Messages After Proposal But Before Contract

[c5cc1230]

After I submitted a proposal, I was contacted by the poster in Upwork.messages.  Asked for some sample content, which I provided a day or two later.  Now asking me to contact through an outside app.  

Just read some other posts.  Guessing I was scammed?

If someone who works at Upwork is reading this, feel free to go through my messages to figure it out. 

[ArjayM · Accepted solution]

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you for reaching out and reporting this here in the Community. I would like to let you know that sharing contact information before a contract has started is against Upwork's Terms of Service and that all communications prior to the contract starting must take place on Upwork.

I have shared this with the appropriate team for further review and they will surely look into this and take action accordingly if necessary. We also encourage you to let us know if a TOS violation has happened by using the Flag as Inappropriate option throughout the platform. You can learn more about user reporting here.

Additionally, You may want to check this help article and this thread for more information on how to stay safe on Upwork. 

[c5cc1230]

Thank you.  So what do I do now?  I don't want to assume the person's trying to scam me.  Maybe they forgot.  Should I ask them for a contract and remind them not to share contact info?

[c5cc1230]

Well...the the messages have been deleted, so now there's zero chance I get anything from the work I started, and all that time was wasted.  To Upwork staff–please consider whether or not this is the best way to handle this.  Do I even get the connects refunded?  Seems like the incentives here are counterproductive.

[LuiggiR]

Hi Jonathan,

I'm sorry to hear how this has inconvenienced you. If you can no longer see the message room on your end it means that the job you are referring to it's already been canceled for violating Upwork TOS. In addition, please know that you should avoid working on a project before a contract is in place.

Regarding the Connects, these are returned whenever a project’s post is removed because we believe it violates our Terms of Service. I can see that you were already refunded for those, you should be able to see that by going to Reports > Connects History.