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Ahmed's avatar
Ahmed M Community Member

How can i be respected as the weaker part of the link

Hi,
I have been working with a client for a while now on an hourly contract ,
At first he started asking for small favors on the side "free" then he started telling me to shut up in the middle of the conversation because he has a headache or completely ignoring me till he wants something else or calling me a scam if something "in the favor" didn't work and when i fix it he doesn't apologize nor offer any money.
So i told him i dont want it anymore and i was willing to refund my unfinished code just to get rid of him so he threatened me to claim on here that i requested a payment through another payment system and that he can photoshop it or whatever and that your system is always with the one who pays not the freelancer as i am obviously weaker so i acted as if i didnt care so he really sent me the message here and i got afraid to be honest so i told him okay so he deleted the message( you can check the history, i am sure you can see deleted messages) and as a punishment he gave me a new contract for 9$ instead of 10$
then he became worse so i refused to do it and i said i dont care so he asked me to help him and he told me he was just stressed out and apologized and offered a compensation at the end and a good review so i asked him to give me the first review before i start , so he did it and you can check the huge gap between ending the contract and him giving me a review, he holds on to everything as a method of extortion till he gets what he wants fully.
You can check how many times i ask him to pay and end the contract and he says today or tomorrow and doesn't do it.
And i started working and he got a little better but not for so long so i just finished the code and gave it to him ,and told him to hire someone else and i will help him through the code if anything happens, then he posted a new job and got someone that couldn't even install python's standard libraries which is something quite easy, maybe he didn't want to pay much .
installing a standard library is a one line command so i asked him for someone better so i can help him not do the work for him and he started calling me all sorts of names, then after a while he contacts me and calls me a scam again and when i point him to the line in the documentation that said it , he doesn't apologize , he just ignores me and he got me in a group with a new guy and when the guy said it works he kicked me out of the group immediately so i don't ask for the compensation and now he comes to me again and tells me my code doesn't work and complains about things that can be upgraded to fit his server but the code itself works!!
and he tells me the programmer that is 13x my worth doesn't like the code and suggests a piece of code "return exit" when no such a thing exists in the language so he probably asked it from that guy as a favor as well and the guy got it wrong.
he wants me to upgrade the code for free or he gets a refund and he is trying all his methods of extortion again and you can check our last conversation to see how he can't hold himself even here and calls me all sorts of names.
All my contracts till the last one, had a bonus on top of it which clearly shows i dont ask for anything outside beside the fact that in my country i have to show my bank a statement of payment or i get in all sorts of trouble and get in jail probably which is the main reason why i am using upwork.
when i first started here on upwork, i refused to talk on any other chatting system but my clients would ignore me if i did so but now when i agree, i get that type of guy.
how can i stop him, and can upwork team upgrade the chatting system "it gets constantly slower if constantly chatting for a long time and i have to restart it every once in a while" then force the clients in some way to use the chatting system here
thanks and sorry for the long conversation.

8 REPLIES 8
Virginia's avatar
Virginia F Community Member

I'm not going to read your whole post because I don't understand what you do. All I know is that if it were me, I'd cancel the job and block the client ... no matter what the consequences.

 

I've flagged your post to get a mod's attention - hope you get some help.

Ahmed's avatar
Ahmed M Community Member

I didn't include any technical details so as to make it easier for reading, but i understand it is so long for someone to read.

You are absolutely right , at first i was afraid because he threatened me and i thought i probably will be the one to blame in the end because i am the weaker.

But it got to a point where i can't take it any more and i have done what you suggested now but i just wanted to share the problem, and get insight about the correct way to deal with him.

thanks a lot for your help.

Petra's avatar
Petra R Community Member

So you had a really poor experience with that client, left feedback accordingly, then the client offered you another contract at less money than agreed and you accepted that... why, exactly?

 

You could and absolutely should have walked away after the first contract- people get to treat you as poorly as you allow.

 

Ahmed's avatar
Ahmed M Community Member

I agree it was a cowardly action but he threatened me to report me saying i asked him for outside payment which is a naive thing to say given all my other contracts had a bonus on top of them which proves otherwise but,
i got scared and i agreed just to finish it so i can be done with him but he keeps getting back with more

Avery's avatar
Avery O Community Manager

Hi Ahmed, 


I'm sorry to learn about your experience with this client. I checked your account but was unable to see the conversations exchanged with this client, other than your most recent discussion with her. If you can please send me a message and provide screen grabs of the client's offensive and threatening remarks so that I can forward it to the team for their review.

 

If you do not agree to the client's refund request, you have the option of declining it. This will then be sent to our Dispute Team. The Dispute Team will then assist you further through an email support ticket. 


I would also like to confirm that we won't take any action in case a user is reported for having violated Upwork ToS unless there's evidence for it. Also, you can stop communicating with the client and block them in Messages.


~ Avery
Ahmed's avatar
Ahmed M Community Member

Hi avery,
thank you very much,
i can't open the refund request page so i can decline it , it just prompts me for reentering my password and when i do ,it just refreshes.
**Edited for Community Guidelines**is perceived as a female name but he is a male in that case, i made that incorrect assumption as well Smiley Happy
his name is **Edited for Community Guidelines** and the two contracts's rooms are "**Edited for Community Guidelines**" and "**Edited for Community Guidelines**
all the chat history has basically the same abuse so i can't flag or something exactly, i answer with considerate and reasonable words about the subject and he insists on taking it on me personally , and he even admits not reading it but just talking based on his assumption
You can see me complaining many times about his attitude and he doesn't disagree, he just keeps getting worse.
He says its not working but then links me the output and tells me to update some things inside.

Goran's avatar
Goran V Retired Team Member

Hi Ahmed,

 

Please follow the instructions Avery posted and feel free to reach out to me or her via PM with the screenshots. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork
Ahmed's avatar
Ahmed M Community Member

ok, sorry about that , thx