Is Upwork Secretly Helping Scammer Clients to Loot Top Earning Freelancers? - see attachments.

[alitoori5]

Hi community, 
I can not be anymore silent over this brutal looting from Upwork on a pretext of "chargeback" from clients. I have attached some screenshots for you guys to better understand how Upwork helps those scammer clients either in a fixed-price or hourly contracts. I have proof for both of the contract types. 

1. Hourly Contract LoopHole - Fake Payment Method Scam
According to the Upwork's so-called Hourly Payment Protection, if you log hours and fulfill all the mentioned rules, you'll be protected by Upwork. But that's not true because it has happend multiple times to me even I didn't miss a single rule of the hourly protection but still didn't get paid and all my time and effor was wated and my hours were reveresed.

If you log hours correctly you'll be paid 100%, they can't reverse hours? Nope that's not true as well.
Here's how: Even if you do log hours correctly and deliver the work, Upwork won't check if a client's payment method is working or not so at the end of the week, you have delivered the work but since Upwork is unable to charge the client so you got scammed and the client took your work for free 100%. 

This type of scam has happed to me thrice, if I recall correctly. In one case, I worked for a week and logged over 35+ hours and delivered the work as I was supposed to. At the end of the week, I received an email from Upwork, saying, there's an issue with client's payment method, we can't charge him. Sorry. And I was like, what? Haha, what I am supposed to do with that? You're responsible to check with his payment method, how am I supposed to know if the client's payment method is working or not? 

Upwork then offered me that they can share the client's personal information with me if I wanted to reach out to him, so I said that'd be helpful. I was able to get those information, screenshot is attached. I was then able to track his businesses and his geo-location information. I didn't attached those.  

2. Fixed-Price Chargeback Scam - The Best Way For a Scammer Client To Get Services For Free.
The Upwork's so-called Fixed-Price Protection says if you start a fixed-price, you're protected to be paid but that's a big lie. There's a loophole in fixed-price contract that when a client get their services, they can simple reverse all the payments even they have paid via escrow which is middle-man to settle payments for services. So at the end of the day, you're scammed again and your time and energy is wasted.

This has happened twice to me and has severely hurted me mentally and emotionally. In one of the cases, I developed a full-stack web app for a client for an agreed budget of $4.5K, I delivered the work in two milestones, one a $2K and other $2500. After a month+ later, I got an email from Upwork that your contract is reversed and you got a chargeback from the client and we paid on behalf of you so now we are seeking an emburement.  Hahaha. such a big and day-light scam. And my financial account has been suspended since then.

How can they reverse such payments?
Well, accroding to the Upwork, the clients went to thair banks and reversed the payments from there, we as Upwork paid to them and now we are seeking an embursement. So what am I supposed to do with that, they took my work for free and wasted my time and effort. And Upwork said sorry. 

Till now, I have paid over $4000 to the Upwork from my other contracts which I worked on but they are still saying that they owe me $2000 more. hahaha. That's insane. And it's hurting me every single day because I have worked on this portfolio for years. It's not that hard for me to leave as I have made my presence on other platforms and I have a good client base in my communication channels.

Before this had happened, I was bringing my outside clients to the Upwork, but now that trust is gone in the dust.

What you should do to avoid such scams?
Well, I am avoiding such scams successfully since then and I have been successful so far. I have found a good solution for this situation to prevent. I wish I could share the solution here but the text is already getting lenghty. If you anyone needs my solution, I'll share it on my **Edited for Community Guidelines**

Take me as a lesson and an experience for yourself so you can avoid this stressful situation. I am still able to handle such situation and nothing can stop me doing things my way but many out there might not be able to go through this.  

Thanks for reading.

Kind regards,
Ali

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

[bobafett999]

You should never bring your outside clients. About the chargebacks in real life all businesses suffer charge backs.  Perhaps on upwork it is more than usual

  On hourly protection was the buyer' payment method verified?

[alitoori5]

But this does not apply in services it may happen in product-based business model, here on Upwork, we are service providors, we don't sell products on which we expect chargebacks or return of that product specially when we do hourly work. According to your analogy, take an example of a car servicing physical business, when someones get their car servicing, how can they put a chargeback on that company they got service of?

Yes in all of the cases, the clients payment methods were verified, I never work with clients having unverified payment methods.

[bobafett999]

Yes in a way I agree that upwork has very lax attitude towards chargebacks.   They have decided that it is not worth their time to fight them.  They didn't lose 4.5K.  They just lost fraction of that.  They are not going to change it either, unless there is a lawsuit and they lose.

Also, Upwork really doesn't care about freelancers.  They are necessary irritations to attract buyers.

You are a good programmer, in future you may want to insert a kill switch.

[alitoori5]

Yes you're right, Upwork doesn't care about freelancers. A freelancer's win is also Upwork's win, but when a freelancer lose Upwork doesn't lose. 

And another alarming thing is that Upwork doesn't care about freelancer's security. I have seen Upwork's behavior from very close. A time ago, I would report scam campaigns to the Upwork Safety Team and even hunted down some myself. Once I found a and tracked huge ramsomware campaign. I gathered some information on them and sent to the Upwork Saftey Team via email to take it down, they didn't care and ignored it. The next day, when the same campaign was hiting top rated freelancers, and I found out that it had stolen thousands of dollar of crypto from one of my Indian friend's hot wallets, my heart was bleeding when I came to know. But I couldn't do anything to save them. Then Upwork started to panic and sent me emails on emails saying that I have interacted with a ransomware and I might be a victim, I said you should take care of your security, I am fine. It means they are sleeping since all the Upwork team went remote after the COVID-19 pendemic 😀

[tlsanders]

It most certainly does. Retail merchants lose tens of billions of dollars to chargeback fraud every year.

[janrozs]

Why should he never bring outside clients to Upwork? Who are you to say such an absolute thing? Of course, he can bring them, it has benefits. Problems are thousands of**Edited for Community Guidelines**scammers on the platform creating a new fake identity (both as clients and freelancers) daily and milking the platform dry, leaving only unsatisfied clients and exploited demotivated freelancers behind. They hijacked every single niche, posting as experts in areas/languages they know nothing about. There is a difference between being a middleman and a scammer. It goes like that for 3 years already and Upwork seems complicit. There is no need to blame the victims. I remember how secure Upwork was under the previous CEO. At present it seems that Upwork found another means of income, maybe sharing data with authorities, companies developing AI, tech giants, and advertisement companies, maybe they get some benefits for embracing wokeness. Freelancers who worked here for a long time and have higher expectations when it comes to the quality of projects and overall treatment, can be easily replaced. And in the end, a cheaper and less demanding workforce will more than replace them. So the scammers may be here to clean Upwork of the old to make room for new (because they certainly don't plan to close or sell their business, they recently made great improvements to the business model which will make them the number 1 online work marketplace for many years). 

[the-right-writer]

Yes, a freelancer can bring someone to Upwork. However, there is no logic that I can see. If you already know the client, why would you involve a third party, and incur so many fees, etc. when you have the client? Upwork is to find clients. Most of the freelancers who have left, took clients with them, and the ones that are leaving are arranging to take clients with them.

Where do you get the idea Upwork is the number one online market? If you mean for protecting freelancers and clients, no. If you mean low fees, no. If you mean fewer scams, no. If you mean better paying clients, no.

So, for those and many other reasons, why would anyone even consider bringing a client here?

[williamtcooper]

Ali,

I always interview a prospect before accepting them as a client. After 330 jobs, I have not had any lost revenues due to the situations mentioned above. It's KEY critical to know who you are doing business with because every one on the planet isn't honest.

[alitoori5]

Hi William, yes since then, I always ask client for zoom meeting but in my hourly reversion case I had interviewed that client before starting that project but I couldn't know about his payment method being fake, which is responsibilty of the Upwork to validate client's payment method.

[williamtcooper]

Ali,

I truly understand because I have come in contact with a few dishonest people not only here, but also life in general. If I can discern someone being dishonest or a narcisist, I run the other way quickly because it rarely would work out.

[6bfcdaf8]

Here's my personal opinion : I think you should review your work category. Scraping, trading bots... Have a browsing around upwork freelancers and job posts and ask yourself : "which are the best type of clients for me? how can i re-skill myself to serve such clients?"

[alitoori5]

Thanks for your opinion, I appreciate it. But I am making a good amount with these categories outside of Upwork. It's not only about scraping or trading bots, there's much more than that if you are aware of trendy automations.

[ericaandrews]

I have never been scammed on Upwork and in addition to all the 'generic' notes of caution written on this site, I follow a few simples rules that help me weed out scammers along with my 'thought' process for coming up with these rules:

1. NEVER, EVER, EVER deal with or submit a proposal to a client that has been on this platform less that 90+ days  (This is hard for many out of fear they may 'miss out' on a good new client, but the VAST majority of scammers are using 'brand new' accounts created within the past few days or couple weeks, sometimes even the same day.  For every  ONE  'good' new client on the platform, there are easily another 200 'new' client accounts that are scam artists or just people 'trying out' the site and not likely to ever hire anybody.  Not worth the risk.)   If you see a client account that says "Member Since:"  then a date within the past couple of days....RUN.  My rule is 90+ days because scammers always do these 'chargebacks' within the first 1-2 months. 90 days is enough time for somebody else to be a victim, report them, and their account closed.  Me personally, I am still hesitant with a client that has been on 90 days and usually target the 6+ months or more crowd.

People to really to avoid are 'clients' that just joined like 1-3 days ago, and already have 'hired' a large quantity of people (often for the same job or similarly sounding jobs).  Sorry, but nobody does that. No real client just creates an account and begins just clicking the 'hire' button on every freelancer without a care for costs/money

2. I NEVER EVER do business with a client that doesn't have at least 2-3 **closed** contracts showing in their 'history' with MONEY paid out, with at least one of those contracts having ended/closed over 30-60 days in the past.  Reason: These 'chargebacks' usually happen after the contract is 'ended' or closed, usually within a month after, and sometimes right away.  Again, once the client does the 'chargeback' Upwork suspends their account and kicks them off the site. The fact they actually paid out money on a contract well into the past and did NOT get kicked off the platform is a good indication they really PAID and didn't do a 'chargeback' theft

3. NEVER do business with a client that has multiple negative reviews, from multiple REPUTABLE freelancers (top rated folks, high JSS, Expert Vetted folks, etc) - especially if those reviews are complaining about the client refusing to or 'fussing' about making payments, being slow to pay, or 'disputing' hours, or being abusive or acting like a jerk

4. Never do business with a client whose 'location' in their profile says one thing, but the TIME showing on their profile doesn't make sense for the location they claim to be in.  (You can go to google and type 'what time is in England' or whatever, and check the time showing on their profile makes sense for where they claim to be.)   Reason: scammers lie about location.  I often see client profiles claiming to be in some town or city I never heard of  in the U.S. and their profile says they are 10 hours ahead of me. Well, I'm on the east cost (one of the 'earliest' time zones there is in the U.S. except for Puerto Rico).  There is no part of the United States that is '10 hours' ahead of me, so LIAR was caught/spotted.

5. Look at the client's 'history' of hires and open some of the PROFILES of the freelancers that worked for them in the past.  If the freelancers look scam-my and sketchy, then the CLIENT is scam-my and sketchy

6. The only clients I feel are fairly guaranteed to be 'safe' (in terms of paying and not ripping people off, not necessarily personality/work conditions being a 'match'):  'Enterprise Clients' - those big companies that pay Upwork tons of money to help them hire large quantities of people quickly. Basically, they make too much money to be concerned with running 5-dollar scams and usually have somebody from their HR department handling the Upwork interviews. I have never heard of a freelancer being ripped off by an Enterprise Client or an Enterprise client 'refusing' to pay a freelancer, because for most of them, $1,000 is a 'rounding error' and nothing they're going to bother fussing and fighting about

7. I now insist on at least one VIDEO interview before accepting any contract. A while ago, I didn't care one way or another, but I think it's better for me to SEE who I am working with and vice versa.  If a client refuses or gives me some lie about a 'broken camera' I just discontinue the conversation and go the other way.

8. I don't believe in "trust but verify".  I VERIFY first, and then....I might trust you. 😁

Learn from these past unpleasant events and hopefully you'll be much safer moving forward.  Good luck!

[f1ecd428]

Thank you, I really appreciate this advice. There were some things I never considered before such as checking for time-zones or how long they have been on the platform. As a new-ish freelancer I felt like I might have better odds if I sent proposals for clients who are also new, but it makes sense that the odds are that they could be scammers. I've been somewhat lucky though because I haven't had any bad experiences other than maybe wasting connects on fake jobs!

[alitoori5]

I appreciate your detailed response. I somehow agree with all of your rules but not the first three ones. Because a ganuin client can be new to the platform and they might have just signed-up to look for quality freelancers. Why would we ignore them or cancel them based on their account maturity? 
That being said, I have litrally seen scam campaigns with years old accounts. How's it possible? It's a different story. 

[romahora]

This is all really solid advice that I'll definitely keep in mind going forward. I've worked with quite a few clients that are new to the platform and so far its turned out okay but its unsettling to wonder if you're being scammed, if the payment will go through, if you'll be chargedback. You want to be able to focus on the work without that noise! For some reason, I never thought to just not work with people with less then X amount of time or experience on the app. Thank you for sharing. 

[lysis10]

Really curious to know the true story of your hourly non-payment. I don't vet clients at all and don't care about feedback and will do almost any job in the general realm of my skillset as long as they open an hourly contract. What job did you do that they refused to pay? AFAIK, they won't pay if they believe you contributed to fraud. 

[alitoori5]

I have explained the hourl scam and how it works please read that part to better understand but you'd not be able to avoid such scam since you don't know if their payment method is fake or real.
That contract was trading bot and after I delivered the work at the end of the week, I found out that their payment method was fake so Upwork said we are unable to charge their payment method. I hope you got it.