I’m late to this thread thanks to hurricane prep and trying to push as much work out the door before I lose power, and I wouldn’t even post this, but from Stan’s and Valeria’s responses, it’s not clear to me at all that y’all get why some of us are bothered by this.
This change was and continues to be extremely poorly communicated and it’s still very unclear to me whether completing this form and paying the dollar for long-term relationships is required.
Many (most?) of the people posting in this thread are ones that pay close attention to Upwork’s terms because the service is important to our businesses. We encourage newbies to pay attention to the terms, both in these forums and in others. Stan, you said that 1% of SaaS users read the terms. I don’t doubt that. Upwork is not a SaaS. If Airtable, for example, blocks me because I violated terms I haven’t read, I don’t care. If Upwork does so, I care, because it’s the source of a large chunk of my revenue. But I don’t reread the terms constantly. I (apparently foolishly) rely on Upwork to post meaningful updates to trigger me to review them again.
Up until this change, the wording on the help pages regarding taking clients off Upwork said something like after two years we are encouraged to let support know, and I remember seeing similar wording from staff in the forum. But “encouraged" is not a requirement.
As many have pointed out, the update that Valeria linked to said nothing about requiring >2 relationships to go through the process and pay a token fee. (To be clear, I don’t care about the $1.)
So yes, when I saw that announcement, I went to the terms. From user agreement section 7:
You agree to communicate through the Site and make and receive payments only through the Site for two years from the date you first identify or meet your Client or Freelancer on the Site, unless you pay a Conversion Fee.
From this, it’s clear that the conversion fee applies for clients within two years. Not after.
From 7.1:
Therefore, except as set out in Section 7.2, for 24 months from the start of an Upwork Relationship (the “Non-Circumvention Period”), you agree to use the Site as your exclusive method to request, make, and receive all payments for work directly or indirectly with that person or arising from that relationship and not to circumvent the Payment Methods offered on the Site unless you pay a fee to take the relationship off of the Site (the “**Conversion Fee**”).
Again, from this it’s clear that that the fee applies within the first two years. Not after.
From 7.3:
You may opt out of the obligations in Section 7.1 with respect to each Upwork Relationship only if the Client or Freelancer pays Upwork a Conversion Fee which is a minimum of $1,000 USD and up to $50,000 USD for each Upwork Relationship, unless Client and Freelancer have had an Upwork Relationship for at least two (2) years.
Again, this is clear that the fee applies only within the two years.
And then later in 7.3:
If Client and Freelancer have had an Upwork Relationship for at least two (2) years, the Conversion Fee is a nominal $1 USD for administrative purposes.
Here we have a mention of the token fee. But everything above tells me the conversion fee only applies in the first two years.
So we go to the help article about the fee that Valeria linked to. The first FAQ “What’s the Conversion Fee?” starts with:
When you use Upwork to find a freelancer, we require you to use the Upwork platform to pay that freelancer for any work they complete for you for the following two years.
Again, this tells me this page applies to relationships within two years.
and
By paying the Conversion Fee, you can move your payments outside of Upwork without violating our Terms of Service (TOS).
So this says the conversion fee allows me to take payments outside of the platform without breaking TOS. Fine, but the TOS applies to < 2 years, not after. So why would I think the conversion fee applies?
Later, in the FAQ “I heard there were changes to the Terms of Service; what were those?” the full answer is:
We’ve recently made new updates to our Terms of Service that impacts users who may want to take their relationship outside of Upwork. The Conversion Fee is now 13.5% of estimated 12 month earnings and calculated differently for hourly and fixed-price projects. The Conversion Fee was formerly called the “Opt-Out Fee.”
This should explain all the changes to the TOS, but there’s nothing here about the change needing to go through the process after 2 years.
It’s only in the last question, “Are there exceptions to the Conversion Fee?“ is the need to submit the form for the $1 fee mentioned. But after all of the above, Why would we even read that far? Especially when the terms state in multiple places that the conversion fee applies within two years, not after.
So, if I take a long-term client off Upwork using my old process of “hey, we’ve been here > 2 years, let’s switch to direct-bill and be done with it”, am I breaking the TOS? I don’t think so, but I honestly can’t tell from the current TOS and help pages.
Circling back: You have a group of relatively high-earning freelancers (and hence high fee) who want to follow Upwork’s rules because it’s important to us that we are able to continue using the platform, but y’all have made it difficult for us to tell when the rules change and in this case even what the rule is.
And, like I said, this same group of freelancers I’m talking about encourages newbies to read the TOS to stay within the rules. But the impression I get from Stan’s post is “most users don’t read the TOS so why are they a big deal” and that providing adequate notice of changes is a cultural thing.
If Upwork doesn’t care about the terms, and doesn’t care if its users know about them and follow them, why should we?
