Preston,
You certainly don't come across as a member. It is common practice for large companies to 'plant' dustbusters to refute legitimate grievances so it would be nice for you to identify yourself and your experience as a user. The issue is of course "reasonable expectation" of what Upwork does to protect it's users. The simple answer is very little.
I have been on Upwork going on seven years. I worked very closely with **Edited for Community Guidelines** when they were transitioning from Odesk to Upwork. We all felt we were part of a community and we built the web development part of our company with Upwork freelancers exclusively . That sense of community has changed dramatically in the past two years, We have had numerous bad players on the platform that have caused our company severe financial damage repeatedly. All documented by their own escalation teams.
we had our entire team we had built on Upwork and we were filing a Reg A + securities offering with the SEC decimated by a convicted fraud named **Edited for Community Guidelines** or **Edited for Community Guidelines**. Simply putting his name into a search produces this: (link removed) He not only was not censured but allowed to stay on the platform and after the complaint went on to do further damage by illegally using our server for his own purposes until detected by AWS. Upwork chose to ifgnore it and
This past month I traveled to the Phillipines for a film project. We had an adminstrator I had hired and worked with for pre-production which of course meant she had access to everyone. She was in dire straits and I even loaned her personal money so she could continue. When I wouldn't give her more she wrote a Letter of Resignation and then began a campaign of disinformation and maligning the project. .
This is the communication I sent to Upwork.
**Edited for Community Guidelines**,
I was unable to access these replies from my Ipad from your app while in the Philippines and I did not receive any emails on the complaints until now. .
This case was by no means solved. I appears that whoever investigated this failed to consider the clear violations or so I thought which were amply documented not only by myself but rather bizarrely by Ms. ---herself. Both J----- ---- and Y------- were in management positions with access to group chats and confidential information. As well documented even by herself Ms. ---- had resigned on April 27th after being told it was repeatedly it not a job, taking compensation other than sweat equity violated Upwork policy and I was not in a position to loan her any other funds.
I as your record will show immediately asked Upwork to remove her her full admin. position and tried to end the contract peacefully. Then she rather bizarrely decided to litigate and air here grievances in her still active room. I filed a complaint and asked you to communicate to her that contacting any freelancers we still had contracted with covert and false information was or so I thought a clear violation. Guess not. .
So instead of once again trying to litigate the details I will ask you to clarify Upworks position on the record by asking asking the management of your company to state it's position on the following.
1) Are Upwork freelancers in an administrative position allowed to use their access to the freelancers they are managing after offering a letter of resignation to make covert and unsubstantiated accusations resulting in a complete disruption of a project and severe financial loss? I informed Upwork of Ms. ---- and her behavior starting April 27th to no avail.
It appears that Ms. ---- was in contact all along with Y---- ---- and perhaps three other freelancers. What we discovered only last week ten days before my reurn to the States and nothing filmed far after the damage was complete that they were paying milestones for work that had not been completed and as it turns out with no intention or chance of anything being completed before I left the Philippines and that this was not disclosed as it appears in order to continue to be paid and get supplementary subsistence loans and submit doubtful receipts for expenses.
I have sent direct communications about my upset with the way the executive escalation team has handled this to both CEO **Edited for Community Guidelines** and **Edited for Community Guidelines** Chief People Officer at Upwork.
As this has been the third time that UpWork has allowed this to happen and has done nothing to stop it before further damage is done I am going to write an article documenting my experiences and release it to the media sources we have and on social media. I am doing this after consultation with the other other partners, our attorney partner **Edited for Community Guidelines** and friend and partner **Edited for Community Guidelines** founder of the LA Weekly advising me on how to compose it with the facts.
I am truly sad it has come to this but, the damage both financial and in time wasted from this last go
As you can Preston H there is systemic failure on this plaform very little is being done to deal with it.
Laughingly enough I go this templated response which I am sure was written by their legal department.
The boiler plate text that reads;
" Should you wish to take any form of external legal action against any of these three freelancers, you are of course free to do so, and Upwork will cooperate with any official criminal investigations or legal requests that are properly submitted to our Legal Department. If you need to obtain any contact information for them, we'll simply require you to follow our Subpoena Protocol."
I responded as follows:
This of course is absurd since they are in the Philippines and as an international platform that has freelancers from developing countries where the protection and ethical standards of the United States obviously do not apply. The issue is of course the safeguards that one would imagine that a company like yours would have to protect this kind of thing happened is as I have discovered not in place. The article will of course reflect that.
What i repeatedly asked was for you to contact the Ms. **Edited for Community Guidelines** and either shut down her account for the obvious multiple violations that occurred wherein she was allowed to go unchecked in a campaign of vindictiveness to systematically unfairly malign me and the project. That you allowed her to do this unchecked for over a month and in fact your trust & security team seem to vindicate her emboldened her to continue and undermined our efforts to try and salvage the mess she had created.
Only in the last ten days of my stay in Philippines did the extent of the damage and the fact that she in fact was in communication with and apparent collusion with **Edited for Community Guidelines**. I kept wondering why Ms. **Edited for Community Guidelines** was not cooperating in the investigation and corroborating what she knew to be fact.
My article will simply present the facts. Most of it bizarrely enough was in the thread she posted. Your intervention early on would have made all the difference. I have been reading comments in the forum since this happened and realize I am not the only one to experience how little protection we are afforded by Upwork. Your Trust & Safety team seems to only be concerned with making sure you get your money and little else.
Be happy to have either you or Upwork respond to this. I an Upwork user with over 400 contracts and a near 5 Star rating. I have tied to remain on the platform, but this was the last straw
Andrew C
