Client asking for refund in paypal - Urgent

[9b080661]

So, I and a new client started a fixed contract for a task, after the submission he approved as usual. Now he is asking for refund in paypal, I said if there is any problem, I can refund on upwork only, but he is adamant on using paypal only. He is saying he wanted his first job to be a big amount, so that he gets more amount spent on this profile, in that way he gets better freelancers next time when he posts a job. This is very suspicious as I have read many similar overpay scams. Kindly assist me asap, he is threatening me to give the worst possible feedback, if not refund paid on paypal.

[yofazza]

Don't, it's a scam.

The money paid to you in Upwork will be reversed, most likely.

What was the job specifically?

[9b080661]

How to stop him to give me a bad feedback?

[yofazza]

If he's not a scammer but a real client who'll be able to leave feedback later, you can respond to it calmly explaining how the client wanted a PayPal refund which is ToS breaking.

It's better than if the client is a scammer, and you lost money twice.

[sh_jyoti]

Don't be afraid of one bad feedback. You can also write all these details in your feedback to the client. It works both ways. Just don't do anything outside of Upwork. Certainly don't give him refund on Paypal.

[9b080661]

It affects my JSS badly.

[roberty1y]

You need to show Upwork the messages where he threatens bad feedback. They can remove it and ensure it doesn't affect your JSS. Anyway, it's likely that the whole job will be removed, along with the client, and the feedback will thus disappear.

This is almost certainly a scam, where the client uses a stolen credit card, pretends to overpay, and then asks for the money back through PayPal. Whether you give him the refund or not, the money will probably be taken back from you. If you refunded it to him, you'd be losing it twice over. 

[moonraker]

Report him. He's breaking the rules.

[9b080661]

Client giving me bad review, affects my JSS badly

[AveryO]

Hi Prithviraj, 

It's up to the freelancer whether or not to issue a refund and if they notice any TOS violations on behalf of the client, such as feedback manipulation, we encourage them to report them by flagging the message. Generally, you can issue a refund on the contract by following the steps here. This ensures that the refund is processed on Upwork. 

I looked into this, but I was unable to identify the contract. Are you referring to this contract with Contract ID 31163254? Please let me know so I can forward it to the appropriate team for further investigation.

[9b080661]

Yes, that's the contract ID. Anyways he don't want a refund in upwork, I mentioned the reason in my post.

[AveryO]

Hi Prithviraj,

I have escalated this to the appropriate team so they can look into it further. Please refrain from refunding the client through Paypal as the team investigates this.