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9d8ae0b3
Community Member

Unresponsive Freelancer and Mediator for a complaint about fraudulent activity

I hired a freelancer **Edited for Community Guidelines**. on an hourly contract to help trace a hack on our company. He claims it would take 40 - 100 hours and we begun the contract. He appeared to be doing some scanning of the IP addresses we gave me as suspected hack locations. However, after he loggin over 80 hours, he requested another 20 days, and I could tell from our chat that he was simply dragging on the hourly contract and scamming me for more hours. 

 

Initially, I believed him when he said the first 40 hours were for extensive scanning and so I approved the hourly invoice. However, in the chat conversation we were having afterwards, he told me he is just preparing to scan, which is why he is requesting 20 more days. He was self-contradicting and couldn't explain what he did in the first 40 hours of Work Diary logs. I have successfully disputed the second invoice of 40 hours but I am waiting for a mediator to handle the first invoice of 40 hours since I only discovered it was fraudulent after the reveiw period. 

 

I have contacted customer service many times and I have responded to the mediator many times but I still have not heard back from the Disputes Team. This is a serious matter as the freelancer was clearly committing fraud. The activity the freelancer logged was not what was assigned and he has been unresponsive after I discovered he was a scam. 

 

While I understand disputes take time, this case is a serious matter since the freelancer has committed fraud which is against Upwork's Terms of Service and therefore should not be protected under Hourly Payment Protection.

 

I would like some advice about how this case will be expedited to receive attention and how Upwork will address a dispute about fraud and not simply a dispute about quality of work. 

13 REPLIES 13
g_vasilevski
Retired Team Member
Retired Team Member

Hi Abe,

 

I`m sorry to hear about the bad experience you had. I just checked your account and I would like to confirm that our Dispute team has followed up with an update on your dispute. 
You can also view the update on your ticket with number 29890250, you can access your tickets on this Link
If there's anything else I can assist you with, let me know! Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork

Hi Goran,

 

The one and only response from the Dispute Team was on Oct 10 after I filed a dispute on Oct 7. It is now Oct 13 and I have not heard back from the mediator. The freelancer is also unresponsive. 

 

Please advise how Upwork will address this fraudulent complaint in a itmely manner. 

 

Abe

Hi Abe,

 

Unfortunately, since private details are involved we can't discuss them publicly in our Community.

Rest assured, I just followed up with our team regarding your request and you can expect an update as soon as possible. Once again, I`m sorry about the inconvenience this had caused you. 

~ Goran
Upwork

Goran,

 

I have heard the same response from Upwork many times -- "rest assured", "follow-up", "as soon as possible"...

 

This is no longer sufficient as a response for me since I have followed procedures and policy with my dispute. I was told a response would be given to me within 24-48 hours and all I have gotten was "rest assured". 

 

Please address with business acumen and not with lines from standard client response scripts. 

 

I do not doubt that the original poster is disappointed by what has happened.

 

I have some thoughts about effective ways to use Upwork as a client. These are general observations and are not related to the original post or anybody who has participated in this thread.

 

Effective clients do not ask for help from Upwork Customer Support in order to manage freelancers and contracts.

 

Effective clients understand how the Upwork tools work, and use that knowledge to benefit themselves and their projects.

 

Effective clients do not try to get refunds in order to recoup wasted funds. Instead, effective clients don't spend that money in the first place. By proactively monitoring the work done by freelancers, effective clients can end the contracts on underperforming or over-billing freelancers. It is far easier to not pay a time-wasting freelancer a large sum of money than to pay the freelancer that money and then ask for it back.


Preston H wrote:

I do not doubt that the original poster is disappointed by what has happened.

 

I have some thoughts about effective ways to use Upwork as a client. These are general observations and are not related to the original post or anybody who has participated in this thread.

 

Effective clients do not ask for help from Upwork Customer Support in order to manage freelancers and contracts.

 


If Upwork wishes to be an effective business where clients can find effective freelancers, then it effectively needs to remove scammers from its platform. In order for that to happen, clients do need to ask for help from customer service. 

Yes, there is a way to use this however, can you imagine if we spent all our time investigating each an every move.

Where is the support from Upwork?

Why are these scam agencies not held responsbile?

And do you think Abe or myself have the time to post ads, hire someone and work with them for months only to find out we have been ripped off?

The dispute process and mediation was essentially useless. The mediator only functioned as a messenger and offered a 50/50 split on the invoice, which I did not accept since the full amount on the invoice was fraudulent. 

 

It appears that any scam artist can sign up as a freelancer on Upwork, get paid hourly, make it look like real work (which many experienced scammers can do), and they will walk away with the payment because "hourly contracts cannot be refunded after the 5-day review period". 

 

 

e7d3208e
Community Member

So Sorry, Abe

I just posted a similar issue. Good luck. 

This is a rip off

Thanks buddy. We are all aware of fraud on the internet but some of these scam freelancers are very good at logging work that appears to be legitimate. In my case, the freelancer was hired to scan some IP addresses to help improve our company's cyber security and I was fed many pages of Work Diary that looked like the freelancer was indeed doing this work. It wasn't until a subsequent conversation that showed many inconsistencies that I realized he fed me fake Work Diary entries. He has been unresponsive since and the mediator has concluded mediation has failed. 

 

I am now purusing this fraudulent charge with my payment company in hopes to reverse the charge. I really didn't want it to come down to this because I know Upwork suffers as well but honestky I'm left without options.

e7d3208e
Community Member

I want to Thank whoever can help.

First of all my mistake was, I agreed on a fixed price and its mentioned in our chats and agreed upon but did not turn on fixed so, the freelancer kept billing and my credit card got hit. Thats whn I put a stop on entering hours but by then the money was gone. (Lesson learned)

I have borught this up with upwork and apparently I do not have the option for Mediation or Dispute only customner service group can talk to us. WOW. 

A bit about the whole 

  1. Delivery date was 15 August and we still don’t have a working solution
  2. We have never been able to have a call with the Manager
  3. There is no status update, timeline and no calls have ever been setup
    1. Only their developer has joined the call twice
    2. On the last call The developer agreed that the basic requirements were not working. We recorded that call
    3. We requested the Manager to join and still he never joined to see the issues.
    4. The manager keeps pointing out that the issue is at our end but how does he know if he is not part of the call or seeing the issues?
    1. We have had to follow up on lateness
    2. We have sent call details to join
  4. We have spent 55 hours providing feedback on their server for the requested feature and its still not functional
  5. Once the solution is ready we expect their developer to get on a call, and give us a walkthrough so we can begin Testing and we have asked for this several times.
  6. The Manager has the money and now, he is not willing to get on a call and is asking for more money
  7. He mentioned that they have done a lot more that we had asked for after August but they vanished and mentioned it was due to Co-vid and the product was not even delivered to us then.
  8. The solution has to work on our production server and not their vanilla install or even our clean server
  9. We have waited each night at 9 pm for their developer but there is always an excuse
  10. We keep getting files in an email and they ask us to install and Test but are unwilling to see the issues which we see in their module.
  11. The solution currently is useless
  12. It is not the matter of $700 anymore. They have wasted 3 months of our time and have never been available for a call.
  13. The Manger keeps saying we are reputed company but he is an invisible man who is scared as hell to get on a call

With no working solution, what are my options?

 

What we expect

 

Option A

A full refund and a firm warning to the Agency / Manager to be blacklisted if such behaviour occurs again

 

Option B

 

Have the Manager,  and us on the call to resolve this
 

Their developer to log in into our server, install the solution, Test it and deliver to us for QA after which we will provide feedback which they have to fix.

 

We will not log into their server and Test as we have done that but the solution needs to work on our server.
Does anyone think this will help or am i just banging my head against the wall?

Hi Vishal,

 

I'm sorry to hear about your experience working with this freelancer. I checked your account, and I can see that one of our agents is already assisting you on this ticket number: 29902277. The agent has shared more details with you on the ticket.

~ Joanne
Upwork
e7d3208e
Community Member

Thank you!

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