow their rules.  The protection only works if you have enough mouse clicks and screen shots.  If you have to pause and think buyers can dispute that time.

Ofcourse, if both parties are dealing honestly any model would work.

[prestonhunter]

Upwork DOES ALLOW clients to pay down payments or "up front payments."

I advise clients to never do so.

It is important for clients to understand that if you pay a down payment, that money is gone forever. If the freelancer ends up doing zero work, it does not matter. You can't get the money back just because the freelancer doesn't do anything.