Hi guys!
I recently responded to a job posting asking for someone to ghostwrite a book on the power of affirmations. The client interviewed me via Upwork's Zoom feature and said she thought we were a good match. I distinctly remember asking if she intended to interview anyone else for the position and at that point in time she said no. She indicated that she would send me a contract outlining the details of the work in the Messenger feature. Within a few minutes of the interview's end, I received the contract.
I messaged her to remind her that even if she sent me a contract, she still had to make me a job offer on Upwork and set up milestones. Throughout my interaction with her, she claimed she was new to Upwork and didn't know how to use those features. She even admitted that she "was warned once already" regarding her outreach to freelancers, but it was a genuine mistake. Her project entailed writing a short intro for the book (a test milestone), then the 30,000 word limit (split up into 3-4 other milestones). She claimed that when she tried to set up the milestones, the original job posting just disappeared. Keep in mind that if the original job goes away, I can't flag it. I've tried. I took all of this in stride, after all she seemed genuinely perplexed and after a year on Upwork, I'm still not always clear on lots of stuff here.
The red flags started waving when, a day after the interview where she absolutely loved me, sent me a contract and I hadn't signed it, she messaged me to say someone else contacted her out of the blue, providing an intro (for the milestone she claimed she couldn't set up) and it just blew her away. Therefore, she decided that she'd go with that person, but is hoping to maintain contact for future projects...because she is just so impressed with me :-).
Now it could just be that the dear lady is as clueless and hapless as her story suggests. Or, there's something more sinister afoot here. After all, she dropped me a line after everything to say, she forgot, she sent an invite to the person who responded. That person sent an intro that very same night. Keep in mind that this woman sourced this person on Upwork (by her own admission) and I am assuming, paid them for the job off of Upwork, since she doesn't know how to set up milestones. Last time I checked, Upwork had a huge problem with this sort of thing.
I'm just asking about it on the forum because I've had largely positive experiences on the platform so far and this is my first encounter with something like this. What exactly did I encounter here? Was this an attempted scam? Or a client who doesn't understand how the platform works? If it's the former, I hope I would have saved another freelancer by talking about it. If it's the latter, Upwork...you need to come get your clients. 🙂
Thoughts welcomed.
