Upwork just stole $10k from me • Hacker News Board

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#91

Post by dannyr » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 12:53 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

goodpoint wrote: post #6

This is very serious. As these platform become bigger and bigger they become difficult to avoid for customers and workers.

Either a company would need to be extremely diligent about fixing workflow exceptions or they would be overwhelmed by the cost of support, especially across countries. And I used to work for a bank which took years to put password reset online, despite it being 25% of support calls. And we only operated in one province. Companies would need to fundamentally change their cultures to fix this kind of issue as often the…

It's not a free product. This transaction is over $10K. Users (developers and clients) deserve customer support for this kind of transaction.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#92

Post by ejanus » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #77

miohtama wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If clients keep paying it means they are happy with the work delivered. 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.

Do they do coding test? I have not heard that before.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#93

Post by Garlef » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #38

bsaul wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're in france and maybe europe malt is a good site

It would be helpful for downvoters to explain why this comment was down voted. Is it not available in Europe? Is it not called malt? Is it a shitty product? Did the parent not capitalise France?

Malt requires freelancers to publicly state their daily rate in order to be listed for contracts where they don't serve as an intermediary. (At least that's how I read their terms.)

"Publicly" in the sense of: Can be found via google.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#94

Post by ejanus » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #66

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.

Gitcoin is a place to go if you want to pay contractors with cryptocurrencies.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#95

Post by Laaas » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:14 PM UTC

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #88

moonchrome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly would be solved by Bitcoin here ? 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.

Currency stability is a relative and psychological issue; for someone in Russia, people holding USD are crazy adventurers, as value of US dollar fluctuated from 120 rubles to 50 and now back to 76, all within a year. For a Bitcoiner, a USD hodler irresponsibly lost 99% of his savings within a few years.

The important part is its value relative to the value of your expenses.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#96

Post by Laaas » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

nmfisher wrote: post #2

As a client, what are my alternatives to Upwork?

Why do you need a middleman in the first place?

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#97

Post by ejanus » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:18 PM UTC

i0nutzb wrote: post #45

zamnos wrote: post #34

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…

Why applying when you already knew what they would be paying ?

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#98

Post by not_your_vase » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:18 PM UTC

dannyr wrote: post #62

The crazy thing with these companies are they say you violated the user agreement but doesn't mention what specific policy you violated.

Can't comment on this case, but I used to work for a company that did similar verifications.

The omission of the exact reason is intentional - as an example, I distinctly remember seeing the same mistake appearing on photoshoped passport scans over and over again. If the exact reason would be told, bad actors could exploit it more easily.

With that said, this policy also causes false positives. The goal is to exclude as many bad actors as possible, while minimizing the number of false positives. But there will be always false positives unfortunately.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#99

Post by luciusdomitius » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

henpa wrote: post #40

I don't understand why all of these replies from the big companies come with something like "we are not able to revert this decision" somewhere in the text. It shows such an arrogance!

Upwork is a hellish abomination of a company. I did some contracting for them cca 7 years ago.

It all started with a final meeting with the CEO - the bald Greek guy with the same first name as me, who spent almost an hour of his (not so) invaluable time for the sole purpose of pushing me to drop my rate from $45/h to $40/h. Ultimately we agreed, but on the condition that it is a 20h/week assignment, so that I have time for properly paid work.

3 weeks later I got fired for only doing 30h/week. Even back in the day, when I first read the e-mail I chuckled :D :D :D

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#100

Post by Xylakant » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

prmph wrote: post #87

Xylakant wrote: post #52

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…

Quickbooks has taken almost $2000 of money, that my client paid for work done, for more than a year now. I registered for, and received the payment through, their merchant account, but later found out I did not qualify for it since I was not in the US. I understand if their fraud detection systems flagged something, but all they needed to do was to talk to the client and verify that it was a legitimate payment. They…

Likely a similar situation - either you or your client would be entitled to the money, but enforcement is impossible because of the prohibitive costs.

We have a few clients in the US and I’m always factoring in this issue when making contracts with them. If they decide to not pay a small to medium sum, collecting it will be impossible most of the time if they don’t have a subsidiary in Germany.