Robert, I will have to disagree with you here. I'm not sure the terms of service is effective in keeping scam postings off the site as there is no penalty for posting a scam other than possibly having your account blocked. Then the scammers simply generate another email address and account and try again. And again.
My position is that it is too easy for clients to post jobs. So much so that this scam problem is a well known issue that experienced freelancers have learned to kind of navigate as a survival strategy. I feel there needs to be some barrier to entry for clients. I understand imposing a cost on clients would eliminate some opportunities and probably increase bidding competition on the remaining postings, but those eliminated opportunities may have been from clients who were not serious enough about hiring a freelancer to begin with.
Someone dead set on using the platform to obtain freelance services would not balk at an intitial charge for posting a listing. In fact making the charge eligible to apply towards the freelancers future payment so it is not an extraneous expense to the client would eliminate any added expense to clients. Consider it a deposit to post a listing.
In my mind, if a client is legitimately anticipating investing in a freelancer to complete a project and they plan on using the platform to initiate a contract and manage payments, then there should absolutely be no issue for them in verifying their banking information in advance as they will be needing to transfer money to the platform anyway. Why hesitate to take that critical step unless you aren't serious? Is it an afterthought? Oops I forgot to link my payment method, but my freelancer has been billing hours and doing work for a while. That is a recipe for burned freelancers since the terms of service states UpWork simply closes the client's account in the event they refuse to pay for work. There's no remedy for a freelancer to collect from a delinquent client. It is trivial for a negligent client to generate another email address and open a new acount.
In reality, it should be impossible for a client to fail to pay for services. They should have to prove that they own a bank account before posting opportunities at the very least. Again, forcing them to pay for listings up front would filter out dead beat clients.
I agree with you and do not believe a 24 hour job vetting position would catch the issues as it seems you cannot know without first applying to the role and by then it is too late. As a freelancer it is just such a waste of time and energy to go through with the process simply to have a client start asking to contact you by phone or outside of the platform.
If they had money tied up in the platform, they would have to stay within the platform to use it which would prevent a lot of this kind of thing. Money required up front from clients to post job listings would also protect the freelancer in the event the client balks or decides not to pay for work. They would simply lose their deposit.
I agree with you that making it more difficult for clients to post listings might drive some of those clients to other platforms where they can get away with whatever behavior they are trying to get away with. Serious clients would not find such a cost burdensome and it may increase their success in finding candidates as freelancers would be more willing to apply to projects as each one is now guranteed to be legitimate under such a scheme.
The downside is it would increase competition between freelancers as there would be fewer projects available for the pool to apply to. Clients who did not feel compelled to commit to finding a freelancer on the platform and were merely window shopping, or collecting resumes, or user info, or scamming people would disappear.
My argument is that those are the opportunities you want off of the platform because they waste everyone's time. The remaining opportunities would be of a higher quality and there would be a gurantee that submitting a proposal is actually going towards a legitimate project.
By changing their model from a free job space to a paid job space, UpWork separates themselves from the business models used by Indeed, Craigslist, Monster etc. which mainly collect resumes and user information. Since the objective of UpWork is to benefit from the work that freelancers complete and remaining on the platform is critical to that end, why not ensure that clients have no incentive to go offsite or post their opportunity elsewhere by making them commit up front funds to the platform so that there's no incentive to do any of the things that violate the terms of service.
By raising the bar for clients and requiring an investment to participate, this would essentially eliminate many of the problems the terms of service attempts to enforce.
That completes my rant.
