UpWork Work Diary can be easily deceived and UpWork will not refund

[8a603425]

Hi all,

Recently I hired a freelancer to help me setup a Magento2 webshop. I am a layman when it comes to Magento, simply because I am not familiar with this tool. The freelancer was aware of this and misused this knowledge, by opening fake files and spending hours in these files and letting me think that she has been working very hard on my project.

I paused her contract as she did not meet several deadlines and hired another developer. This other developer told me about the files the previous freelancer worked in for hours and the new developer als told me that it did not make any sense to open these files and even spend time in them. My new developer was 100% sure that I have been scammed. 

**Edited for community guidelines**

With all clear evidence I contacted UpWork and told them that I want to file a dispute and want a refund, because of this scam. Although I provided a lot of evidence, Upwork refused to refund my money and they did not even disabled the account of the freelancer, which still suprises me.

This freelance lady has billed me for 120 hours, while I think she only spend max 40 hours on this project.

So guys please check the work diary thoroughly, because UpWorks system is not reliable and they are not willing to refund even though you can proof that you have been scammed.

[BojanS]

Hi Wesley,

I'm sorry to hear about your issue with a freelancer. I see that our mediation team has already assisted you with this situation via the support ticket. I'll also follow up with them. Please, note that we won't be able to discuss any details here in the public Community!

[8a603425]

Hi Bojan,

Thank you for your reply. It is a shame that my post has been altered and the community cannot see my evidence of the hours the freelancer has been spending and the files that the freelancer been working in. I think most of the people here will agree that this has been a fraud.

The outcome of the support ticket was:

As previously stated, we cannot make determinations on work product and we are definitely outside of the time frame to retrieve funds already paid. 

Again, I would like to suggest that in the future you monitor freelancers work and pause contracts when you feel that work is not being done properly. Also you may want to consider using Fixed Price Contracts.

The case is that I have monitored this, but as I mentioned before I don't have any Magento knowledge, so when I looked at her Working Diary I assumed that all the files she has been working in were Magento/porject related, but this wasn't the case. If I knew this before I have had her contract paused directly.

We have reviewed the work diary based on our policy and I cannot require a refund at this time. Please review the links sent in my previous email for more details.

Such a shame. This means that the Work Diary can easily be misued by freelancers when they know that their client has no knowledge re: the project they have been hired for. More hours can be billed while opening fake files and the freelancer that has misused the system gets away with it / without to refund or being expelled. 

[prestonhunter]

Wesley:

I am very sorry that you had a negative experience while using Upwork.

I believe you have gained true knowledge about how Upwork works. There were expectations that you had which were NOT met. You should understand that in the future, these expectations would ALSO be unlikely to be met. As a client, I find Upwork to be an extremely useful tool and resource. However, it does not guarantee outcomes.

If you decide to use Upwork again to accomplish your goals, then you will want to take a different approach.

For a project such as you describe, you should really use an independent project manager, because you do not have the experience and knowledge required to serve as your own project manager.

You allowed the freelancer you hired to serve as the project manager. But only about 20% of developers on Upwork are actually capable of serving as a project manager. The person you hired is not among this 20%.

A project manager would have immediately caught on to what this freelancer was doing, and would have stopped working with her immediately. A project manager would have identified the best, most productive freelancers among those who were hired to work on the project, and would have conintinued working only with them.

Putting all that aside, even without a project manager, a client can insist that a developer regularly send links to test to see that real, usable work is being accomplished on the project. If are unable to properly evaluate the back-end source code and if you do not have a project manager, then at the very least do that: Only work with developers who will regularly let you test the latest progress on the project. If a developer is not willing to do that, then they are not right for your team and you need to work with somebody else.

[kat303]

Wesley - To address some of what you said -

Your previous posts were - as you say - altered because you are not allowed to mention conversations, communications, freelancers names on this site. Any mentions of those will be deleted.

On hourly jobs. there is a time limit to review a freelancers work hours/diary. During that period, (and I don't know the exact number of days a client has to do that, but it's more then 3) and delete any screen shots that do not relate to the job By the time you submitted the help ticket that time period was gone. Therefore Upwork can not refund any money to you. 

Also, on hourly jobs, you pay for the HOURS a freelancer works, (that why a freelancer uses Tracker to log in their time)  not the quality of work done. Once a client views the work diary the client is billed automatically and funds are taken out of the clients financial account automatically. 

On fixed rate jobs, a client pays for the work done, Not the hours (how long or short it took to complete a job) Also on fixed rate jobs, the client deposits money into Upworks escrow account before the freelancer begins work. Work, when completed on fixed rate jobs is sent to a client to review and approve. A client has 14 days in which to view and approve the work. Once the client is satisfied of the quality of work done, the client then releases the funds that they deposited into escrow at the beginning of the job.  

There are many professional, skilled freelancers here who know what they are doing and produce high quality work. There are also many scammers here who have no idea what they are doing, who get clients to release escrow funds Before work is started or many other things. In the future, perhaps your job should be a fixed rate job where you have a lot more control over the work and the release of funds. Also, as Preston advised, if a client doesn't know anything about the programs or job, then they should hire a project manager to keep track of the quality of work being done. Finally, I have no idea of what your payment was, but, as the saying goes, "if you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys." 

[ac9d7d03]

I have sympathy ... the screenshots every 10 minutes can be manipulated and I am sure of this.

Project managers are up selling themselves in these replies ... no doubt they are great for big or complex jobs but upwork is also designed to be used by small business owners.

[prestonhunter]

re: "the screenshots every 10 minutes can be manipulated and I am sure of this."

This is factually incorrect.

The screenshots can not be manipulated.

[5aa402ab]

How come 5 freelancer took 4 hours and 1 freelancer take 10 hours?

I have used Smartlook to track them and I noticed they stay 1 hour per day doing nothing on my website. I even send the freelancer the proof and they even accepted(i also paused the contract), but later they decided to challenged it.. But yea, I believe upwork does not even care of my evidence neither. Upwork work diary is nothing!