Client got work done but not paid

[nidhibth]

Hi,

Yesterday, i bid on this job **Edited for community guidelines**

and client contacted me on upwork messages and got the work done. I thought he will assign the job to me in the meanwhile like most of the others do, and i did the task for approx. 3 hours. I have all the chat conversations with me on upwork that can be checked for my account. The client is **Edited for community guidelines** and my converstions can be checked and the total time i spent on the task. I completed it successfully.He contacted me at 11.06 AM with login details of website and our last conversation about the task was till 2.50 pm.

Since yesterday i am sending messages to initiate the payment but the client has not turned up yet on upwork. I have no clue of his whereabouts and am worried he has gone away without paying me.

Please see if you can contact him via email and get him pay me as its about 3 hours of work.

Thanks & Regards,

Nidhi

[petra_r]

You weren't hired.

The client could not even pay you if they wanted to, they haven't even verified their payment method.

It's also an hourly job, and as you weren't hired you haven't tracked your time.

Unless the client hires you and verifies their payment method, you worked for free.

Don't do that again. No contract - No work.

Nothing Upwork can or will do about it, it is up to Freelancers to learn how the system works, either by reading up about it, or by learning the hard way.

[colettelewis]

I wish, wish, wish, that Upwork would make it mandatory for all new freelancers to read the help pages and how Upwork operates before accepting jobs or bidding on them.They then would not come whinging to the forum complaining about scammers and/ornot being paid. If only they realized that if they knew the rules they would know know how to avoid traps like this. 

ETA: And if they knew the rules, there would be fewer scammers. 

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

re: "Please see if you can contact him via email and get him pay me as its about 3 hours of work."

No. You need to let this go.

If you have a desire for this money, that desire will only hold you back.

But if you fully learn from your mistakes - learn what you did wrong here - and understand that you can not get money from a situation like this, in which you didn't even have a contract...

Only then will you be ready to move forward and begin to succeed on Upwork.

[nidhibth]

Ok, I understood.

Thank you.

Regards,

Nidhi

[bstojadinovic]

Hi Nidhi,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, you can flag the job for us to review it by clicking on the "Flag as inappropriate" link located at the upper right of the job posting and our team will review it and take action on any violations of the ToS. If you have more details about this client or screenshots of messages please send me the private message with more details. When working on Upwork, please make sure that you have a contract with a client before doing any work, and ensuring that they have a verified billing method so that the work you do can be covered by Upwork Payment Protection is also a good idea. I'd suggest browsing this thread which has helpful tips for new users and you can also check out this thread for tips on avoiding suspicious jobs and scams if you haven't already.