Our freelancer was offered to go outside Upwork and it went bad

[kateaensland]

Hi!

So here's what happened, I got hired (through Upwork) by this digital media agency a couple of months ago as their project manager, then they made me their hiring manager and gave me access to hiring freelancers. I handle multiple social media projects and my main job is to find freelancers to do the social media graphics and captions on a monthly basis. I've only hired 1 person since I was given access. He's done a great job on the first project so instead of looking for another person to do the other projects I decided to keep him in all of my projects (with the owner's permission of course) then came the time that this freelancer is doing 5 projects with us, the owner offered on the phone during one of our meetings that in order for the Freelancer to save some money from Upwork's fees, he's willing to pay him through Payoneer instead. The first month outside Upwork our boss was 10 days behind payment. This month he's 15 days behind. Now, this freelancer is insisting that I pay him through Upwork either by creating a new contract or via a bonus from the last contract we ended. He wants me to do it behind my employer's back and has threatened me that he will mention my name in the Freelancers Facebook Groups and ruin me. Our employer owes him $700. I begged him to settle the payment already but he always changes the topic every time. I'm caught in the middle of this mess 😞 what should I do? 

[petra_r]

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Katherine P wrote:

...what should I do? 

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Report them both to Upwork so they get dealt with (suspended/ banned for paying and receiving payments outside Upwork)

Oh... wait... you just did that with your post.

[ronlorraine]

In reading your post it seems to me that you and your client have broken Upworks TOS. To explain you were hired by a client hourly to hire other freelancers. So that makes you an agency and doesn't give you the right to find freelancers to work off of the platform for your client.

I may have read this wrong and if so "sorry". If not then best if you and others like this are removed.

[petra_r]

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Ron M wrote:

In reading your post it seems to me that you and your client have broken Upworks TOS. To explain you were hired by a client hourly to hire other freelancers.

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No, she was giving recruiting rights on the client's account, which is perfectly above board.

The client, in a phone call to the other freelancer, suggested the disintermediation.

It does not sound like she played an active part in that.

However, I am sure both the client and the other freelancer will truly love her for ratting them out on a public forum once Upwork deals with them. The freelancer will likely lose his Upwork account.

[kateaensland]

Hi Petra, this is exactly what I'm going through right now. Our client seems to not care enough and the freelancer blames me for not getting paid because technically I was the one who interviewed him and hired him, I just wanted to quit the job so I don't get involved anymore. 

I still have hiring access and the freelancer wants me to just give him the payment as a bonus so we can all move on. Now the freelancer thinks I've conspired with our client and that "we" as a company has really no intentions of paying him at all. 

I might just quit. The 10 hours per week is not worth the headache, I feel bad for the freelancer thou. He seems to be a nice person, he's just fed up with all our client's excuses. 

😞

[AveryO]

Hi Katherine, 

I'm sorry to learn about your experience with this client. I was unable to identify the contract you were referring to on your post. If you can please share the Contract ID for the contract you are referring to, I will look into this further. 

ETA: Katherine, I sent you a private message so that we can discuss this further. To everyone, thank you for participating in this thread. We are now closing it from further replies.