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pgregory_indigo
Community Member

Fake jobs (again)

This site is getting worse and worse for fake jobs. I just wasted tokens submitting a proposal for a job in my home country that seemed like a perfect fit for my skills and experience. Only to find almost exactly the same job post, from a different client, with identical wording, in a different country not 2 hours later. Not sure whether both were fake, or the new one is fake jumping on the bandwagon of the original, but either way, the fact that it costs us freelancers actual money to submit proposals, while UpWork does absolutley nothing to validate the honesty of the clients is so annoying. It's so frustrating that this site punishes the freelancers, we're the ones who pay the bills for UpWork, you take money from us, not the clients, and yet you still continue to treat us with utter disdain.

 

</frustrated_rant>

 

Aaaarrgggghhhh!😡

15 REPLIES 15
arunkumar60
Community Member

Glad to see Freelancers are actually seeing this and raising this!

pgregory_indigo
Community Member

I think, at the very least, if a client doesn't award a job to anyone and just let it die, all the freelancers who have submitted proposals should have their tokens returned. This would reduce the imbalance and treat freelancers with some of the respect we deserve.

I guess tokens are returned to freelancer if a client doesnt hire within 30 days .

No, they're not, only if the client closes the job instead of just disappearing (which is normally the case). It's best if you think of connects as a business expense; once you spend them, you won't usually get them back.

Connects (tokens)are a part of business. Every decent platform charges something. If it's not connects, there will be some other charge.

Agreed, I have no qualms with the connect system, it makes sense in part. The problem I have is the imbalance. All of the effort of UpWork is put into making sure the clients are protected, that freelancers are genuine, while zero effort is put into ensuring the clients are genuine. All the while, it's the freelancers who also take a hit when the clients aren't genuine, as we are the only ones paying anything to use the service. Bottom line, there is zero incentive for clients to be genuine and consider their project proposals properly, because if they are so poorly written, devoid of any concept of reality, or outright unethical, it doesn't matter, they'll just do another, and another, and another and another and another, until some poor freelancer is hooked.

 

That's my issue. And don't get me wrong, I can totally see why UpWork wouldn't want to change this. They get all their money from freelancers, freelancers will only use the site if there's a large number of jobs posted to make it worth their time to use it. So it's in their best interest to just open the flood gates, let as many jobs through as possible, keep the site at least appearing active and dynamic, and let the freelancers (again) deal with the problem.

51ddd111
Community Member

Got tired of this **bleep**. Deleting my upwork account soon. I don't really have time and resources to sit and apply to jobs and only to find out these **bleep**ers are fake and trying to scam me. 

williamtcooper
Community Member

Paul,

 

If you see "true" fraud, report it and move. Most Jobs are real and it's the exception that are fake. Thanks!

"If you see "true" fraud, report it and move. Most Jobs are real and it's the exception that are fake. Thanks!"

 

The easy ones are simple to filter or spot. There are a lot of jobs, and more and more are showing up, that aren't written by lazy scammers, and are pretty convincing.

 

It depends on many factors whether jobs are real. Just because you rarely see scams doesn't mean they don't exist. Sure, if I set my filters to $300.00 an hour with the Boolean filter, I won't see many scams. However, for people not looking for those jobs, there can be few to the majority.

Jeanne,

 

I have figured out why there are more fake jobs (agree many hard to spot this year), but an every bigger issue I have figured out is why there are 100+ freelancing proposals per job. Completing my research in the next few days to do more verification.

As I said in another post, I am well aware of the reasons, thank you.

 

If I set my Boolean and fee to $300.OO and hour, I will see fewer scam proposals. That is unsustainable for me.

What are the top 3 reasons (short) why there 100+ proposals per Post?

Location, location, and ... location? 🤣

Removing the Upwork tests, skills test, and all limits on categories.

 

Upwork's policy to allow anything that can minimally use a keyboard to be a freelancer.

 

Agencies or farmers throwing proposals and connects at every job post.

 

Scammer freelancers.

 

Bots.

 

Ok, there's five.

I do exactly that, but you kinda missed my point, by a country mile.

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