I was able to view the screenshot prior to it being removed per Community Guidelines. It shows that these were previous clients and your profile only lists one contract from Dec. 2022, so I am confused as to why you are claiming that these clients are scammers if they were previous clients.
I also must disagree with your opinion of Upwork protecting scammers. I have been on the winning and losing sides of mediation.
Timeline of my first mediation dispute:
- 1st weeks hours over by 18 hours which were logged manually per the clients permission.
- Payment received for the 40 hours that were logged.
- Sent email reminding client of manual hours that had not been paid and that I would not be working until paid.
- Client sent a bonus payment the following day for the manual hours.
- Second week, 40 hours logged, and 7 hours manually entered.
- 40 logged hours paid
- Third week, 40 hours logged, and 20 hours manually entered.
- 40 logged hours paid.
- Fourth and final week 40 hours logged, and 4 hours manually entered.
- 40 logged hours paid.
- Following week contract was ended with no communication from these very nice clients.
42 hours of 'free' work to these clients because I did not use this platform correctly.
Was this Upwork's fault? Nope all on me. Did Upwork support help me in trying to get paid for these hours? Yep, they sent several emails to these clients with all my evidence and invoices for eight weeks. Unfortunately, I have never been paid for those hours but guess what I can guarantee it won't happen again.
However, just recently I was contracted to work on a software platform reconciling accounts at an hourly rate. Something about this client gave me the "he's gonna try to scam me" vibe. Everything was urgent, urgent, urgent, but it took him 3 days to put a contract together and sent over to me. The project that he posted was very, very vague as to what deliverables he wanted and with my notes from our meetings about what he wanted me to do I thought I was set to go.
For this type of software I have a strict workflow that I follow when reconciling and cleaning up records. I was involved in a car crash the day of our meeting to go over the items that I found and make sure I was up to date on all information. I was in the hospital for 2 days and unable to get in contact with client. But as soon as I got home he was the first I messaged to apologize and that I would gladly get back to the clean up. He refused and wanted to offer me a third of the hours that I had worked on his project as payment. This is when I knew that there would be a dispute coming down the pipeline my way. Five days later I received Upwork support dispute notification and responded right away with my work diary, emails, spreadsheet, and statement. I probably would have been fine with just the work diary as the client when filing the dispute wasn't disputing my hours but rather the fact the project wasn't finished and so he claimed he was disputing the quality of my work. Upwork protected me from the beginning. I won, although I think winning and losing are horrible terms when it comes to working with clients. I was still willing to finish his project in mediation but he refused so the hours that I logged using the desktop application were protected.
I have also been involved with a client who after a month of the contract being suspended on Upwork for payment method not being updated, she filed a chargeback with her bank. Right off the bat the money in my account was refunded to the client but not after Upwork support asked me for my work diary, emails, spreadsheets, any type of documentation that would help them recoup the money from the bank as my hours were again protected by the hourly rate protection because I utilized the desktop app the way it is suppose to be used with no manual time, and adequate memos about the task I was working on. This was definitely a win although I'm not sure Upwork won the chargeback but they protected me.
Really it comes down to freelancers and clients using the Upwork platform correctly. As freelancers we are the boss and run our own business. With that comes business expenses, well Upwork is no different. How do you think freelancers are able to receive our payments each week? Upwork handles that for us, instead of having to chase down clients for payment, so I am happy to pay these fees. Upwork is a software platform that connects us freelancers with potential clients who need projects done.. The fees that Upwork deducts is not our payment to them for protection. These fees to Upwork are for processing payments to freelancers and other expenses involved with running this software platform.
I'm sorry you had to go through this with these clients but I am most definitely sure you will never let it happen again.
