Hourly client is asking for refund after closing the contract

[duenasstephen]

I manually added time to a contract over a week ago for a client who sent an offer with a 40 hour limit for the week. The work was tedious and time consuming. All in all, it took me 38 hours to complete. A few days later, he responds saying that someone else did twice as much of the same work in only 6 hours and he didn't want to pay me that much and that we should work out a solution. I apologized and expressed my confusion that it took me over 12 times longer to complete the work, that I would show him my workflow, and could he share with me how much work the other person completed so that we could compare and find a reasonable compromise. He said he would, but never did. I asked twice, because we can't determine what "fair" is on my end if he is comparing me to someone else but not sharing the work that they did so we could compare. For all I know, this "other person" doesn't exist or only completed a fraction of the work that I did.

Ultimately, I am asking a moderator what to do since the hours were logged over a week ago, the client already closed a contract, and THEN they asked for a refund. There is no option to refuse the request, so do I just not respond? I can't afford for Upwork to just refund the money without my approval.

Please let me know!

[wlyonsatl]

Just explain to the mediator in simple terms what the file(s) you're sending reflect and why you have highlighted certain sections.

[alexamira]

Yes, will and thank  you so much!  Should I need more advices will ping you then.  

[yofazza]

You have a number of clients complaining about the same thing.

I'm sorry, but in my opinion we can't charge people on remote freelancing like we're being paid on an office or similar jobs. Unless maybe, if the job requires you to "wait" for X hours, like customer service jobs etc.

I see one client also complain about you charging them on slow internet. I discount my billable time when my internet is slow. Clients would ditch me if they see me do task X for 1 hour where a newbie programmer could also do it within the same time. I'm also here since oDesk times but I'm not really a fan of this site btw.