Completed first job and something's fishy....

[96169bc8]

Hi

I am new to this platform (less than a month). I created my profile, started browsing for jobs, found one that was interesting and applied.

I was supposed to do transcription of videos in Hebrew, but then it changed to doing QA for transcriptions. I accepted.

The deal was that I would have to do a small test and if I passed, the employer would send me a contract for 5$ on Upwork and then pay 20$ per audio hour checked. The reason for this arrangement is that their team communicates on Skype and they need to do the 5$ contract to employ on Upwork. I have no idea how they are supposed to pay the rest and it seems that every time I bring it up, they change the subject...

Anyway, I passed the test, started the project and did an hour and a half of audio QA.

I can see that the inital 5$ are held by Upwork in escrow and he still has not paid me the rest of the money.

So my question is:

1- how do I get Upwork to release the money

2- how am I supposed to get paid the rest of the money? Do I have to send the client an invoice or something?

Help!

Thanks

[759e32fa]

Hi Corinne,

Thank you for reaching out to us. I understand you have questions regarding the payment promised in your contract.

We do not recommend working on a milestone that is not funded. Since there was no fund for the $20 task, you cannot submit work for payment and invoice the client. The client would have to release this manually on their end by creating a milestone so you can resubmit work or they can issue a bonus payment.

As for the $5 payment, when your client releases a milestone or final payment on a fixed-price job, it immediately shows as pending on your financial account. Pending payments become available for you to withdraw after the standard five-day security period.

[96169bc8]

Hi and thank you for your reply.

I am still in contact with the client and he claims that I will be paid
this week after the work that I did is approved.
So I will be waiting and hopefully it will happen.
In the event I do not get the payment, is there anyway for you to intervene
and mediate?

I don't really understand how those milestones work to be honest. For this
job that I did for example, the client offered to pay 20$ per audio hour
checked. How do you break that down into milestones?
I understand that there is also an option to be paid per project but what
if I don't know how many hours the project takes?
Why isn't there an option of being paid hourly in the proposal?

Thanks
Corinne