Maybe ask for help FIRST?

[tlsanders]

Not sure this is the best way to address this, but there's a pretty significant pattern in the forums of freelancer postings that follow this template:

Client did (fill in awful or threatening thing)

I did (fill in thing there's no fixing now that I've done it)

What should I do?

Obviously, there's no value in asking for advice after you've randomly grabbed a solution out of the air and applied it, so what I suspect is happening is that freelancers are panicking, acting instantly out of fear or anger, and then realizing too late that they may not have solved the problem--or may have made it worse. 

So, I'm just tossing out for any newer freelancer who isn't yet in this situation that panic-based decisions usually aren't great ones and it would be a good idea to take a deep breath and ask for advice BEFORE you refund money, leave a multi-paragraph response to bad feedback, end a contract without having been paid for the work you did, etc. There are almost no situations on Upwork that require instant action.

[spectralua]

I agree with you. But it was before, now, and will be. You can do nothing with that. This your topic also will be readed after. Noone will read ToS before, noone will read forum, nothing. Sory, but as-is. 😶

[d9fc6d8d]

The people who don't ask for help beforehand are the same people who don't bother reading the terms of service. Personally, I think they deserve whatever comes their way.

It would be nice if Upwork reinstated its Readiness Test, making it mandatory and harder for every freelancer before they are allowed to submit proposals. But since Upwork is now an open bar, that's not going to happen.

[celgins]

Yep. And I'm guesstimating that 55% of the posts in these Forums are about freelancers being scammed. Only a small portion (2%) of those are freelancers at the beginning of a suspected scam, and they come here to ask questions of more experienced freelancers.