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Upwork just stole $10k from me

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Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#111

Post by benj111 »

Garlef wrote: post #93
benj111 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'd rather go to a shop that lists it's prices.

If it drives more customers to the site, the contractors gain also.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#113

Post by i0nutzb »

bwb wrote: post #76
i0nutzb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, they banned you for that? Curious to hear the full story!

The short version: I was working on and off on upwork for the past... 10 years or so (since they were called elance). Didn't had too many projects (less than 20) and only applying there only for very small gigs, when I had some breaks from my regular clients (a couple of times per year).

Some years ago, one of my client went out of business and I wanted to give upwork a serious go, as I already had _some_ projects there, the account was verified and such.

Start applying on jobs that matched my skill set, asking for my regular hourly rate (hence the audacity). Looking backward, my requested rate wasn't even that high, but that's a story for another time. :)

Dunno how they work now, but back then they had a certain amount of credits every month that you could use to apply to jobs. IIRC, you could apply to 10-15 jobs every month with those credits.

Which I did.

I applied to about ten jobs, on most didn't had any replies from the client (they either closed the job or picked someone else), but the gist is that I didn't get any job.

One day, I get an email where the gist was: you weren't able to get any clients with your credits, so we don't need you. Same as OP, tried to contact them, but the decision was final and that's that. Fortunately, I didn't loose anything but some internet points :)

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#114

Post by i0nutzb »

ejanus wrote: post #97
i0nutzb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Lol, I was applying asking for my regular rate.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#115

Post by dang »

jb1991 wrote: post #14
ddtaylor wrote: post #5

Welcome to HN where we provide support after large corporations fail to do basic due diligence.

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…

We moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC-related startup is the story: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#116

Post by zedadex »

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…

> the magical sequence of fellow accounts

You're just describing being well connected, which is nothing new. It's not 'a magical sequence of accounts', it's being part of a community.

> if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment

This still beats "XYZ group" - in this case, someone who is

> stressed about the situation and being without electricity due to the war

being ignored by us as well as by the company that's meant to be the middleman (to clients who had no issue paying them directly - so clearly a problem with UW and not any other party)

> I "deserve" to get screwed

No one does, which is the point. Highlighting when companies' customer service fails users (and how they deal with it - sweeping the pattern under the rug versus resolving to address it) helps people make informed decisions about the companies they do or don't choose to work with.

While 'anecdata', it's still a more far useful metric to me than advertising in picking who I support, as patterns tend to arise (both positive and negative!) resulting from a company's culture.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#117

Post by SpikyBlackHard »

bwb wrote: post #76
i0nutzb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, they banned you for that? Curious to hear the full story!

That's the whole story. They'll send a message saying "looks like this isn't working out for you".

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#118

Post by bwb »

i0nutzb wrote: post #113
bwb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, they banned you for that? Curious to hear the full story!

The short version: I was working on and off on upwork for the past... 10 years or so (since they were called elance). Didn't had too many projects (less than 20) and only applying there only for very small gigs, when I had some breaks from my regular clients (a couple of times per year). Some years ago, one of my client went out of business and I wanted to give upwork a serious go, as I already had _some_ projects th…

Crazy, thanks for sharing! What a weird approach on their part, i wonder if they were having problems with multiple bids from fake names or something.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#119

Post by goodpoint »

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…

Your whole post is absurdly apologetic. Stealing $10K from the customers is plain criminal. It does take "extreme diligence" not to do so.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#120

Post by rad_gruchalski »

Xylakant wrote: post #107
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #103

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. 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 f…

There’s a reason why that Rechtsschutz is up to €3m.
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