Freelancers Providing Free Samples / Upwork Response

[dylangarity]

I've been running into an increasing number of clients following a very specific pattern: Communicating for a significant time/number of messages, then asking for a free sample, then not believing that it's against Upwork's TOS and asking to see that language, then when I provide it to them saying "well, other freelancers are doing the free sample when I ask them so you should too."

I report these all to Upwork, and have had regular conversations with upper-level support and escalations staff about this. I understand (and appreciate in the case of mistakes I may make on my own end) why Upwork doesn't want to ban first-time offenders, but there's something particularly egregious and different about it when it's clearly not a mistake, when clients actively say "I see those are the rules and I won't follow them." 

Why are these clients allowed to remain on the service when they are making an active, intentional choice to violate Upwork's rules at the expense of freelancers? If they won't be banned, why, in many cases, are the clients allowed to still hire for the very job that was reported, and hire from one of the freelancers who provided a free sample? And what is being done in terms of actions toward the freelancers undercutting the system for the rest of us?

[petra_r]

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Dylan G wrote:

Why are these clients allowed to remain on the service when they are making an active, intentional choice to violate Upwork's rules at the expense of freelancers? If they won't be banned, why, in many cases, are the clients allowed to still hire for the very job that was reported, and hire from one of the freelancers who provided a free sample?

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To be fair, clients who actually HIRE someone aren't the (main?) problem. The "non-clients" who get their work done for free by asking 10 freelancers to do 10% of the job each, disguised as a "sample" are the problem.

Upwork recruiters ask for free testing as a precursor to hiring for some Enterprise clients, so Upwork would have to ban itself lol...

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Dylan G wrote:

And what is being done in terms of actions toward the freelancers undercutting the system for the rest of us?

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Nothing. Freelancers are "free" to do free samples / test work. It is not against the terms of service.

[dylangarity]

Petra, re: "real problem", while obviously someone gaming the system to get all the work done for free is a serious problem, I do not think that makes this any less of a problem. Clients are wilfully violating a very clear and important section of the Terms of Service and seemingly going unpunished.

Re: freelancers, I hope Upwork will reconsider that, as it's clearly regularly undercutting freelanceres who follow the rules and report clients rather than providing those samples.

[petra_r]

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Dylan G wrote:

Re: freelancers, I hope Upwork will reconsider that, as it's clearly regularly undercutting freelanceres who follow the rules and report clients rather than providing those samples.

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As long as it is required by Million $ Enterprise clients I would not hold my breath.

Again, there are no rules for freelancers as far as tests and samples are concerned,  so none to follow.

Personally I'd rather there were less restrictions on how freelancers may conduct their business rather than protecting a bunch of them from their own folly.

To be honest, I'd (obviously) not do any free custom samples / test nonsensse for small contracts ( a few hundred Dollars) but when it comes to those worth (tens of?) thousands I will quite happily jump through a hoop or two.

What I personally will never do again is "paid tests."

[a_lipsey]

I don't provide free work. I have samples of my work and successfully won grants that I am allowed to share with potential clients. If that's not enough for them to see that I can do the job, then they're going to be too much of a pain to work with anyways. 

[versailles]

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Clients are wilfully violating a very clear and important section of the Terms of Service and seemingly going unpunished.

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Wait, these are not clients. They probably never intended to buy anything. It's just scammers looking for free labor. Yes, some are falling for the trick. Some are falling for the check scam or some Nigerian scams and so on. You can't protect people from themselves. For sure, Upwork prohibits soliciting free work and they may or may not act upon these violations, but scammers are imaginative and they will always find a way to steal from people.

The best line of defense is one's own experience and intelligence. Of course nobody in their sane mind would give away huge free samples to someone who is clearly fishing for free work.

[rolludesig]

asking for sample is not allowed here at upwork FYI

[rolludesig]

yes this thing is happening with me quite often now and i simply tell them this is aganist the upwork terms. i thing portfolio of a freelancer is good enough to judge his designing skills.