I have used upwork and formerly elance for over a decade and never had a major problem wtih a freelancer (in fact I have a perfect rating from freelancers). However, I had a website project and my freelancer had a death in the family, sadly, so he was not able to complete the project. I was in a rush to get it done for the client so had to hire someone to do that last 10% of the website, a list of about 5 things.
I hired (or thought I did) a woman whose profile indicated she had almost 10 years of wordpress development experience, was a theme developer, etc. Well, the person started and appeared to be a total Wordpress beginning, didn't even understand the platform. It appeared that the job was handed over to someone else after the initial proposal and emails (asking for more money, which I agreed to).
After a few hours or work this person claimed to finished and nothing was even complete, and they had now created display problems on the site. They also did things I didn't ask for , like removing plug ins or adding some, which is dangerous. I asked to end the project. Now they are disputing it.
I looked through old reviews and saw that multiple names were used, which to me shows more than one person is working on this individual profile. In the dispute, however, Upwork however is siding with the freelancer. The dispute rep even called this person him at times and her at other times. It appears that everyone but me the client knows this is a shared profile.
I am getting pressured to pay the whole amount instead of part (I offered $35 out of $200). It is clear that nothing was completed since I immediatey opened a job with the same scope of services plus additional to correct the new problems this person caused, but Upwork is continuing to back this freelancer and is not enforcing their own TOS.
As a result, I'm sure this school or whatever it is will go on to damage other client websites. This is not good. Anyone else experience this? Upwork, is this really your policy to allow this and turn a blind eye?
