This makes sense in cases where the money is still sitting in the freelancer's account, 'waiting' to be taken when a chargeback occurs. It doesn't make sense that Upwork still ASSISTS with these 'chargeback' efforts AFTER a freelancer has taken the money out of their account - often leaving the freelancer with a 'negative' balance (i.e, debt). It simply doesn't make sense that the client does something wrong, the freelancer did everything they were supposed to do, but Upwork punishes the freelancer by taking their money or putting them in debt. Either way, Upwork loses no money and assumes no 'risk'
Upwork makes more than enough revenue to cover the freelancer when these things happen, but they should be doing MORE to keep the crooks off the site to begin with, like requiring full photo ID checks, business records, etc before clients can begin 'posting' jobs they never intend to pay for. Often the SAME clients do this over and over again under different accounts, repeatedly, BECAUSE Upwork doesn't do any type of identity verification for the clients: If they started making 'clients' show a Driver's license, passport, etc before 'posting' anything, much of this would stop, because a client that gets 'banned' wouldn't be able to come back the very next day under a brand new UW account he/she just created, and Upwork would also have something to hand over to the POLICE to help get these people locked up when they steal from freelancers. If all UW is requiring for clients is an email address that could be made up/fake/temporary and a credit card number, which could be stolen, that isn't much information to send to the police, FBI, etc. "Suspending" accounts for fraudulent clients is great, but handcuffs, orange jump suits, and lengthy jail sentences for clients that steal are even better remedies LOL
Either there is a 'payment guarantee' or there isn't. If there's a 'payment guaranteed except when the client turns out to be a crook', well, that isn't much of a 'guarantee' at all, because there are lots of crooks in this world and plenty of them on Upwork. A 'charge back' from a bank is a REQUEST to refund money based on the so-called client claiming a 'fraudulent' charge on their card when they aren't happy with the freelancer's work or just don't want to pay. Upwork is ultimately the entity that DECIDES to actually hand that money back over to the bank. They could also REFUSE and NOT send the money back because both the client and the freelancer signed an agreement in their contracts that they would resolve disputes ON upwork, not by whining to their banks about false allegations of 'fraud' because they don't want to pay for work performed. If the client is going OUTSIDE the system specified in the contract to try to resolve the dispute, they are violating their contract with Upwork. Instead of simply handing money over everytime a bank demands it, Upwork needs to be working with the FBI (or appropriate law enforcement in the client's country) to get these clients arrested for fraud. However, if they are just going to 'hand money away' everytime somebody files a false fraud allegation with their bank, then Upwork should at least provide the FULL contract information to the freelancer in case they wish to SUE or Press criminal charges - especially if both the freelancer and the client are in the same country. If the client is being allowed to 'take' the 'dispute' OFF upwork, the freelancer should be allowed to as well. Many people don't realize that making false claims of being a 'fraud victim' to initiate a 'chargeback' as a quick way to get a 'refund' when you don't want to pay for goods or services is actually illegal, and a felony in many states. Either way, they shouldn't be advertising that payment is 'guaranteed' when it really isn't. Most of the instances of freelancers NOT getting paid are from scam artists and crooks running 'chargeback' schemes and deliberately putting in fake credit cards, so if 'protection' is not available in the most common cases, it's not really 'protection' at all.
