Scammed by **Edited for Community Guidelines**

[b8fac9f1]

I was scammed by a freelancer named **Edited for Community Guidelines** and do not know how to leave feedback for clients to be aware of the risks of dealing with him. I reported him to Upwork but nothing was done to keep him from scamming others.

[PradeepH]

Hello Julio,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with this Freelancer. I see that you are already communicating with our team via support ticket. Please don't hesitate to follow up with them on your support ticket if you have additional questions regarding your concern. On our end, we will also follow up with the team so that they can continue updating you on your support ticket.

Thank you.

Pradeep H. 

[b8fac9f1]

You cannot delete his name because he will continue to operate and scan others while you do nothing about it.
Why can’t you force him to refund me the money? Ask him where’s the website that I paid him to deliver?
Where are my website files so that I can host them with someone else?
He has nothing to show for the work I paid him to do.

[prestonhunter]

Julio: You are putting the needs of OTHERS before your own need.

I commend you on being a compassionate and thoughtful person, to have such interest in this one particular freelancer and to be so concerned about other clients who might hire that freelancer.

But I advise you to step back from that a bit and put YOURSELF and YOUR project first.

re: "Why can’t you force him to refund me the money?"

It is not so simple. There are conditions under which a client can get a refund m and there are many conditions in which a client can't force a refund to happen. Remember that after you pay a freelancer, the freelancer withdraws money to their own bank account, and then Upwork no longer has any way to access those funds.

re: "Ask him where’s the website that I paid him to deliver?"

It is not Upwork's responsibility to manage your project. You should strive always to manage your project by working directly with freelancers, or by having them work with your project manager. You never want to count on Upwork working with freelancers on your behalf. That is not how the system is intended to be used.

re: "Where are my website files so that I can host them with someone else?"

You need to ask the freelancer to provide those files. Upwork doesn't have your files.

If yiu hire a freelancer and the freelancer doesn't provide you eith the files you paid him to create for your then you are supposed to fire the freelancer. You are not supposed to continue paying the freelancer.

re: "He has nothing to show for the work I paid him to do."

How much money in total have you paid to this freelancer?

You made many mistakes in how you managed your hiring of this freelancer. Not all freelancers are honest or competent. I am sorry that you had a bad experience while hiring on Upwork.

But if you, as a client, use the Upwork system properly, with best practices, it is impossible for you to lose much money at all.

A basic concept is that you as a project owner should receive all files BEFORE releasing payment to a freelancer (with fixed-price contracts) and should receive all files continuously from a freelancer (with hourly contracts).

You did not do these things. These were your mistakes, which may feel disappointing, but it is a good thing in the sense that YOU have the power to change how you act in the future.

You have the power to succeed in your website development efforts on Upwork. Now you know more about how things work here.

Remember that it is always easier to STOP paying a freelancer or to not pay a freelancer in the first place than it is to pay a freelancer and ask for money back. You are asking for a refund. That demonstrates "refund thinking", which hurts clients. As you move forward, you will save money and have more success with your projects if you pretend that refunds and disputes do not exist. Decide now that you will never get money back from a freelancer. That will help you to hire thoughtfully and proactively and it will help you to monitor the work submitted by freelancers and to decide quickly to end the contracts on underperforming freelancers.

[b8fac9f1]

If you were to inform all potential clients about the pitfalls that your platform does not warn against, we would not be here.
Your platform makes it easy to connect clients with freelancers, but does not warn that if things do not go as planned, clients are out of luck. Then you put the blame on the client for making the mistake of trusting that Upwork is connecting them with reputable freelancers. As you said, “Not all freelancers are honest or competent,” yet, Upwork allows these dishonest and incompetent freelancers scam clients who are not savvy enough to filter these scammers. Clients are out of luck for not knowing what Upwork fails to disclose to clients during the hiring process.

[prestonhunter]

re: "If you were to inform all potential clients about the pitfalls that your platform does not warn against, we would not be here."

I can assure you: I know about all of those pitfalls.

I am still here. I have hired over 100 freelancers on Upwork. I find Upwork to be an amazing tool for hiring people to do work for me.

You are CORRECT that there are pitfalls.

You are CORRECT in understanding that new clients begin using the system before they fully understand it.

You are correct in pointing out that clients can experience disappointment when they use Upwork due to this lack of understanding, and due to incorrect assumptions about what Upwork does nd does not do.

I have personally advocated for Upwork to improve messaging to clients.

One thing I would point out about this topic:
Most of the "pitfals" that clients encounter do not actually have anything to do with Upwork specifically. They are pitfalls and problems that are universally associated with hiring freelancers. A client who hires a freelancer and doesn't monitor the freelancer's work or is unwilling to fire an underperforming freelancer will have problems whether they use Upwork, or another online platform, or face-to-face hiring in their own neighborhood.

[AleksandarD]

Hi Julio,

The freelancer's name had to be edited as posting such information is against our Community Guidelines. As Pradeep mentioned, the ticket is already assigned to the correct department and our team will continue assisting you directly on that ticket.

Thank you.

[prestonhunter]

It would make no difference to potential future clients if a freelancer name was allowed to be left in a thread such as this. Because clients don't search the Community Forum for freelancers' names before hiring.

There are proper ways to report problem freelancers . The main way being the "Flag as inappropriate" link button found on every profile page.