Freelancer unresponsive

[elag]

Hi, I'm relatively new to upwork and had someone respond to my job.
She said she needed all my files to give me the quote, before I hired her, which I stupidly handed over.  And now she is completely unresponsive. 
Which means I have no recourse and she can rip off my work.
How can I trust anybody on Upwork? She had 86% success rate and over 30k earned. Which indicated to me that I was dealing with a professional. 
What can I do about this? Can I put in a complaint?

[feed_my_eyes]

It's entirely common for freelancers to ask for all files from a client before accepting a job, and in your freelancer's case, it sounds like she decided that she wasn't interested in the project (although I agree that it was unprofessional of her not to tell you so - how long have you been waiting for a response?). It's unlikely that she wanted to steal your ideas, but in future, you should ask freelancers to sign an NDA before you send any sensitive information. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "She said she needed all my files to give me the quote, before I hired her, which I stupidly handed over."

It is not stupid.

I require all of applicable files before I provide a quote. Otherwise, how can I provide a quote?

re: "Which means I have no recourse and she can rip off my work."

I very much doubt she wants to rip off you work. She is here to earn money by working for clients. She has no interest in working for free. If she were to use your files for anything, then it means she is working for free. When she COULD be getting paid.

re: "What can I do about this?"

Nothing. Don't worry about this.

re: "Can I put in a complaint?"

Technically, you would try to contact Upwork Customer Support. But it would just be a waste of your time to do so. They are not going to do anything because the freelancer has not violated any Upwork rules. You don't even know if the freelancer is unresponsive. She may simply not have responded yet.

What you describe is rare. Usually a freelancer will get back to you with a quote within this amount of time. The freelancers are here to earn money, after all.

But if you want to be absolutely 100% certain that something like this can not happen again, then you can simply use an hourly contract.

If you hire a freelancer using an hourly contract, then you don't need to provide any files until after they have accepted the contract. And you don't need to provide them with everything all at once. You can provide some of it, see how they do, and then provide the rest when you're comfortable doing so.

[acgpakistan]

I am sorry that your first experience is far from ideal unfortunately there are quite a few very unprofessional freelancers available here which brings bad repute to other freelancers as well as the platform itself. As a rule of thumb I would suggest never to judge a freelancer based on earnings alone, success rate is somewhat important for sure but you should rather discuss the project in-detail, review the previous projects/experience, the feedbacks, portfolio/work samples etc at the end of the day you have to do your due diligence.  

You can talk to customer service but it will not lead anywhere. If you are pressed for time I would suggest finding a more appropriate freelancer. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "If you are pressed for time I would suggest finding a more appropriate freelancer. "

I agree.

If I'm pressed for time, I don't need to wait to hear from this freelancer.

I posted a job, I had 10 freelancers reply. I can send my source file to ALL of them and I can ask them ALL for quotes.

There is nothing wrong with doing so.

If I don't hear from one or two of them, that's fine. I receive feedback from 8 of them in a timely manner. I can hire as many of them as I want to. I can hire one. I can hire none. I can hire all of them.

As long as I pay everybody I hire to work for me, I'm not doing anything wrong.

Obviously if I'm in a big hurry with an important task that needs to be done, I'll hire multiple freelancers simultaneously.

If the deadline isn't so important, I can spread things out. I can hire just one person, and if they don't turn in the work by the deadline, I can close the contract and hire somebody else.

As a client, I often hire VERY quickly. It is not unusual for me to post a job stating that I want somebody to work with me "right now." Then I receive a few proposals. Sometimes if a freelancer takes 5 minutes to reply to my request that they get started with me, they'll end up not getting hired because I hired somebody else who replied within 3 minutes.

[BojanS]

Hi Ela,

I'm sorry about your experience with this freelancer. Our team will reach out to you directly to assist you with getting in touch with the freelancer and advise on further steps.

Thank you for reaching out to us!

[elag]

Thank you.

After I told her that I have to put in a complaint because I thought it was unprofessional of her not to communicate, she actually replied finally after 3 weeks.
Said she was unwell and never received my file. 
So I guess, lesson learned and all the above comments make sense.