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Upwork just stole $10k from me

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Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#101

Post by joenot443 »

miohtama wrote: post #71
moralestapia wrote: post #20

>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

There are blackhat hacking forums with a better reputation and fraud protection system than Upwork. If all it takes is a “bot army” to make a profile seem legit, they’ve created this problem for themselves.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#102

Post by ilaksh »

moonchrome wrote: post #74
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.

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.

Actually with advanced cryptocurrencies this is false. One can build an escrow system that uses a stablecoin and does not require a third party. (It's also possible to build in different types of public arbitration if you want.)

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#103

Post by rad_gruchalski »

Xylakant wrote: post #70
anonzzzies wrote: post #64

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.

> 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.

All this means is that the losing party must reimburse your costs. Your lawyer is going to ask for money while the case is ongoing. So you need to have some serious money in advance.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#104

Post by beepbooptheory »

ddtaylor wrote: post #69
jrumbut wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I see it as a benefit to be part of a community that can help in these situations. I'm willing to have to scroll past one person's headache in the hope that if I suddenly lose my XYZ account I will be able to get redress through the same avenue.

> Personally, I see it as a benefit to be part of a community that can help in these situations. The problem is that instead of actually solving the issue we are normalizing the idea that if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment while everyone else gets screwed. If you're on YouTube and have a massive audience or are friends with someone that has a major audience you may be spared the wrath of a rogue AI th…

I don't really think its normalizing anything, this is unfortunately a pretty consistent pattern with the wider world. Kinda seems unrealistic to think HN or twitter could be better than the environment they're within.

People "deserve" things in our world for far far more arbitrary reasons than what you give here unfortunately.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#105

Post by rad_gruchalski »

not_your_vase wrote: post #98
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…

> 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.

Yes. We get it. And without doing that companies like upwork would have it prohibitively expensive to stay in business. And maybe for a good reason. That’s exactly the difference between any semi-large consulting agency and something like upwork. The former has people on payroll who can vet the client and the supplier, but due to that, there’s only so much business they can turn around. And then there are those companies like upwork who pride themselves with shit like “how we support 50k suppliers per one support staff member” (I came up with this particular one but it’s pretty reasonable for that to happen).

I mean, come on, it’s like your local traffic law enforcement agency sent you a letter:

Your driver’s license is now suspended and we are sorry to inform you that you have no recourse, you can never ever drive again. We cannot tell you why. All communication from you will be ignored. G’day.

Same, no? How the f** is that legal. The fraud is NOT my problem, it’s upworks problem. Get us on a level playing field. Provide a method for your client and supplier to sort it out using a transparent legal path. Same with google, facebook, twitter, whatever. And if the company cannot provide that, well, maybe their business is dubious. They can ruin you on a whim! And you have no recourse!

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#106

Post by redbell »

In unrelated topic, I always found the HN ranking algorithm hard to understand but this time, it is of another level. This story was ranked No.6 with 170 pts and 44 comments then I entered the comments’s section, spent just a few minutes, return back.. bum! It just disappeared from not the front page nor the 2nd neither the 3rd, it is in the 4th page, ranked 107 with 269 pts and 96 comments.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#107

Post by Xylakant »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #103
Xylakant wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. All this means is that the losing party must reimburse your costs. Your lawyer is going to ask for money while the case is ongoing. So you need to have some serious money in advance.

Serious money is relative: Standard fees in this case would be around 1850 EUR including relevant taxes, but only if it goes to court. Depending on the complexity of the case, your lawyer may ask for more, but that you’ll need to have with your lawyer. Also, legal insurance exists - if you’re doing serious business you should either have that or set aside some money for legal representation - or be prepared to just fold in those cases.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#109

Post by kamikazechaser »

They did that to me when I was fresh out of high school . Did some js/html fixes for a few days for some guy and got $200. A few weeks later, original hirer charges back Upwork (I contacted him and he told me it was a different work that wasn't delivered by the other person). Upwork goes into damage control and sweeps my entire balance and tells me it is part of their policy. They claimed they would return it if they won the charge back claim.

Never went back.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#110

Post by jb1991 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #22
jb1991 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A moderator replied to me a couple months ago that these kinds of posts are usually penalized so HN doesn’t become a support site, but I still see them quite often on here on the front page. I had been commenting that when such posts are made for YC companies, they rarely make it to the front page. > there has been a glut lately of stories using HN as customer-support-of-last-resort or generic-complaints-about-$compa…

It is also the middle of the night where HN mods usually live (USA).

I guess he woke up because this quickly dropped to the fifth page!
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