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Sergey's avatar
Sergey G Community Member

Permanent account suspension for Top Rated Plus freelancer without any explanations

Hello Upwork,

 

We have a big community of Eastern European freelancers. Our friend Victor's account has been recently suspended without any explanations or reasons given. Victor is not the first one who faced this problem and we've heard about such cases before with both new and old members. We know about all possible reasons which can lead to account suspensions but it looks like none of these reasons are applicable to this particular case. We are heavy concerned that honest Upwork freelancer can be blocked without the reason and lose the ability to use the platform he used for many years.

 

Here is his profile URL: **Edited for Community Guidelines**


He has Top Rated Plus badge, 5k+ hours and $100k+ earnings and verified identity (both ID and video call from 2019).

 

Obviously he has lost access to his Upwork profile thus he can't connect with anyone from the platform except via the social networks.

 

We would like to expose our concerns about this situation and our future on the platform. Nobody wants to be permanently suspended.

- How can we help to improve the verification process and decrease number of invalid suspensions?

- How can we know the reason of this particular account suspension in order to meet the policy for other members in the future?

- Do you have some contact which can be reached out regarding such suspensions and explain the reasons?

 

Thank you!

53 REPLIES 53
Ivan's avatar
Ivan M Community Member

It is not even a single case during the last week – I've seen another top-rated freelancer banned where Upwork also has not provided any reasoning for the ban, not even vaguely pointed to a section in the ToS.

 

So, no warnings, no explanations, and also stealing the already-reviewed money that banned freelancers haven't withdrawn to their bank accounts.

Ivan's avatar
Ivan M Community Member

And please don't say "We don't take suspensions lightly here at Upwork" in this thread, we've all already seen it on screenshots and in Twitter.

 

Start telling freelancers the ban reasons and re-examine the latest cases to make sure there are no false positives. Any other reaction is just corporate speak and avoiding responsibility.

Balavignesh's avatar
Balavignesh M Community Member

My partner account has been permanently suspended. Can i use the credit card of my partners, where he was using as billing method on suspended account? using that credit card will ban my account?

Aleksandar's avatar
Aleksandar D Community Manager

Hi Balavignesh,

 

Please use the method you are authorized to use. If any issues arise, the Upwork team will notify you directly.
 
Thank you.
~ Aleksandar
Upwork
Richard's avatar
Richard M Community Member

NA

Denis's avatar
Denis Z Community Member

Unfortunatelly this concerns me as well. Seems like it wouldn't be an issue if we had at least a reason and an ability to dispute the case. I believe that a support agent have to provide some kind of explanation on why they decided to ban someone, at least for internal statistics. There shouldn't be any major obstacles for upwork to also share this information with us freelancers. Thanks.

Armen's avatar
Armen M Community Member

Unfortunately, this is a well-known and an ongoing problem that, in my eyes, makes Upwork a platform that I cannot trust both as a former freelancer and a current client. Because of such cases, we avoid hiring key people at Upwork as this can happen to anyone for no sensible reason, with no explanation and without any kind of responsibility taken by Upwork as a platform.

The key point here is that this kind of behavior means that neither freelancers nor clients have any kind of stability and protection of their rights on this platform, so a potentially useful tool becomes a dodgy service that I'll never recommend to other individuals and startups until there's a reasonable and a well-established process of handling false-positives such as this particular case.
Valeria's avatar
Valeria K Community Member

Sergey and others,

 

We are unable to discuss the details of another user's account here for privacy and security reasons. The team will thoroughly review the account for TOS violations and communicate directly with the account owner.
Please, check out this help article for more information about the most common reasons for the freelancer account holds.

~ Valeria
Upwork
Ivan's avatar
Ivan M Community Member

Valeria, we are not talking only about the specific user (though re-examining his case is a must), we are talking about a systemic issue: how Upwork treats freelancers who have invested years in its platform and earned Upwork tens of thousands of dollars with their labor.

 

Why would we stay on your tinderbox of permanent bans out of nowhere without a right to appeal? Why would those of us who hire via Upwork continue doing it when we can lose our contractors at any moment?

Denis's avatar
Denis Z Community Member

You're right, it's definitely a private information.

 

Let's instead discuss the approach used in these scenarios. Is there any possibility it could be modified to suit both parties? It would help all of us achieve our goals: for us freelancers to have a platform we could rely on; for Upwork to be the place your clients could have a longterm relationships which won't be interrupted at any moment without any particular reason. And I want to emphasize this, clients have their own reasons to keep a contact with us workers, it could be a deadline or anything else. Thank you.

Armen's avatar
Armen M Community Member

The community Sergey is talking about has more than 2000 members. Sounds like a great opportunity for both sides to cooperate and work together to make the platform better for everyone. For example, adding an official Upwork representative to the community could be a brilliant step.

Mikhail's avatar
Mikhail N Community Member

Hey, Valeria!

First and foremost, I appreciate you coming forward and providing an answer in this thread so swiftly. However, I believe that the core message was missed, most likely because you have to deal with quite a bit of such requests on the regular basis.

I'm certain that this comes from a place of good intentions, so let me try voice my concerns in a way that I think you'll find it easier providing a tangiable answer with respect to the guidelines refarding PII that I'm sure you have to adhere to.

 

I have been active on the platform for over 6 years now, with 3500h+ and $200k+ earned. In the past couple of years I'm consistently paying Upwork over $5000 yearly in fees, which instantly makes it the most expensive work-related service by far. I believe Upwork acts as a great discoverability platform, but I believe that the most valuable aspect of Upwork is the Public Track Record that it provides. Anyone, at any time, can gauge your professinal life with clear numbers and quantifabile feedback. And I'm willing to shell out $5000 yearly for that alone. 

Being a reputation platform, I believe, it is absolutely paramaount for everyone on it to have transparency. And the platform should be the most transparent actor here - towards both freelancers and clients. If the platform (Upwork) fails to be transparent with me regarding the enforcement of rules and proceeds to do seemingly nothing about rampant bans with no actionable and clear reason for it - it makes it incresingly difficult for me to bring more of my clients to the platform and to continue to justify spending five thousand USD+ every year for a reputation platform that can collapse around me any moment.

I would appreciate if you could escalate this issue and make our voices heard internally. This has been an issue for a long time, and it's time to make a change. I'm putting aside how stressfull it can be for a person to go through such a humiliating process, I'm putting aside reputational damage when freelancer's clients will be informed of suspencion, I'm putting aside a lot of things - others expressed and will express it rather well.

Having an answer which directly address the pain points that I've mentioned above would demonstrate that Upwork is willing to acknowledge the areas where it can improve, and I hope to recieve such a reply.

Daniil's avatar
Daniil R Community Member

This is not the first time I hear about Upwork being unresponsive and unfair. I clearly remember at least 3 cases when it took a lot of efforts of a lot of people in community for upwork to just admit its mistake and revoke people accounts. 

 

I really want to hear back from you, Upwork representatives, on what can do to keep us calm and continue our long-term relationships on this platform. I am working on long-term projects only. I already have one project where I am eligible to go out from platform without charges according to ToS, but I keep working through Upwork and bring more people here, although I find them outside of Upwork. I am really interested in making each side happy: the client, Upwork and freelancer, I care about client experience and make their products succesfull and efficent, I respect upwork rules and bring more people here (I promoted Upwork on local conferences, found people for my client locally to work on Upwork, I help people with recommendations in chats), but what Upwork does to keep me loyal? Restricts me from communicating with client in the way we both want (e.g. use calendly to schedule our meeting, we both have tight schedules, so what's the crime if we ended up working through upwork?), bans people with proven record of high earning and happy clients. 

 

It seems for me like it's easier for upwork to find new people than to care about communite. 

 

Valeria, you don't have to reveal any private information. To be fair, at this point I won't be satisfied if Upwork will just revoke his account as we will get explanations. I want to know what Upwork is ready to do for my to feel that my contribution is valueable and respectfull. For now it seems for me that I will be thrown away like a garbage without any discission only if your algorithms will falsely consider that I violate ToS somehow.

Zeeshan's avatar
Zeeshan Z Community Member

I like your this sentence ( For now it seems for me that I will be thrown away like a garbage without any discission only if your algorithms will falsely consider that I violate ToS somehow.) and you are right. 

Richard's avatar
Richard M Community Member

NA

Oleg's avatar
Oleg Z Community Member

I am a Top Rated Plus with 400K+ earned for the last 5 years.

I never had a ban, but I cannot trust the platform and feel safe.

 

You can get a ban for unclear reasons. I know freelancers, who get banned because they used public VPNs. Yes, some of them got their accounts back again after long and unpleasant explanations to the support. But I didn't find any rule against VPN usage in TOS.

 

After that I deleted the Upwork application from my Iphone, because I use VPN in my iPhone from time to time, and I don't want problems. Is it normal?

 

I withdraw earned money every week. It costs me $120 every month, and I would prefer to do this every 2 weeks and save my money, but I don't want to lose my earnings, because someone in Upwork could decide to ban me just because he sees 'irregular activity' or maybe he's just in a bad mood today. Is it normal?

 

I'm ready for alternatives to Upwork, I'm ready to work directly with my clients, because I can lose my account anytime.


Is it possible for Upwork just think about it? Become more open, clear and honest? I don't know. But this is not trust and not safety.

 

 

Richard's avatar
Richard M Community Member

NA

Gregory's avatar
Gregory B Community Member

Checking in to voice my take on the situation. At some point I also was randomly banned and it took me enourmous amount of stress and time to "un-ban" myself.

 

Lack of transparancy and easy ways to really discuss such events require re-evaluating. Upwork has become a sole source of income for many sincere professionals. Knowing that it might or might not go away in a blink is not acceptable.

 

All the best and thank you,

Gregory.

Oleg's avatar
Oleg Z Community Member

Personally I decided to not spend time on Upwork if I get banned.

 

Yes, Upwork is a big marketplace, with many advantages, but the world is much bigger, and there are a lot of opportunities for good professionals. I don't want to spend time trying to protect myself in the place where you in fact have even no right to get a simple explanation why you was kicked off the platform.

Tom's avatar
Tom Z Community Member


Oleg Z wrote:

Personally I decided to not spend time on Upwork if I get banned.

 

Yes, Upwork is a big marketplace, with many advantages, but the world is much bigger, and there are a lot of opportunities for good professionals. I don't want to spend time trying to protect myself in the place where you in fact have even no right to get a simple explanation why you was kicked off the platform.

 


But why would Upwork ban you though? Have you done something wrong? I just don't see how Upwork would ban you, you are bringing them revenue... unless there's some serious repeated offense on your end.

Richard's avatar
Richard M Community Member

Sadly, It still seems  its too easy to get incorrectly banned.

Alexey's avatar
Alexey S Community Member

Can we have the Upwork representative here?
How many Kudos is enough to be noticed? 112 is not the number?

Anna's avatar
Anna N Community Member

Hi Community members, 

 

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. I lead Trust and Safety here at Upwork and want to reiterate that we do value your concerns and points of view. 

 

I have read all of your comments and shared them with my broader team to ensure that your feedback is fully heard and that we take meaningful actions to support you. Our freelancers and the experiences you have on the Upwork platform are a key priority for us. 

 

Ultimately, our goal is to foster a safe, professional, and trustworthy marketplace. We always aspire to catch bad actors with minimal impact on good users. It’s a nuanced balancing act but it is an important one that we realize has real implications on people’s lives. Our intention is certainly not to create an atmosphere in which you are concerned about your personal profile’s security.

 

We have several projects underway that we expect to address many of the concerns here. For example, we are actively working on more user-friendly processes that enable freelancers to continually verify their identities and provide us with the necessary information to keep Upwork safe for all on the platform. Our team will share more details about this and other improvements over the coming weeks.

 

Given the feedback in this particular thread, I can commit that we will also work on providing more transparency on an individual basis and providing freelancers support they need. We will continue to make decisions in the best interest of all of our stakeholders but we will strive to be more accurate and more transparent.

 

We use feedback like this to drive continual improvement. Thank you for raising this issue, and please keep the feedback coming. This is how we get better and we sincerely appreciate your help here. 

 

Many thanks,

Anna

Mikhail's avatar
Mikhail N Community Member

Anna, let me start by admiring the speed with which this whole conversation is moving. I personally appreciate that you answered our call in such a manner and I'm sure community does too.

Moving to the contents of your message, I can't express how happy I am to see a message that addresses most of our concerns whilst paraphrasing them and addressing point by point, and from a lead of Trust and Safety to boot.

If you would, I'd like to ask for a bit more concrete info on the projects underway. Naturally, you can't disclose too much, but having something like "Q3/Q4 2020" or like "Q1/Q2 2021" timelines for the projects, as well as their general outline would, I'm certain, really help the community feel more secure continuing pouring our heart and soul into our work and being sure that our favorite platform will be improving in the very specific ways that would be graciously provided by you. 

Is that something that you would be able to provide to us as a way to back up your commitment, or we would have to make do with the general outline provided by you earlier?