Is this allowed - contact outside of Upwork for interview?

[jbran64]

A potential client is asking me to call a number, leave my name and location in a message,  and download an interview app and contact a user who will be conducting the interview (who is different than who I have communicated with on Upwork). There are three different companies that seem to be involved in the process. Is this likely a scam?

[pgiambalvo · Accepted solution]

Total scam, one of the many that have been more frequent here on UW. Don't communicate with any one off of UW until after a contract has been set up and read and follow the ToS. Sorry you had this experience but glad you posted about here to raise awareness of the scam post problem.

[jbran64]

Thanks for the heads up. I wasn't sure if this qualified as the single exception is the ToS:

"A client or freelancer may only share contact information if it is for the sole purpose of giving the other party access to a system that allows them to scope the project in advance. This allows freelancers to review a project prior to a contract so they can determine if they have the needed skills, how many hours it will take, etc. "

Still, it seems like a lot of hoops to jump through simply to obtain more information about a potential opportunity especially when there is Upwork Chat and the ability to schedule and conduct interviews through the Upwork platform.

Thank you for your advice.

[petra_r]

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Brandon J wrote:

Thanks for the heads up. I wasn't sure if this qualified as the single exception is the ToS:

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No, it doesn't, and there is no exception at all for communicating in any way, shape, or form before a contract is in place. It I always strictly forbidden and can always lead to account suspension.

[jbran64]

Thank you for clarifying this. I will be sure to avoid any clients asking to communicate outside of Upwork to discuss their projects (so far I've only encountered these types of clients unfortunately).

[prestonhunter]

Brandon:

The tone you encounter from Forum participants would probably be different if we thought that Upwork was putting up roadblocks for no valid reason, or if we thought that these people were real clients.

But these people are just scammers. Upwork’s rules about this make sense and they help freelancers to earn real money while avoiding time-wasters, scammers and thieves.

[petra_r]

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Preston H wrote:

But these people are just scammers. Upwork’s rules about this make sense and they help freelancers to earn real money while avoiding time-wasters, scammers and thieves.

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If freelancers would just bother educating themselves about the rules before jumping head first into what is (especially for new entry-level US-based freelancers) shark infested water, and stopped violating the terms of service, either because they don't care or failed at the "figure out how this works" stage, there would be no scammers because there wouldn't be anyone to scam.

[jbran64]

That's why I asked before jumping in. Perhaps UpWork could do a better job of vetting clients - I'm seeing job postings where people are putting their phone numbers in the job description or instructing freelancers to contact them via WhatsApp in their actual job description. Yikes. An automated screen could catch stuff like that and report the posting.

Is there any repercussions for clients who try to abuse the system or can they just repost the same job hoping to get another victim? I'm seeing people cancel proposals when I suggest that we communicate via the UpWork platform like the terms indicate. They then repost the job...

These people should be booted off the platform in my opinion. It doesn't have to be a shark-tank environment if clients were vetted better by the platform. Why not make all clients verify their payment method for example? After all, if they are posting jobs they are anticipating to pay someone, no?

[martina_plaschka]

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Brandon J wrote:

That's why I asked before jumping in. Perhaps UpWork could do a better job of vetting clients - I'm seeing job postings where people are putting their phone numbers in the job description or instructing freelancers to contact them via WhatsApp in their actual job description. Yikes. An automated screen could catch stuff like that and report the posting.

Is there any repercussions for clients who try to abuse the system or can they just repost the same job hoping to get another victim? I'm seeing people cancel proposals when I suggest that we communicate via the UpWork platform like the terms indicate. They then repost the job...

These people should be booted off the platform in my opinion. It doesn't have to be a shark-tank environment if clients were vetted better by the platform. Why not make all clients verify their payment method for example? After all, if they are posting jobs they are anticipating to pay someone, no?

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That's what the flagging option in every job posting is for. When you find a violation, flag the job posting, so it will be checked/removed. 

After all, if they are posting jobs they are anticipating to pay someone, no?

No. The scammers never intend to pay anybody. They could verify their payment method and still never intend to pay anybody. 

[jbran64]

The issue I'm encountering is that sometimes you have to submit a proposal first to determine whether or not an opportunity is a scam. For example if they ask you to contact them outside the platform as part of your interview process.

Each proposal costs connects. These opportunities that wind up getting flagged eat through your connects and you can't get them back when a job is cancelled due to violating the terms of service.

I still feel the onus shouldn't be on freelancers to vet opportunities. There must be a way to prevent these individuals from preying upon freelancers. I do not know what that method is - perhaps charging clients to post opportunities would filter out a lot of the problematic individuals would help?

Raising the bar for clients would improve the quality of the opportunites available to freelancers and hopefully prevent these scenarios from occuring.

Thanks for your reply.

[pgiambalvo]

Brandon J, I'm with you, brother, but trust me, your arguments are going to fall on deaf or surly ears.

[jbran64]

Thanks Peter. I'll get down from my soap box now.

[pgiambalvo]

Brandon, see what I meant about deaf and surly ears? NEVER get off your soap box. Just make sure it's big enough for me to stand next to you.

[jbran64]

Peter, thanks for your support.

[rjackso7]

Brandon,

I agree that it should be on Upwork to try to Vet these people out.  I report a lot of these posts that appear to be scams but I feel like a response back to our reporting would be good so that we know that it actually did any good.  Also, Upwork I feel should charge Clients something to post jobs as well so that this would vet some of them out.  Trust me if they have to spend their money they will not use the platform.  I am set up to receive US only jobs but pay attention to the Clients time in the posting; a lot of them are like 6 hours ahead of the US time zones.  

[jbran64]

Rhonda, thanks for the response. That's a helpful tip regarding the time difference. I did see that after reporting a few jobs, the jobs were removed from the platform, but this was after I had submitted proposals. Unfortunately, one of the jobs simply popped up again in the feed with the same wording as the original posting that was removed. So it seems there is not a method that prevents these individuals from regeneratig their listings. Until they find a better way to screen these people out of the marketplace (assuming there is an interest in doing so) it looks like relying on intuition is the way to go.

[jbran64]

I am all for the roadblocks. Anything to screen out problematic clients and scammers as they are apparently everywhere. I see that as a vetting issue that UpWork could potentially improve upon. Maybe making clients pay to post job opportunities could reduce that problem. It seems only the freelancer has to worry about confirming their identity and payment preferences. I'm new to the platform so I didn't realize that freelancing is a minefield. Apparently I should have known better. I still think that UpWork should strive to ensure that every job posting is legitimate by making it harder for fluff to get through. It wastes proposals when you apply to stuff that turns out to be bogus.

[martina_plaschka]

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Brandon J wrote:

I am all for the roadblocks. Anything to screen out problematic clients and scammers as they are apparently everywhere. I see that as a vetting issue that UpWork could potentially improve upon. Maybe making clients pay to post job opportunities could reduce that problem. It seems only the freelancer has to worry about confirming their identity and payment preferences. I'm new to the platform so I didn't realize that freelancing is a minefield. Apparently I should have known better. I still think that UpWork should strive to ensure that every job posting is legitimate by making it harder for fluff to get through. It wastes proposals when you apply to stuff that turns out to be bogus.

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I don't want to burst your bubble, but this has been discussed a million times in the forum. You can pull up old threads and see the discussions. 

[jbran64]

If it is such an issue, why not fix it? The scams are coming from the client side and not the freelancer side. I don't know what the process is for clients to post opportunities and what checks are in place to ensure they are legitimate, but I get the impression that identity verification is stricter for freelancers than clients based on my observations. The has to be a better way to filter out scammers from the platform.

[martina_plaschka]

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Brandon J wrote:

If it is such an issue, why not fix it? The scams are coming from the client side and not the freelancer side. I don't know what the process is for clients to post opportunities and what checks are in place to ensure they are legitimate, but I get the impression that identity verification is stricter for freelancers than clients based on my observations. The has to be a better way to filter out scammers from the platform.

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You are partly correct, clients are not required to verify their identity and the platform tries to make it easy for them to use and post jobs. Scams are coming from both sides, though. There are freelancer profiles that are copied from other people, wrong information, lots of accounts of freelancers never delivering any work, trying to get paid outside of upwork, and pretty much everything else you can imagine. 

If freelancers would read the ToS and abide by them, it is practically impossible to fall for a scam. But most of them don't read them or feel they don't apply to them. Then they complain about upwork not doing enough to protect them, which is hardly fair, since that only happens if the freelancer does not follow the rules he signed up for. 

[feed_my_eyes]

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Brandon J wrote:

If it is such an issue, why not fix it? The scams are coming from the client side and not the freelancer side. 

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Actually, there are plenty of scams coming from freelancers as well. 

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Brandon J wrote:

I don't know what the process is for clients to post opportunities and what checks are in place to ensure they are legitimate, but I get the impression that identity verification is stricter for freelancers than clients based on my observations. 

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It's completely different for freelancers than for clients, though. Freelancers spend a lot of time working on their profiles (at least, some of us do), and reviews are important to us, so there's not much of a temptation to abandon our accounts and sign up under a different email address. Clients have no such worries - if a scammer is kicked off, they can simply sign up again using a different fake name and a different email address (which they do - over and over again). If payment verification was required, they'd find a way around that as well. The only way to reduce or eliminate the scamming is to reduce the number of freelancers who fall for scams, thus making it a waste of time for scammers to operate here. 

[jbran64]

This makes sense. I am trying to understand what the scam is that we are falling for when they ask us to contact them via other means. Are they collecting user information to sell or what is their objective? In any case it is frustrating that the only way to solve the problem is by "being street smart". I'm sure there are many people who do not read the terms of service - it's 17,300 words.

The problem is as you state there are no repercussions for misbehaving clients. They can simply generate a new email address and create a new account. Even failing to pay a freelancer for the work they perfrom and defaulting has minimal consequences. Their account gets closed, but what does that matter if they can simply open up another one and repeat the game.

There's not enough "skin" in the game from clients in my opinion. There should be an investment made in order to post a job opportunity. For example a client could have to pay a portion of the cost of a job into an escrow account BEFORE their job post goes live. This would ensure only clients that are legitimately interested in paying for freelance services are attracted to the site and post opportunitites.

Heck, even charging clients $100 to post a job opportunity would curtail the problem. It would clean up the clutter on the site, reduce scam attempts because no one would pay $100 for the opportunity to steal someone's identity, and it would weed out the jobs where people are offering to pay $6 for a new company website. If there was more of a financial cost to clients to participate in the freelance market, they wouldn't be a need to play bad client account whack-a-mole anymore and not following the rules would cost clients their posting fee.

This is my proposed solution to the problem. It would lead to less job postings in the marketplace, but those job postings would all be real.

[feed_my_eyes]

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Brandon J wrote:

Heck, even charging clients $100 to post a job opportunity would curtail the problem. It would clean up the clutter on the site, reduce scam attempts because no one would pay $100 for the opportunity to steal someone's identity, and it would weed out the jobs where people are offering to pay $6 for a new company website. If there was more of a financial cost to clients to participate in the freelance market, they wouldn't be a need to play bad client account whack-a-mole anymore and not following the rules would cost clients their posting fee.

This is my proposed solution to the problem. It would lead to less job postings in the marketplace, but those job postings would all be real.

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You think that nobody has come up with this idea before now?

Imagine how you would feel if you went to a website and wanted to browse to see if there was something that you wanted to buy, but you were required to enter your credit card information and commit to spending $100 before you had even found what you wanted. Would you use that website, or would you go elsewhere?

The minimum charge here is $5/project, BTW. I think that it's too low, obviously, but if other freelancers want to work for that amount of money, how is that any of my business?

[jbran64]

In your example, buyers would not be charged to purchase anything, but sellers would be charged to sell something. That is indeed how Ebay works.

The connects mechanism sort of does what you proposed in your example. Freelancers pay for the opportunity to apply for opportunities and if they run out of connects they must purchase more connects to contnue applying to positions.

The burden is on the freelancer whereas the client is free to post nonsense jobs or try to run scams. Why not make the job "sellers" pay to post positions and attract talent instead of burden the folks needing the work? Unless UpWork has realized it may make more money from the freelancers' purchasing of premium memberships and buying connects than they would on charging clients to post jobs?

I don't know but I imagine there is a business decision that is guiding the current philosophy. Charging for job postings would solve the scam problem though.

[jbran64]

You think that nobody has come up with this idea before now?

No, I honestly didn't.