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wizew
Community Member

Refund a Client

A client set a writing gig's project fee at $1500. I submitted work for review and he went missing for over a month. As I had submitted the work through the Request for Approval function, Upwork automatically paid me the full fee after two weeks -- the client was not commenting at all, so that is Upwork's process.

a month or so later, the client turns up and asks for a $1,000 refund. He assumed my submission was final (it wasn't; I asked them to review before approval) and claimed it was far from final or useable. He claimed (truth or dare?) that he'd hired someone else to "complete my work". Why not get in touch with me? Dunno.

Upwork processes don't let me refund the $1,000 as I don't have that much payable to me any given week (most of the time).

I've told the client he can have the money; I can't give it to him. I need to have my weekly payments held back or something to get that refund to him.

the REAL problem is no live agent to speak to at Upwork to make this happen. The ChatBot thing was useless (even told me the case was "solved"--NOT!)

Any tips here?

10 REPLIES 10
spectralua
Community Member

You have default Payment Method set? Can pay from.

Or disable automatic payment schedule to collect required amount in account.

feed_my_eyes
Community Member

Do not give the client a refund. This is a scam in which someone deliberately overpays you and then asks for a refund; if you give a refund, there will be a chargeback (probably because the credit card was stolen), and then you'll lose money. Tell the "client" to dispute via Upwork. The longer this drags out, the better it is for you.

I agree with Christine.

 

Why would you agree to give the client any sort of refund?

The client hired you to do a task. You did the task. You received the money for that task.

 

The client should be ashamed for having even thought of asking for a refund.

 

It does not matter if the client is a scammer or simply a bad person. The client should not have asked you for money. Is the client going to return your time to you?

Yes!

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Tamma, 


I looked into this, and it sounds like there was a misunderstanding with the process. When you submit work, your client will have 14 days to review the work your submitted. They can ask for revisions during this time, and when you submit a revised version of your work, the 14-day count will reset. They may also pay you before the 14-day review period is over. In your case, they missed responding within 14-days which is why the payment was automatically processed to your account. You may read more about it here.

Since it seems you and the client had an agreement about the refund, I will ask for help from the Customer Support Team so that they can reach out to you and assist you further with this. They will reach out to you directly through an email support ticket. 


~ Avery
Upwork
7bbd316f
Community Member

Hi Avery, not the same topic but similarish. How long does it take to remove the public review after a full refund? I issued a refund almost a week ago. The money is already gone, the job does not occur in total jobs anymore, but the not-so-great review is still there.

Hi Lukáš,

 

Thank you for your message. Please allow 24-48 hours for the contract to be removed from your Upwork profile.

 

Thank you,

Pradeep

Upwork
shummas
Community Member

Why would you consider refunding him? The contract was active, you submitted the work for review, and he had 14 days to request a revision. But the client went MIA, and now his time's far gone. Whatever he assumed, that's on him. I don't see how one can simply go out of the loop for an entire month after hiring someone. All he had to do was check his phone.

He can go ahead and dispute it via Upwork, but I don't think that would be of much help at this point. If he hired someone else to do a part of your work behind your back without communicating it to you, that's on him. The man literally just hired two people to do the same job, if that's true! Hilarious 😂

Again, all he had to do was send a short text message to inform you, but he didn't. Your client's either a scammer or just extremely lazy with communication, and you shouldn't be the one to cover for his losses. 

renata101
Community Member

Hi Tamma,

As a few others have mentioned, I would proceed cautiously on this one. There are a lot of refund scams happening on the board at the moment. That's where a client overpays on a contract and asks the freelancer to pay them using an alternate payment method. Months later, the freelancer will be hit with a chargeback from a card company for whatever they've earned (usually because they've been paid with a stolen credit card). So there's a possibility that might be happening here.

I'm not sure if this fits the regular pattern, but a few things about it definitely seem odd. The part about hiring someone else to finish your work rather than simply talking to you (and perhaps explaining the long absence) doesn't make sense. That's not to say I've never encountered a client who doesn't make sense (but I normally bypass their jobs if this becomes apparent early on).

You might look at this article to see if anything Wes mentions seems familar:
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Community-Blog/Top-Red-Flags-for-Scams-From-Community-Member-Wes-C/b...

I'm trying to imagine what might happen in the event that this is a legit client (even though what you've described weighs heavily in the other direction). Did you have any sort of agreement about how you would handle revisions?

I'm looking at the job posting. A few red flags I see are that the client had no hiring history (so it's hard to know what sort of experience others hand with him), and altough the client's organization does show up with hits in a Google search, no one outside the organization has written anything substantial about them. Considering the topic the client wanted you to write about, that might make me a little wary about dealing with them.  If they were a non-profit offering grief counselling, I might not view it in the same way, but it seems like they're talking about selling the method. That along with the rest of what you've mentioned would have some alarm bells ringing.

roberty1y
Community Member

You're an experienced freelancer, but this trick may be new to you, because it's only really begun showing up in the last month or two.

 

The client gets a refund outside of Upwork, and then the bank takes back the money all over again, because it was a stolen or misappropriated card. So, if you refund the money outside of the site, it means that not alone did you work for free, but you paid the client for the privilege of working for him. 

 

Even if it's not this type of scam, there's no logic in giving back the money, because he's already given you a bad review (which you can remove anyway, being top rated). Giving him a full refund won't in itself remove the private feedback. 

 

You would have revised the job if he'd asked you, but he didn't. If he really went and hired someone else, that's entirely his choice and his problem. 

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