Freelancer agreed to Stop Work on account, but he continued to bill the account.

[9047fd31]

Hello, I spoke to the Engineering Freelancer and told him I needed to pause his work. (I kept the contract open because the chemist needed to complete his work.)  On Tuesday Dec. 29 the Engineering Freelancer wrote to confirm his understanding, "Hello, I'm sorry that the project will be closed... please give me a couple of days to retreive all the work that has been done."- See attchment for his acknowledgement.

After confirming he understood his work was finished, see attached, he continued to tell Upwork he worked X number of hours per week in 2021. (It was an hourly rate with a cap.)

I did submit through upwork a request for refund for each of the payments after/post the conversation asking him to pause and stop work. He was concerned about his feedback rating and he said that if I leave a good rating that he could make payments back to me.

I left a possitve rating. Now he refuses to make payments (I do not exspect the whole amount to be paid in one lump sum, payments are fine.)

How do I solve this?

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

[feed_my_eyes]

Unfortunately, you made a mistake by not pausing the contract yourself; if you had done so, then the freelancer wouldn't have been able to continue running up the clock. And when you noticed that he was continuing to charge you (for several months now?), why didn't you put a stop to it? Then you made another mistake by letting the freelancer trick you into leaving good feedback; now he has absolutely no incentive to co-operate, and you can only challenge the hours from the past week.

It's very unfortunate that you got such a dishonest freelancer, and hopefully a moderator will come along and investigate your situation (if nothing else, his account should be suspended for feedback manipulation). 

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Tara M wrote:

Hello, I spoke to the Engineering Freelancer and told him I needed to pause his work. (I kept the contract open because the chemist needed to complete his work.) 

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I don't understand this statement. Are you saying that more than one person was using the same freelancing account? That's against the rules. 

[AleksandarD]

Hi Tara,

I'm very sorry to hear about what happened. We'll have one of our team members reach out to you directly to assist you further.

Thank you.

[prestonhunter]

re: "How do I solve this?"

The main thing to do is to learn from your mistakes and not make those same mistakes again in the future.