71–80 of 140 posts
>Provided the documents, went through the visual verification with a webcam, answered the questions, and solved the programming task live, ... Excuse me, WTF? You have to code something in order to get verified? (!)
- Set up fake profile
- Set up a bot army to vote you up
- Take clients money, never deliver or deliver some random crap duct taped together with ChatGPT README
Welcome to HN where we provide support after large corporations fail to do basic due diligence.
I'm interested in this post and others like it, not because of one person's story, but because it tells me something about a company's way to handle customer support, fraud detection and prevention and more.
I agree as long as that takes into account the fact that their system failed enough to warrant needing to go to HN in the first place. All too often we see something like this blow up on HN, get "resolved" and then the takeaway is "oh, I guess XYZ company really handles stuff" when in reality there are probably hundreds or thousands of other cases that weren't fortunate to get to the front page of HN to bubble up out of the AI support hell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would expect that to be illegal already in most jurisdictions. I believe in Germany you could argue it constitutes fraud. Either the client received the work and it’s fine, then the contractor is owed payment for the work. Or the client did not receive the work, then they are owed the payment that they made. Upwork permanently keeping the money from both sides is almost certainly not an option. They might be permit…
Yeah, I would hope so. But I mean in the more general case. If google closes your account with no recourse, they don't make any money from doing so, but if you bought into their marketing and relied on them, then you lose a lot of value. Companies encourage tens of thousands of consumers and businesses to rely on them, should be required to be able to be held to account by those they have led to rely on them.
For Google to make profit, they can just close your account and not hire humans and train them with enough internal organisation knowledge to politely and humanly handle these issues.
Better profit is to have automated/AI based system that closes accounts based some user reporting - which can be easily gamed.
Exactly the case where Bitcoin could be useful. I remember paying someone 0.6 BTC for a day's work processing a bunch of photos :) As to those sites, Fiverr proved the most convenient, hired a lot of contractors there. They accepted Bitcoin at that time, not sure about now.
Bitcoin is not an escrow, and crypto escrow is a joke for contracting - by the time you deliver the crypto value could be off insanely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is fighting it; in Germany this would cost quite a bit, even if you win. It should be a protection that if you cannot talk to a human who has mandate, you get your money back.
If you prevail in Germany, most of the costs are placed on the loosing party. It’s still a problem, but in a case as such, I would hand it off to a lawyer and see where it goes. The bigger issue here is likely that the upwork terms of service stipulate a court in the US, and that will be hard to pursue.
But yes, jurisdiction is an issue, however damage can be done; they don’t want to lose EU and these are violations of our laws so they should be hit hard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the uninitiated, mind explaining why TopTal (and the rest) don't look at all the same?
You go through an addmission process that's pretty much similar to an employement process (several interviews, technical interviews, tests etc). After you get in, most of the jobs you get are strongly limited to your particular skill (so you won't be able to see what coding jobs are available if you're a designer). Then, the customer aquisition process is slightly different, as you don't talk straight to the client w…
>Provided the documents, went through the visual verification with a webcam, answered the questions, and solved the programming task live, ... Excuse me, WTF? You have to code something in order to get verified? (!)
Fraud is likely a huge issue on Upwork - Set up fake profile - Set up a bot army to vote you up - Take clients money, never deliver or deliver some random crap duct taped together with ChatGPT README
But if upwork really wants to implement coding tests they have to do it BEFORE assigning customers to the developer. Especially before $10K have been spent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would expect that to be illegal already in most jurisdictions. I believe in Germany you could argue it constitutes fraud. Either the client received the work and it’s fine, then the contractor is owed payment for the work. Or the client did not receive the work, then they are owed the payment that they made. Upwork permanently keeping the money from both sides is almost certainly not an option. They might be permit…
Yeah, I would hope so. But I mean in the more general case. If google closes your account with no recourse, they don't make any money from doing so, but if you bought into their marketing and relied on them, then you lose a lot of value. Companies encourage tens of thousands of consumers and businesses to rely on them, should be required to be able to be held to account by those they have led to rely on them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I would hope so. But I mean in the more general case. If google closes your account with no recourse, they don't make any money from doing so, but if you bought into their marketing and relied on them, then you lose a lot of value. Companies encourage tens of thousands of consumers and businesses to rely on them, should be required to be able to be held to account by those they have led to rely on them.
Google loses money if they need to figure out whether account closing should be done or not. For Google to make profit, they can just close your account and not hire humans and train them with enough internal organisation knowledge to politely and humanly handle these issues. Better profit is to have automated/AI based system that closes accounts based some user reporting - which can be easily gamed.
Exactly the case where Bitcoin could be useful. I remember paying someone 0.6 BTC for a day's work processing a bunch of photos :) As to those sites, Fiverr proved the most convenient, hired a lot of contractors there. They accepted Bitcoin at that time, not sure about now.
a) OP is stuck in a cycle where he's inquiries are managed by bots and no human is actually verifying the claims.
b) OP breached the terms in a serious way and UpWork is not being transparent as of why they are deleting his account.
UpWork offers a lot of services for both freelancers and clients (escrow, payment protection, guarantees, etc), that's why they handle the money and keep them on platform until the job are completed. Freelancers know that they will get paid if they get the job done, while clients know that they money are safe if the freelance doesn't deliver. It's a trusted middleman. I don't see how bitcoin can solve any of these issues.