Client made me do various tasks under the disguise of 'human verification' and went AWOL

[5d60bb6d]

So this client responded to my proposal and send me a link to start the task. I requested them to send out the contract first, to which they said this is the verification process and the job will start once verified. When I did the tasks, they said they'd pay me in an hour and now I can't seem to get a peep out of them. It's been 8 days. Basically, they had me do the tasks and got away without paying.

I would be satisfied if I could at least report them so that they can't do this to others, but I don't see a 'Flag' for this job. What can I do? 

[ericaandrews]

You can report them and block them in Upwork messages.  However, it'll probably do no good because the scammer has probably got several Upwork accounts and has already moved on to somebody else.

Just to be clear, the client didn't 'make' you do any tasks. If the client asked you to go outside of Upwork for any reason to 'fill' anything in or begin a 'test' without a contract, your answer should have been "No, thank you".  The 'human verification' happened when the client saw you responding to messages in real time. The fact that you were being asked to perform actual WORK  just to 'prove' you were a 'human' should have been a red flag for you, because I have met plenty of HUMANS that don't or won't perform any WORK.  lol  Performing "work" is not a requirement for being "human"

If a client insists upon freelancers doing one or more 'trial' tasks as part of the interview, you should require them to send over a small fixed-price or hourly contract to cover the 'trial' tasks, or decline to do the task if they will not send a contract over because they are running a scam to get free work. 

[5d60bb6d]

Yup. Learned my lesson the hard way. I have had several jobs where the client sends out a trial run of the task before sending out the contract, so I didn't even think twice with this one. No one to blame but me, just wanted to see if something could be done about that job posting and the client. Thanks for your response. I'm going to keep these things in mind going forward. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "What can I do?"

Learn from your mistakes.

Don't make the same mistakes again in the future.

[5d60bb6d]

Yes sir!