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jordonbaade
Community Member

Reportable, Common?

I just had the weirdest experience with a potential client ever on Upwork, after just having been harassed by a client I was working for last week when I used the time tracker against their wishes for the job they hired me for and their account got flagged.

 

Client has listing for a PDF upload and sharing service, right away gives off weird vibes saying multiple people quit on him implying it's because they found out it was about law enforcement and it's for his client who he's 'finanicially supporting' in law enforcement and asked if that'd be reason for me not to work on the job. I say no, ask if the person is note worthy other than being in law enforcement and what that has to do with PDFs, they ask if I like dogs, I say yes and they tell me that the app is all about K-9s and wants to get on voice to talk about it. 

I declined to get on voice because it's late here, offering to chat Monday about his project for 30 minutes, and asked if he had a budget range.  They responded by cancelling the proposal for too high a bid, and telling me about how wealthy they are and how much they spend ($900 spent here lol) on projects, and how many cars, homes, and vacations they have.  They're using a name and location of someone that shows up in orbituaries when I google the name and the way they communicated completely changed once they closed the proposal.

Was this another scammer do y'all think, what's your crazy stories or how do you spot these and avoid them?  Is it possible to report accounts like this, and should I even bother?  The only thing tipping me off is how utterly weird the conversation was and the name.

3 REPLIES 3
prestonhunter
Community Member

I don't believe in reporting people unless they clearly violate an Upwork TOS rule.

 

I can't report a person for being wealthy. Or goofy. Or claiming to be wealthy.

 

I can't report a person for having a name that you can google and find in obituaries. Google my name. You'll find it in obituaries and lots of other places. My full name is even the name of an upholstery fabric. So forgive me if I don't think googling a name is cause for reporting someone to Upwork.

Fair!

 

I don't want to report them for any of that, I want to report them for whatever it they're doing to try to scam work out of people.

He's also not a Sam Smith or anything close to that, the name is pretty unique, so while I appreciate your little quips, I'm not talking about just a run of the mill person or account and my being being overly paranoid or upset they didn't hire me.  I could tell almost right away that there was something off by this account, and it didn't take long for them to cancel my bid when I started asking questions because things didn't add up.

I think faking your profile, using a VPN to spoof your location to further that cause, and opening job proposals just to farm free work from suckers should be a violation - at least the first two.

Plus, this is the second scammer I've encountered in weeks after years on this platform.

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

That definitely smells bad. I would report to UW that they appear to be using a name that isn't theirs, along with the other things that smell like they're operating on the shady side. It's not clear how enthusiastically UW polices ToS violations when we report them, but IMO we should all continue to go through the motions whenever we can muster the will to do it. 

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