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Upwork just stole $10k from me

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Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#81

Post by Xylakant »

anonzzzies wrote: post #75
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.

Agreed, but as someone who had lawsuits in DE, the loser pays a nominal fees (I do not know what they are now, but they have to pay hours * nominal fee, not your actual lawyer bill) for the court costs, not the actual costs. If you have a good, which often means expensive, lawyer, you won’t recoup the costs if you win unless a fine is imposed on the other party. But yes, jurisdiction is an issue, however damage can b…

The costs paid are based on the “Streitwert” which in this case would likely be the 10k. There’s tables to look up the lawyer fee and the court fee. A good lawyer may demand more, but you’re still likely to come out ahead if you win.

You’ll likely also be awarded interest and the court-appointed interest rates are nothing to sneeze at (they’re based on the banks base interest rate plus a few percent)

Edit: went and looked it up: Interest is applied from the point when the defendant received the court papers and is currently the base rate plus 5 or 9 percent points.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__291.html

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#82

Post by prmph »

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…

But at least when posts about major tech companies' customer service fiascos show up here, there is the opportunity to discuss it and shame them into doing better.

If these kinds of posts are disallowed here, the companies are not going to go: "Oh, our customers cannot get redress on Hacker News, so we better improve our internal customer service processes". They are screwing up their customers regardless of where redress is to be found or not.

Maybe this is a startup opportunity: pay a fee to have your issues with company X broadcast on the social media that will be most embarrassing to them; hopefully you get redress soon.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#83

Post by MattGaiser »

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 think anyone believes on a societal level that HN support is a fix. But at the moment it is the only fix and I would bet it will not get much better.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#85

Post by jrumbut »

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 like the idea that unless I'm cliqued up on YouTube, Twitter and HackerNews I "deserve" to get screwed.

I don't either, but that's such a fundamental part of the human condition I have no hope of it changing before I die and I couldn't afford to lose $10k.

Also, oftentimes pressure from an individual case can lead to fixes to an automated system. It seems like we do better when we can put a face and a story to a problem.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#86

Post by _tk_ »

ddtaylor wrote: post #72
_tk_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

Sure, but how can you be sure that the takeaway is a „good“ one now? Maybe the author of this thread was ill intended, left out important details etc. Stories like these are really hard to assess without some more research.

When I say it tells me something, I mean I get a first impression. I do not get a significant amount of information to have a settled opinion.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#87

Post by prmph »

Xylakant wrote: post #52
ajb wrote: post #44

One of the reasons that criminal acts are criminal is that they destroy value. For example, when metal prices go up, criminals steal wires from railway lines. This gains them a couple of hundred bucks of metal, and costs tens of thousands in disruption and reinstallation. This kind of action by companies should be criminal, because they just destroyed economic activity worth at least $10000, because they didn't want…

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 have refused to release the money to me, or to send it back to the client. They also disabled all my Intuit accounts, some of which I had paid a subscription for.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#88

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

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.

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.

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#89

Post by thriftwy »

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!

I can't see how it does not make some lawmakers eyes glow.

"1M of fines say you will"

Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me

#90

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

password1 wrote: post #80
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.

I don't see how Bitcoin can fix terrible customer support issues. The problem here is that either: 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 protec…

The escrow and trust part can be handled in 1) reputation system 2) breaking the work into small parts and not risking large amounts at once.
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