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cvcero
Community Member

I did not press any refund button, but I received an email saying I refunded money to a client.

I did not press any refund button, but I received an email saying I refunded money to a client

Can any staff check for me?

 

ref no: 174496798

**UPDATED 11/04/2018**
I just realized Upwork have covered up the payment that the client failed to pay.

I am both embarrassed and gracious to what had happened.

Anyway I would leave all my replies here for anyone who is in doubt as a reference.

Thank you very much for the Upwork team and the service provided!

17 REPLIES 17
cvcero
Community Member

My gmail account received the email at 12:21am HK time. The time now is 1:47am.

Over the last couples of hours I did not login into Upwork at all. I do not think there is any hacker who would hack in and refund a small portion of the money (84usd) but not all to the client.

The status of the refund is still pending (surprisingly this comes with service fee as well!). I urged for help from Upwork staffs.

Hi Mark,

I know it can be disconcerting to receive an alert that you have refunded money to a client. This usually happens when a client's payment method becomes unverified and the hours you logged didn't qualify for Upwork's Payment Protection. You will be receiving a notification with more detailed information about this from our team very shortly.

~Nina

 If any of the upwork staff has looked into the case with ref. no. I have provided, one should probably know the client has paused the project for a while. 
In this case why  am I the one who give the refund while I haven't received any payment yet? (And upwork is doing double-charge of both our parties when the money is transfered back and forth!)

And may I know who is the judge of the qualification for Upwork's Payment Protection? I did not make any manual time at all.

petra_r
Community Member

Mark, chances are your client did not pay Upwork, so Upwork examined your work diary and determined that the hours logged were not in accordance with the hourly protection so Upwork did not have to pay you out of their own pocket. Reasons could be:

  • you didn't include meaningful (!) work memos to describe the work you were doing.
  • your activity levels were low
  • your screenshots did not show you actively working on the client's work.

Any ONE of those will result in you not getting paid.

Have you discussed this with your client? After all, it is the client that owes you, not Upwork. What is your client saying about all this?

 

 

 


@Petra R wrote:

Mark, chances are your client did not pay Upwork, so Upwork examined your work diary and determined that the hours logged were not in accordance with the hourly protection so Upwork did not have to pay you out of their own pocket. Reasons could be:

  • you didn't include meaningful (!) work memos to describe the work you were doing.
  • your activity levels were low
  • your screenshots did not show you actively working on the client's work.

Any ONE of those will result in you not getting paid.


Or, all hours were entered manually instead of tracked.

 

Edit to add - it's also not clear if the project is hourly or fixed-price. If there's money sitting in escrow past 90 days, that is automatically refunded to the client. The freelancer states the project is "paused for a while," so this seems likely.

cvcero
Community Member

Firstly, thank you for answering--
HOWEVER, since you have read what I have stated "paused for a while", don't you read I have also stated that I did not key in any manual time? So this does not apply onto me.

2ndly, in what sense the client is owing me when Upwork is the side that is judging about my work and timelog,  and did the refund on behalf of me without even a prior warning/informing?

I will elaborate more about my case in the following replies for your readings if anyone is interested.

cvcero
Community Member

Everything happened in 1 month time. The project had been run for 2.5 weeks and the project has only been paused for 1 week until now.

*All dates stated are in 2018
To clarify:

Payment method: Hourly.
Working Hour limit: 40 (Before 28th March)
Working Hour limit: 50 (Raised to 50 on 28th March)

Hired/project started date: 11th March
Paused date: 28th March
Hiring period: 11th-28March (18 days)
Paid period (before Upwork's did a refund on my behalf): 11th March- 18th March
Paid period: 11th March-25th March (Client paid my work hr for the period 19th-25th March a few hrs ago.)

*I have just received an email from Upwork 1 hour ago.

As quoted from email: 
"We are writing to inform you that your client’s payment was unsuccessful for the week of March 19, 2018 - March 25, 2018. As such, we have reviewed your Work Diary and reversed funds that did not meet the criteria for Upwork’s Hourly Protection policy. ...

... Please note that the reversal will show up in your transaction history as a "Refund" even though the transaction was a reversal processed by Upwork. If your client approved the hours reported in your work diary, please ask them to make a bonus payment to you for the amount reversed."


AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

I'm sorry to hear that the payment for the hours logged noted on the email was reversed, Mark. I would recommend that you get in touch with your client and discuss how you can be paid for the work week noted. 


~ Avery
Upwork
petra_r
Community Member


@Mark K wrote:


2ndly, in what sense the client is owing me when Upwork is the side that is judging about my work and timelog,  and did the refund on behalf of me without even a prior warning/informing?


 Which part of "the client did NOT PAY" is so difficult to understand?

If a client does not pay Upwork, Upwork will pay you for hours which qualify for protection out of their own pocket. The hours which were reversed did not qualify, so Upwork is not paying you for those (out of their own pocket.)

The client never paid ANY of those hours, so how would anyone BUT the client be the person who owes you the money?

 

cvcero
Community Member

When I started this thread, the client paid me for the 1st week of work. It is only on the 2nd week, when the client has not paid me yet, then Upwork come to review, and decided to do the refund on my behalf by reviewing on my 1st week, and intended to deduct the earning that I have made in the 1st week. Understand now?

Now the client has paid my 2nd week of work(happened 10+ hours ago). And Upwork has deducted my pay through the refund.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Mark, 

I'm sorry but I think you misunderstood. On your ticket, the team noted the dates for which they client's payment was unsuccessful. The team reviewed your Work Diary, and reversed that funds for hours logged that did not meet criteria for Upwork's Hourly Protection policy. I hope this clarifies it for you.


~ Avery
Upwork
cvcero
Community Member

Alright.
I apologize if there's any misuse of wordings among my replies.

Overall it is the matter of wordings--
*All refers to my previous replies.
1) "...when the client has not paid me yet, then Upwork come to review..." = "the team noted the dates for which they client's payment was unsuccessful. The team reviewed your Work Diary..."

2) "refund" = "reversed that funds for hours logged that did not meet criteria for Upwork's Hourly Protection policy." I used the word "refund" as it is stated by Upwork under my history.

But the fact is, the hours the Upwork team checked on and claimed them as "did not meet the criteria" belong to the week whereby the client have fully paid me. Both parties were satisfied at that time. But now I am very disconcerting and unhappy.

petra_r
Community Member

No.

The client did *NOT* pay. That is the whole point.

**CLIENT DID NOT PAY!**

It just looked like that on your Reports while Upwork tried to make the client pay.

 

Have you spoken to the client?

 

You can avoid this happening again by making sure your hours qualify for protection, such as adequate activity levels, meaningful memos (always) and so on.

 

 

cvcero
Community Member

I think you should re-read my replies and understand the sequence of events.

If upwork has doubt on my work, then upwork should go after the hour of work that the client did not pay, not the  hour of work that has already been paid. It's the client "unsuccessful payment"/"did not pay yet" in the ***2ND WEEK*** that triggered Upwork to judge my work and timelog of ***MY 1ST AND PAID WEEK***, and make the "reverse funding"/"refund on my behalf" FROM MY 1ST WEEK.

 

This is disconcerting- If I have worked for 10 weeks, and only till the 11th week the client stopped the paying, is upwork going to check on all 10 weeks and make such "refund" for all 10 weeks? This is worse than working in office.

petra_r
Community Member

It goes like this:

 

You work a whole week, all right?

Then the Monday afterwards the client is charged.

It the charge does not go through, Upwork try again and only after several attempts fail, puts the contract on hold, so you may be on the second work week.

Then they look at the work diary of the first (!) week (even though you are at the end of the second week, workwise) to check.

The reversal then happens just before the funds move from pending to available (Tusday-ish of the third week in the sequence)

So you may "think" you ´"were paid" for the first week but you really weren't because Upwork didn't actually GET that money (and likely not the money for the second week either, so the whole process may repeat itself...

 

That is how it "usually goes down" anyway, clearly I don't know what exactly happened in your particular case...

 

 

cvcero
Community Member

I just realized Upwork have covered up the payment that the client failed to pay.

I am both embarrassed and gracious to what had happened.

Thank you very much for the Upwork team and the service provided!

jcullinan
Community Member


@Mark K wrote:

Firstly, thank you for answering--
HOWEVER, since you have read what I have stated "paused for a while", don't you read I have also stated that I did not key in any manual time? So this does not apply onto me.


No, because you edited that into your post after I replied. It was also not clear from your original posts that this was an hourly contract and not a fixed-price.

 

Screen Shot 2018-04-04 at 12.28.55 PM.png

 

 

 

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