Few days ago, I received an email stating that my client was refunded. Now, if it was an hourly contract I would kinda understand that maybe the client failed to pay (which is still unfair for a freelancer who thinks he is protected by the so called "Hourly payment protection") but in my case, it is a fixed-price contract and the contract has ended in good terms. My client was satsified with my work and released my money. Everything was going fine then this refund popped out of nowhere.
I reached out to the upwork support and explained the situation to them and provided them with the necessary information to look into this issue and to my surprise support got the nerve to question my work. They qualified the contract as :
- "paying way higher than my usual rate" (120$ fixed-price contract for a job that took more than 5 hours to complete);
- "may not match your profile skills" (I'm a certified network security expert and the job was answering questions about computer network);
- "pressuring you to finish at a very limited period of time" (the deadline was in two days, last time I checked 5 hours of work in 2 days is way more than reasonable. Plus, deadlines set for my jobs is none of support business.);
- "promising huge amount and bonuses" (120$ for 5 hours ?? you call that a bonus !)
- "too good to be true" (Really ? is this too good to be true ?).
In a later message, Upwork support stated that they have found compelling evidence of fraudulent activity by the client I worked with and that they've taken action to protect me. Now, how on earth reversing the payment after my contract ended is gonna protect me ? Protect me from what exactly? Protecting me from getting my money !
From my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), Upwork has an escrow system that holds the money paid by client so they can release later when the freelancer finishes the job and everyone is happy. This means that the money was already in upwork's hands and they reversed the payment to the client and left me unpaid. How fair !
