The freelancer keeps fooling and cheating, they charged me $72

[#1]

The freelancer **Edited for Community Guidelines** keeps fooling and cheating, they charged me $7250 in front for "Resource Allocating", the first milestone is supposed to finish in 4 weeks, now it has been almost 5 Months passed and we received only several screenshots from them, they told us they did not have enough resource to do my project, I need Upwrok to help to get the $7250 refunded, it is a nightmare to work with this company!

We will archive all the messages back and forth to a pdf file so that you could see how many excuses they already gave to us and they quibbled for the serious delays.

[#2]

Hi there,

I'd like to check this further for you. Please share the contract ID and more information via PM by clicking on my name. Thank you!

[#3]

Hi Joanne,

Good Morning!! Thanks for getting involved to solve the problem!

The contract ID is: 20862295    $29,000

As you can see there are 10 milestones in this contract:

1 - Project Initiation & Resource Allocation

Submitted Oct 6, 2018     $5,800.00 (Paid)

2 - Wireframes & Design (ICO & MVP)

Submitted Oct 10, 2018    $1,450.00 (Paid)

3 - Sprint 1 (MVP Release for UAT)   $1,450.00 (Funded)

4 - Sprint 2 (Brand Website Release)  $2,900.00

5 - Sprint 3 (Tokens Private Sale)  $1,450.00

6 - Sprint 4 (ICO Website UAT Release)  $2,900.00

7 - Sprint 5 (Fully Functional dApp progress) $2,900.00

8 - Sprint 6 (Fully Functional dApp progress) $2,900.00

9 - Sprint 7 (Fully functional dApp with Webapp enabled brand website with Backend UAT Approval) $4,350.00

10 - Sprint 8 (Full system testing and approval, Change requests, 4 months warranty period)

$2,900.00

the attached please find their schedule in the proposal and the original proposal that was part of the contract, as you can see they should give us the Sprint1 in 3 weeks, but now almost 5 months passed,  they only showed us several screenshots,  we even allowed them to reduce several important features of Sprint1 so that they might speed up the delivery, but even with this kind of feature reduction they still couldn't deliver the product to us and we don't see any hope that they will be able to do so, they quibbled for the delay with all kind of excuses, now they already run out all excuses. Because this was my first job on Upwork I didn't have experience before, they asked us to pay $5800 in advance for them to allocate resouces and I paid to them (based on what I learned from Upwork recently, a contractor should NEVER ask the client to pay resource allocatiion fee), I did so in order to get the job done in time, but one of the excuses they gave to us was that they had resource issue, they kept changing the technicians, actually so far we worked with at least 10 persons of them **Edited for Community Guidelines** the several recent persons are lack of the very basic understanding of the project, when I go back to contact the first several persons like **Edited for Community Guidelines**

We shipped our own expensive hardware samples to them with the expensive international shipping over 4 months ago, now they told us they got lost;

I will submit the messages back and forth later so that you can see how they quibble about the delay and how they are lack of the capability to work on the project.

Thanks!

Sam Peng

[#4]

We are so upset and disappointed that they waste us almost half year since the start of the job discussion, is there a way to punish them to pay us the wasted time besides the full refund?

[#5]

We also have reason to doubt that our sample hardware devices are NOT lost, they confirmed that they received the samples, they might be copying it!

[#6]

Hi Sam,

Sorry to hear about the troubles you've been having with this contract. One of our agents will reach out to you directly to discuss it further. 

[#7]

Mary, there was another client who went through the exact same experience a few months ago. Here's that thread:
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Clients/dispute-with-Edited-for-community-guidelines/td-p/542078

I *really* hope it's not the same freelancer in both instances, because freelancers who rip off clients on the pretext of allocating resources should be permanently suspended.

[#8]

Hi John,

I filed a dispute against **Edited for community guidelines** about two months ago, then the Freelance begged me to withdraw the dispute and promised ume to do a better job, but as you could see, another two months passed and they still only gave us several screenshot with almost no progress, the job was started on October 6, 2018, the first sprint was supposed to be finished by about November 2 based on their milestones.  This time we decide not to be fooled further, otherwise they dare to hold us for 10 years.

The worst yhing I did was that we paid them the Resource Allocate fee in front, so they almost kidnapped me and make me in very bad situation, I wasted 5 months on them besides the $7250 paid.

They confirmed that they received our hardware device on October 20, 2018, the USPS tracking number also showed delivered, now they told us they did not receive our expensive hardware samples.

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Sam

[#9]

I got the name of the agency before it gets modded and YIKES those reviews. Wow. This is why I strongly believe clients don't even look. I can't believe they are still holding on to 89% JSS.

Won't mention the hourly rate but they're what you'd expect for bad word.

[#10]

Hi Jennifer, thank you!

I wish I'd have read the feedback of the other clients about **edited for Community Guidelines** before I hired them, they actually have so bad feedbacks for jobs with large money, they do have good feedbacks with very tiny jobs like $50, $120,..., most of them were "No Feedback Left". These were what the others told their nightmare stories and exactly the same kind cheating to us:

**edited for Community Guidelines**

[#11]

Hi Info, 

I'm sorry to learn about your experience on this contract. I have shared this information with the team and they will get in touch with you to assist you further. 

[#12]

---

Info C wrote:

Hi Jennifer, thank you!

I wish I'd have read the feedback of the other clients about **edited for Community Guidelines** before I hired them, they actually have so bad feedbacks for jobs with large money, they do have good feedbacks with very tiny jobs like $50, $120,..., most of them were "No Feedback Left". These were what the others told their nightmare stories and exactly the same kind cheating to us:

**edited for Community Guidelines**

---

If they manage to cheat several thousand of a client, it's peanuts to pay someone to hire them for several small jobs and boost there JSS again.

[#13]

They also banked $4 million since 2010 (IIRC), so there's that too. But mannnnn those reviews are terrible. Just pumps my theory that clients don't really look at these things.