I've been freelancing through Upwork for a few months now, and until now I have had no issues. I have mostly done fixed-price contracts, but have done a couple very small hourly contracts, as well.
Well, now I have a very problematic client. We had an in-depth 1.5 hour long call through the Upwork calling feature, during which he laid out what he wanted me to do, and I clearly laid out how long it would take me to do each part of the project, and the entire thing as a whole. He agreed to this.
Now, he is being difficult and straight-up trying to manipulate me out of my payment. I dutifully logged almost 20 hours through the Upwork desktop app, complete with screenshots clearly showing I was working on the project, and the work diary description. He demanded extra "proof" that I had "actually worked" during those hours, so I took the time to scan and send him over 40 pages of physical pen-and-paper notes I had taken. The project was for me to watch all of the videos he had made (over 120 videos adding up to around 100 hours), extract all the information from them, and then write the content up as a 40-100 page booklet. I had told him that I would need to spend the first 2 weeks solely watching the videos and taking notes, that I would have to treat it like a college course and study it, and he agreed. He then asked how long I thought it would take me to write the booklet after I had watched the videos, and I said about a month and a half. He agreed to this time frame. Of course, this was all verbally over the phone, so there is no paper or digital trail of it (though I did take 4 pages of notes during the conversation).
He is now claiming that my work is not worth paying for, and that he is not going to pay me for "just notes" when he "hired [me] to write a booklet." I explained to him that the booklet would take the full two months, and that I needed to learn all the content before I could write a book about it, and that I had told him as much and he had agreed to it. Obviously, I can't just start writing a book before I know what I'm writing about, but hey- he hired me to write the book, so I guess he just doesn't know how writing a book actually works.
Anyway, he got very rude, very patronizing, and very manipulative, basically gaslighting me, saying he didn't agree to this, my work is worthless, and that I should "be thankful that [he] didn't already cancel the contract" because he somehow believed I was in "breach" of it, even though I had been logging my hours faithfully and producing the exact work he asked for.
This guy is a businessman and has told me that his legal department will be following up with me. He requested a refund which I obviously told him I would not give him, and he is accusing me of "scamming" him. I know I have done nothing wrong, but this guy is so manipulative that I am afraid he will take some kind of action against me and weasel out of paying me. The kicker is, all his videos were about how to do business, and he bragged often in those videos about making $30,000 a month and how he's already made a million dollars, so he's making a big stink over a few hundred dollars that is a drop in the bucket to him, but is my hourly pay and what I need to live off of. I'm an honest hard-working freelancer and he is trying to take advantage of me.
I know Upwork has the hourly payment protection for freelancers, so I shouldn't realy be worried. The thing is, though, that since the first part of my contract consisted of watching videos, all the screenshots in my work diary are just screenshots of various videos, and my work diary has read the same thing- "Watching [Client's Business's] Videos and taking notes"- for the whole time. I didn't need to change it because it legitimately was taking me that long to do that work. But the hourly payment protection states that not ONLY do the screenshots need to back up my work, the work diary should be updated frequently and accordingly. So I'm afraid that by keeping the work diary description the same the whole time, I won't get paid.
I do have physical notes. I have 40+ pages of notes I took, and I scanned them into the computer and will attach them here. How do I know that this guy won't just be able to get his big, bad, legal department and weasel out of this? I ended the contract and explained why, and he went on the attack. I'm just hoping that he doesn't do anything, and after 14 days of him not approving my timelog, I will get paid automatically. I don't want to fight this guy. I was so excited to get my first fulltime contract and am disappointed I have to end it after barely one week. I am disgusted and sick of men attempting to gaslight me (blatantly denying what they agreed to and instead claiming that the other party is in the wrong) and trying to smear my reputation. It would be considered abuse were we in a personal relationship. His refusal to pay is in breach of contract, I have done nothing wrong.
What can I do? Should I do anything? Is there some formal complaint or notice I can give Upwork as a heads-up that this guy is lying and trying to scam me, and that he will probably try to take it up with them and smear me?
EDIT: the pdf with my notes in it was too large to upload (see- I really was doing a ton of work!) so please disregard the earlier portion where I said I would attach them.
