Hey Everyone,
I am quite certain that there are lots of freelancers that have been providing various services to blockchain based projects and contracts for years same as i did, i haven't accepted jobs here in a while, and few weeks ago i accepted consultancy job which required me to perform some research initially but later down the road client asked me to give him 50% refund off platform which resulted me in reporting the client.
In turn, upwork suspended my account, for a while under suspicion of breaching upwork ToS (Cleared after a while) where they told me i provided my client with entirely differet service than i actually did. I never sold my client any crypto and charged hours for it..... I don't even have any idea how they came up with that idea in the first place, nor would i ever do something of a sorts, if need be il buy or sell via echange directly for myself. Perhaps eventually show someone how to do it in 1hr consultation! Not sell it to them via upwork. Makes 0 Sense whatsoever.
Ultimately, i provided client a service, afterwards reported him. and as a response from upwork i was told that my contract isn't eligable for payment protection and that all funds are returned to my client. Not to sell any cryptocurrencies via upwork anymore (Which i never done in the first place)
Today i was looking at job posts with Blockchain and cryptocurrency tags just to find countless clients without reviews posting same job posts over and over, some asking for wallets set up help, some for tutoring sessions and many others that if you run into the first time look entirely legit. Payment verified clients .
Which leads me to a question?
Shouldn't upwork be protecting it's freelancers instead of unrightfully accusing each one that accepted any job of such a kind that ends up being posted by a fraudlent client of selling crypto to them? Refusing them a payment protection and creating an ideal place for scammers?
This is the way i see this :
Consequences for a freelancer:
Provides a service, whatever that may be.
Gets his money taken.
Risks losing his account on fake charges provided by upwork.
Consequences for scammer :
Gets job done,
Loses account, which can be solved in an instant by opening another one with a new email. (Without any verification)
Gets money returned to him!
Scams more people.
Id really like to know why hasn't upwork been doing anything to protect us from such Clients/Scammers and is instead punishing freelancers.
Why isn't payment verification process stricter? At least as hard as verification for freelancers?, and should we even be doing business with clients that don't have 10+ jobs completed at all? What is going to become of upwork as a platform if we stop risking our income from new clients by assuming they are all scammers?
in the end i was told i wasn't payment protected because clients account wasn't in good standing (No idea what that even means) and not because of anything i did. Altrough please note :
At the begging of the contract i had payment protection badge next to the contract when i accepted the offer.
Making me believe that upwork is supportive of this scammer scheme.
Thank you all for reading and i am wondering what others in this industry think, and how should we tackle this problem? And how to make upwork take responsible place. Because if we ''Freelancers'' are obligated to follow ToS set by them and pay fee's, Upwork should be obligated to protect us and follow those ToS as well not only at it's convinience but always.
Best Regards!
Goran
