Upwork

We used Upwork for 56 jobs outsourced. In the past, we would refer them to others as the best freelancer resource. A few years ago, the candidates found were always higher quality than other sites.

Now the GREED has set in:

1. Upwork changed their pricing model, most candidates either decline jobs so Upwork don't have to pay for a connection, and the ones that apply to your post are lower quality because they are trying to scam or find a long paying client. They generally have done several jobs for low amounts of money to get a 5 star rating. The top talent recommended ones, most of the time, have had several complaints against them, that Upwork has hidden because of many of the honest, good talent have left. Read other reviews about how many scammers still work there.

2. SCAM- Upwork forces clients to upgrade and pay $30 to have their talent specialist help you find talent to complete your job. If you do not do this, they limit who you can invite unless you do the upgrade. So either You have to buy the upgrade, or you are limited to inviting 3 people which is useless. And all the specialist does is click "invite" to more people. In the past, you could've done that yourself for FREE.

3. BEWARE- the rating system is rigged! You as the client have a very difficult time finding your own company rating and what the con artists review about you. The Upwork developers that scam people can manipulate the rating system to read - no review left. Therefore whatever dispute you had and you try to warn others- it goes unpublished and allows the developer to victimize more business owners.

4. DO NOT trust what you read. Upwork stopped testing skill level of candidates, Changed the vetting process and basically could care less while they make money off you. Anyone can say they have experience. Read others reviews of nightmare broken websites.

DO NOT GET ROBBED! You pay Upwork to assist con artists to take your money.

I hired a so called "Web design expert" on Upwork and what a complete waste of time and money this was. The freelancer did not deliver the job as per the work agreement in any way. The website that be built for me was nothing like I requested it was just a horrible job in every aspect.

The website design was nothing like I requested in the detailed contract provided, some pages had code errors showing when loading and the images he used were all fuzzy and out of shape on most pages.

Even though I asked for the website to be 100% mobile compatible when I tested the site it did not work correctly on smartphones.

He requested the payment milestone to be released, I said no you have not provided me the agreed upon work. He said he had given me what I requested which was complete BS.

The freelancer said he would not redo the website and it had no problems. I opened a dispute but this is where is goes from bad to a complete con for buyers on Upwork.

Upwork said Upwork would not make a judgement on the quality of the website he built. Even though I spent hours detailing all the obvious problems to Upwork they said I had to work it out with him, "Upwork" said they would not get involved in the dispute and they would not refund my money. Why even have a dispute process in the first place if they won't help buyers when things for wrong!

As long as the freelancer says the work is "just fine" that's it, you have lost all your money in any disputes.

Upwork said it was all my fault if I did not check the freelancer properly before entering into a contract with him, the support quoted me their terms and conditions that cover everything in their favour, they will not accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

The quality of the work that I received did not match the posted resume on Upwork so I think he was just a complete fraud about his stated profile and experience. Don't take the profiles on Upwork as actually true or honest in any way.

I lost all my money on this job with no support from Upwork, anyway I hope my review informs enough people to stay away from Upwork.

It does not matter if you are getting a website built or getting anything else done on Upwork the dispute process is a sham, the terms and conditions cover them 100% when problems arise and you will just get nowhere with them.

PS. I did get my website built successfully with a local company that had an actual "shop front" with a real qualified "Web design expert".

Be very careful on how you will choose the freelancers. It is easy for a freelancer to scam a client, especially with a long term contract and Upwork will most likely side with them. The freelancer's reviews do not reflect reality. Upwork will side with the freelancer even though the proofs are evident. I hired a freelancer to build an app. In the length of a few months, I paid him a deposit and few milestones. After I paid him over $1800 he told me he has some health issues and that the delivery of the next milestone will be delayed. Not only that the milestone was past due but I couldn't leave feedback anymore. When I looked at his profile again I notice another client gave him a bad review and that the freelancer took his money without delivering the work.
I contacted Upwork and gave them all the proofs and screenshots Upwork need it to see how the whole contract proceded. In fact, those were not even necessary since everything happened on the platform. Escalated to a supervisor and she said she will forward the information to a Trust and Service department but nothing happened. I asked the freelancer to at least provide me the source files for whatever he worked until now so I can take the files to another freelance/company to finish the app. No response from freelancer. Now a few months have passed and the freelancer has 5 more contracts opened and he is "Top-Rated" with 100% job success. UPWORK should realize that clients are the ones that bring money to the platform and with situations like this not only that clients will leave the platform but will also discourage others from using the company. So my advice to you is to get files throughout the process in case something will happen before the contract will end or better yet use another website that will give you more protection.

I recently accepted my first job on Elance and I was completely ripped off. I was hired by someone calling himself "Joe" to write copy 8 hours a day, six days a week at $15/hr. I completed two days work for "Joe" and received a warning from Elance that I may not get paid because "Joe's" payment info wasn't set up. Now, being new to the site, I had no idea that people can post jobs and accept work without having any way to pay for the work Upwork commission. I immediately stopped work and confronted "Joe" about the payment issue and he claimed that it was a glitch on Elance's systems. This seemed reasonable to me as Elance's Work View program, an app that Elance uses to track a worker's progress on a project repeatedly stopped working and I was told by an Elance rep that this was a temporary problem. Regardless, I told "Joe" I wouldn't resume work until his payment info was resolved.

A few days later, "Joe" broke off all contact and his account appeared to have been shut down, by Elance or "Joe" himself I still don't know. I made a complaint through Elance's Dispute system and waited for a reply. Meanwhile, I googled sections of the copy I wrote and found it posted on a few different sites. I contacted a few of the site owners and heard back for one site admin that he purchased my content through a competing freelancing site called iWriter. "Joe" had stolen my content on Elance and resold it a different site. I added this new information to my Elance dispute.

Today, I finally heard back from Elance. They dismissed all my complaints and rejected my claims. Now, I realize that I was partially at fault for not finding out that Elance hosts projects with no security for writers, but the fact that Elace essentially cultivates a situation where freelancers can be abused in this manner is shocking. I would highly recommend that any freelance writers who are considering pursuing employment through Elance do literally anything else. Elance is a garbage company with nonexistent ethics.

elance.com | The Freelancer site full Schemes

I staying with the theme about having your Guatemala web site found on line I suggest any owner of a web site or business avoid using elance.com. The reasons are monumental to be brief, the company lacks any credibility and allows hacks and those without talent to offer services in the area of WP and SEO freelance services on elance.com.

If you happen to google elance.com complaints you will find hundreds of pages of complaints, customer complaints about elance.com. Complaints from customer being ripped off by freelancers offers SEO services who no nothing about SEO and Freelancers being ripped off by elance.com for payments. The complaints are real and cover sites such as www.complaintsboard.com/ and http://www.ripoffreport.com as examples. The company if one is behind elance.com never respond to complaints. I also came across this article http://freelancewrite.about.com/b/2009/03/01/is-it-time-to-revisit-the-elancecom...⇄ which spells out elance.

We joined elance.com only to find that most of the jobs for WordPress and SEO were posted by companies claiming to have this area of expertise when in fact these job posts were to fix problems these Freelancers had created for there own clients. Needing some one who new about technology to solve the problem Upwork created for clients from elance.com. Most job posts are for SEO after Google updates and those claiming to be knowledgeable about SEO are offering SEO Schemes to solve client issues.

Spammers and Scammers on elance.com can be found with almost every claimed job posting. Individuals claiming to need WordPress and SEO help. What these folks that are doing is posting false jobs, and are looking for free advise to solve there own problems.

Elance.com allows jobs to be posted for violations of all kinds of work ethics. Back linking services about on e-lance, find me a 1000 facebook friends are a small example of the fact the elance.com does not care about what is posted on its site just about money.

Lets talk about money, elance.com takes it from all sides, a % from the person posting the job, a commission from the freelancer a whopping 8%. I figure on every job awarded elance.com is skimming at least 12% off the top. Almost as bad as Paypal. In order to bid on jobs you have to buy connections and must pay to be in categories or the services you want to supply. What starts as a FREE deal on elance can quickly have you shelling out over 70 a month in membership fee to be able to bid on 60 projects. Projects largely posted by spammers and scammers.

So what you may say, well for example elance.com lets unproven SEO talent use SEO Schemes to have a client land on the first page of Google and I mean elance.com has thousands of these back link Schemes offer by this claimed Freelance talent base. So I have an SEO freelance company do this to my site. It destroys your web sites on line ranking and credibility and the cost to repair will be far greater then the cost you paid to be hooked into this Scheme.

Beware of elance.com the complaints clearly speak for what this site is all about complaints about elance.com

I am a high profile freelancer, worked for some very reputable clients and with years of a successful freelancer career.
I've invested a lot of time and efforts to make my Upwork profile stand out and I did it. I carefully selected what work to show on my Portfolio, I've taken a lot of skill tests on the system in order to prove my expertise.
And it worked for some time. But guess what happened to me this year - Upwork asked me for ID and other documents to prove my identity, this process was hard enough because they rejected my ID image and wanted me to take another shot at it especially for them and then resubmit it. I did it and finally after days spent I was able to verify my profile.
Now (a month later) they just permanently terminated my account without any real reason given. I received a blanket "explanation", that after a quick Google search I found out it was nothing more than a blanket message, sent to many Upwork freelancers, who also ended up with their accounts terminated.
I've tried to at least ask for the real reason, but they failed to provide one. They don't care for freelancers, they are only moved by their own interest on the back of the freelancer community. I believe anyone, who wants to start a freelancer career on Upwork deserves to know the truth how freelancers are treated.
- you will spend a lot and a lot of time and efforts to build your profile,
- you'll be charged 20% (!) for the services, that you provide,
- and you may end up with a permanently terminated account at any time, with no explanation whatsoever and no possibility to appeal it.

All in all I think Upwork is a very wrong place to make a freelancer career online, really toxic for your career development. They will feed on you and your skills, but will dump you out whenever they want. You have no rights there. Like back in the days of slavery.
Don't get burned just like I did.

Not sure how or where to start. Working through UpWork has been a nightmare. I'll try to summarize my experience. All I wanted was a simple game for both iOS and Android. Posted my job, received plenty of candidates and chose a freelancer based on her work portfolio. Her name was Natasha Korecki. I explained exactly what I wanted, gave her references, example of similar games and I even sent her a document with everything written of what I want. We agreed on hours, which kept increasing due to her not being able to finish on time. She started working ok design and graphics, which I did like, however, the final completed product was not even remotely close to what I wanted nor what she has been designing. At this point, we're at the ending and we're going back and forth about re-designing. Keep in mind, the whole time, I've been in contact with UpWork to makes sure Upwork have my back. We agree agreed on redesign but she needed more more, which she had plenty of to finish and what we Agee did upon. Now, to save me the headache and stress, I agreed to just get it over with and keep the current design. The game was submitted and approved by Android, however, it was rejected by Apple. Once I went back to Natasha to fix the issue, she kept pushing me to start a new game with her. I explained, we'll discuss once my current game is approved and good to go. She has declined to fix it, unless I start a new game. She also declined giving me the source code to have someone else fix, unless I start a new game. I even received an email from UpWork stating that during their routine investigation, they found the freelancer being linked to a group that was kicked out for inappropriate conduct. Now to UpWork. I've been emailing them back and forth for over a month. All I keep getting is "unfortunately" this "unfortunately" that. I've been dealing mostly with Mark. I explained my experience over and over but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. Finally, he forwarded me to another team. Keep in mind, this was all over email, there is no support/customer service phone number anywhere, so it's frustrating to get my point across. I was excited to get a call from Michelle from the Talent specialist department. Once talking to her, and spent few minutes explaining my situation, she tells me, I only assist in helping with hiring freelancers, but she can let her team know. Now I'm even more frustrated. But wait, there's more. When I asked her to please have someone call me instead of email, she did not sound assuring as she stated, they may not be able to call, as we use emails for tracking. As that might be understandable, we are at a different level now and customer satisfaction should be first priority. Sorry for the long text, just wanted to share with everyone thinking about using them. You're basically on your own.

What a piece of crap website. Possibly not quite as bad as Freelancer, through which I just suffered an appalling ordeal with a Pakistani woman who addressed me like a piece of $#*! on her shoe andwanted an article written like, the day before yesterday, for 7 measly dollars, and then didn't end up paying me, because I couldn't make amendments as soon as she asked for them because, hey, I have a life and do other things.

Anyway, I digress. Upwork's rates are crap, but not that crap. And I signed up in good faith, knowing that I'd have to take on some low-paying jobs in order to build up some sort of ranking, and I was fine with this. Took on a couple of jobs within a couple of days, and worked my socks off to beat deadlines, for low prices. One of my guys was pleased, gave me a bonus, wrote me a stellar review. Other girl was also pleased, and throug these two jobs I amassed something like $80. I work in England, so that's not great for the number of hours, but fine.

Then I started getting these emails from Upwork, saying that Upwork suspected dodgy dealings with my clients... but not explaining what these were, due to 'privacy'. They asked for samples of my work, which I sent gladly, hoping that they could get to the bottom of whatever it was. Except, the clients didn't seem to know about the issues when I spoke to them, and so I was left wondering whether it was the clients that I couldn't trust, or Upwork themselves!

Next, Upwork started sending me emails asking for me to scan in photo ID and utility bills, again not explaining why, so that I could 'verify' myself? But, surely the texts that I proofread, and the happy customers, was verification enough? Why do they need that sort of information? I asked all these questions, and so far have no answers... and no money. Not sure where I stand legally, but *surely* I shouldn't ahve to give them this information after I've done my part of the deal? Surely there are other ways of verifying?

SPAM / FRAUD warning about Elance user JohnVT a. K. a. Vermontinternetdesign

We posted a Job offer on Elance "WP Ecommerce Customization"

This job has been carefully reviewed by specialists and very well documented before we posted it to the Job offers on Elance.

Every bider received the complete documentations as well as all the source code and databases to have a look into it before agreeing on the job. JohnVT was one of the bider and stated he can do this (after reading the documentation and reviewing the source codes.) within time and for the offered amount, so i awarded him. http://www.vermontinternetdesign.com/

Shortly after awarding JohnVT from vermontinternetdesign he started to ask for more money, which i denied, as i had clearly stated the budget and he agreed upon that. During this 2 months JohnVT never informed me about the progress and just sent sloppy and grumpy 1 line answers back by email.

I explained more than one times to him, that this project is very important to me and my business and i will loose money every day if it will be any longer postponed. Again, no reaction from him except "Due date end of May".

On the very last day / Deadline he updated the project with "Need some more days", without any explanation and nothing. I offered him to present a more or less working project by next Monday and another 4 days to eliminate errors and flaws.

After that he comes up and suddenly states "Job is not possible to complete. Client wants to do something that simply cannot be done".

He did not accept this offer and said he will need more time. The only thing we could offer him was to refund the $500 he got from us and we will cancel the job without taking any further actions.

John Anderson ( vermontinternetdesign) answered as follow: "There are no refunds. Nor do I plan on sending you any thing. I applied the balance onto time spent on this project."

We guarantee that John Anderson ( vermontinternetdesign) never ever delivered one single line of code or anything else for that project. There is no work that has been done as he by mistake stated in a earlier email.

We have lost 2 full months of time to open up our business because of JohnVT ( vermontinternetdesign) and therefore lost 2 full months of income from it. We have family and bills to pay and JohnVT did a lot of Damage to us with his ignorant and disrespectful behavior.

All the details described earlier can be proved by email conversationand the jobs workroom comments and documents. If you need any further proof, please let me know.

I would never write a fraud warning without beeing 100% sure this company knew from the first day on that Upwork will never deliver any work and they feel beeing save as we are overseas.

And he is right, Elance will NOT protect or support you in such cases! Make sure you google for #Elance #Fraud #scam #warning #vermontinternetdesign #johnVT

Be warned and feel free to get in touch with us if you need any further details.

Regards
Daniel

I'm new to Upwork as a customer. I know this name through Elance that is mentioned on so many website for its content writing. I need to hire contents for my website. Unbelievable! The price of an article is processing fee + fee from the client + fee from the writer. Even Upwork suggest me a fee for posting a job that can be seen by many writers.

I need a review article for Amazon products and I send an offer with links. They remove all the links and send me a message for violating their TOS.

Today, I again receive a message that talks me not pay for a writer without specific reasons. I don't know what is this, I also pay for my offers, even there are some articles that I can't use because broken English. They told me that I violate their TOS and threat to disable my account.
Here is the message:
"Hi Sieu,
We are contacting you to let you know we have removed a job you recently posted.
We recently learned that your job post was requesting unpaid work from a freelancer, which is against our Terms of Service. Unpaid work includes requests for sample work related to the job post, free advertising, charitable work, agency recruiting, requests for working relationships outside of Upwork, and offers of positive feedback instead of payment, among others.
As a result, we deleted the post and removed any proposals that had already been submitted.
Going forward, we welcome you to post jobs. However, Upwork only supports projects where clients pay the freelancer money for their work.
We suggest you review our complete Terms of Service by visiting Terms of Service. Please note that future violations of our terms might result in further action being taken on your account, including deactivation.

Regards,
The Upwork Trust & Safety Team"

There are a lots of good services out there in the market for me to hire contents, why I have to use their bad service? I decide to remove all my financial information from their system and say good bye forever to Upwork.

I am the owner and lead developer of a Bulgarian company specializing in WordPress / WooCommerce solutions. Recently, I tried to create an agency/client account on Upwork... what an experience! I apologize in advance for the length of this review, but if you are a freelancer or representing an agency ( or even a client) you should definitely read this before joining Upwork.

At first, I tried to create an agency account using my main company email. After I finished the initial setup, I realized that their system was forcing me to create a freelancer account and all account URLs were redirected to this screen. Due to my misunderstanding, I believed that I created a freelancer-profile account by mistake. I tried to contact their support to clarify this, but Upwork don't provide direct support for freelancers ( at least non-approved ones, not sure what happens with working accounts). Unable to communicate their support, I probably made the mistake to cancel my account, in order to create a new account from scratch.

After reading more carefully their help pages, I realized that creating a freelancer profile was a prerequisite for the agency profile. So, after knowing what I had to do, I tried to create a new account with the same email... this was not possible, my email was blocked. Again, access to their support was not available, so I used an alternative company email and I finally managed to create the second account and set up all the information.

My profile featured a legal company based in Bulgaria, a WordPress-specific overview and skill set, 8 years of WordPress themes and plugins authoring experience ( 12 total in web development), a portfolio containing lead web development work on 6 commercial WordPress themes, several high-profile client projects, all my work history and I also took my first WordPress test with a 4.8/5.0 score. Without intention to brag about my skills, I consider myself an expert on my field and this was far from obvious in my Upwork profile.

The next day, I got a generic profile rejection which caught me by surprise. Again no support chance to ask what the problem is. After a while, I received another notice that they rejected my VAT number. Since this was not wrong in the first place, I tried just to resubmit it... it was rejected two times. I updated it again, only this time I added the BG prefix... their system warned me that this might not be a correct one, but allowed me to submit it. I also updated my company name, changing it from English to Bulgarian in order to help their "smart" script to verify the data with the EU VIES system... zero progress.

The final outcome: after spending two days of my life preparing my profile and trying to guess how to solve issues with their system, I get, out of the blue, an account rejection message. Even if they didn't provide a single valid reason for their decision ( they just said it was a term violation), it was clearly an indication that my account was considered a fraud case! They didn't even bother to ask me... that was the first shock!

Since this was the first time they contacted me via a support message on the account panel, I got the chance to write a response, in order to let them know that all their anti-fraud alarms were a product of my struggle working with their dysfunctional system and unreachable support and that I will be more than happy to provide them any type of prove or official documentation.

How naive I was, expecting a human answer! Unfortunately, I received an instant automatic reply that they were not willing to revise their decision ( so they had already predicted my response, but they simply don't give a damn!). Well, I have used and partnered with several web services, this is the first time I was treated like this. I wasted so much time and effort in this, and they didn't even have the courtesy to allow me to access their support. I was totally shocked!

I was so upset with their unacceptable behavior, that I had to take a day-off to calm down. Today, I tried to make a little research on their reputation, and my guess was confirmed. Agencies, freelancers and, most importantly, the clients are absolutely frustrated with their service. If they treat professionals like garbage, why would someone expect that clients will get better treatment?

Finally, I'm quite happy with the outcome since providing client services via unreliable partners is a recipe for disaster. For sure I got my lesson... I should have done my homework before getting involved with them in the first place.

I'm one of the first adopters as a software developer freelancer, worked on Elance since 2011, it was certainly a life-changing at that time, the platform was great, had both business owners and freelancers' best interests at mind, had very reasonable fees and functional withdrawal methods, it was undoubtedly rich in quality customers and quality work, good contracts and competent freelancers, if I'm voting on Elance would 100% give the best review can be written for a service 100 stars not just 5.

Then oDesk and Elance suddenly announced merging, and no more Elance, it's going to be Upwork, I'm not gonna lie, oDesk was the wasteland, the lowest quality freelancers mixed with very cheap tasks, it was just a nightmare, I remember one-time trying oDesk, the next day I came running to Elance, and falling in love even more.

So the merge happened and the new management asked us to migrate our profiles to Upwork from Elance as it was going to be killed, anyway my first impression of Upwork was 'holy mother of God', Upwork made an oDesk with just a modern user interface, I then focused on my full-time job and didn't bother to even try Upwork, few years later I needed some extra cash so turned back and started actively using the service, contract fees were very low, requirements were very high, it was like they obviously chose the new strategy, give business owners a very competitive platform so they can get the lowest prices, never mind the quality, and basically nicely screw the freelancer, Merry Christmas.

To make it even worse, Upwork gradually started to screw the freelancers even further, give less free connect points, then make proposals require more connect points, then abolish all of this and just force freelancers to buy connect points so they can apply, all on top of very cruel fee system of 20%! 20 damn percent! They are milking the freelancer on top of milking the business owner, for me they only way I understood that was just it's greed, pure and simple, Upwork knew and believed that the majority of freelancers had no other way to go than finding work on their platform, they used this fact very well to just massacre freelancers' earnings.

Bottom line is, I'm a guy who's top-rated in Upwork and was from the top 3% of all Elance freelancers, my clients were always happy and had more than 50% return rate, so you can't say I'm a sour loser, but Upwork just can't survive like this, it's a matter of time until some good samaritan comes up with a better solution.

I published the following JOB POST that required a LOCAL Drupal website developer.

At the top of the JOB POST was displayed:

Drupal Back End Developer (**Job for NORTH AMERICA only**)

UpWork emailed a bulk email to me with NO SPECIFICITY on Friday - 11/4/16:

"Action Required! Temporary account suspension"
My post contains: "discriminatory or hateful remarks, threats, profanity, or vulgarity."

I had no clue what UpWork was complaining about... however it turned out to be my LOCATION SPECIFICITY: (**Job for NORTH AMERICA only**)

*****************************
Were writing because a job you posted... contains discriminatory or hateful remarks, threats, profanity, or vulgarity. This is against our Job Post policy: https://www.upwork.com/info/terms/client-policies/ and has led to the temporary suspension of your account.

Upwork is a community of professionals acting professionally. Respectful language is vital in maintaining workplace integrity and a business-like environment for all.

Please reply to this email stating that you agree to comply with Upworks client policies! By doing so, we can clear your account and you can continue to work on Upwork. If you do not respond, your account will remain suspended until we hear from you.

Please note that a second violation of this nature will result in permanent suspension.

*****************************

I wrote back the following:

1. Your apology is disingenuous and meaningless.

2. UpWork's policy regarding: discriminatory or hateful remarks, threats, profanity, or vulgarity... is vacuous and ignorant.

3. Is a commercial website... or a baby nursery. I am running a business. If I decide that I require LOCAL talent... UpWork will not impose upon me to field proposals from around the world. This is UNINTELLIGENT and UNPROFESSIONAL.

4. I could care less if a contractor's feelings are hurt or offended. I'm running a business... and your policy is COUNTER to every job/career website in the U.S. in regards to providing employers the most accurate talent specifications for highest employer efficiencies.
UPWORK IS FIRED FOR UNINTELLIGENCE AND BUSINESS INTERRUPTION.

**************************

I have compiled a list of many freelancer job sites.

I contacted Guru.com... explained what happened at UpWork... submitted the entire JOB POST for their review... it was APPROVED without issue.

I hope this proves helpful to others.

~ Alan

Today on date 06-04-2021
I release 220 USD to Freelaver Evgeny Sutulov as he promised for update after i will release the money

I believe the word of Evgeny Sutulov.

After receiving money he is not replying to my messages and his promise to update EA after dispute is resolve.

Can you ask him to be HONEST once in his life and give me update as he promise.

I complain to Upwork no reply.

I have only one word for this COMPANY.
SCAM COMPANY and people who read this message and still use this company like to become fool by SCAMERS.

Do not TRUST UPWORK and DO not TRUST FREELANCERS working for Upwork.

I have project with Freelancer, Everyday Errors, I change Project from complex project to very simple project Still Errors,

I already ask freelancer to cancel order i will still pay him some money because he tried to do work put Effort but honestly i can prove work done is wrong i can not use the work.

I have clients who buy work done from me.

If i deliver this type of work no one will do business with me.

Upwork Rules are not Good at all.
When Freelancer do Error work and if Upwork refund money back to client they charge commission to client.

Which is wrong we give job to do work not to play games, i have lost 3 clients due to not job done in time or not done properly.

I will say i have done lot of jobs in Fiverr.

If any freelancer do funny things with client they refund money 100% back to client and i saw they block freelancer they give 100% to client, because client pay money for services not freelancer.

People who pay money also work hard to EARN this money.

If you put some strict Rules, i can tell you will get more clients.

Upwork as per my understanding have no professional Freelancers.
I start believing maybe there is no Freelancer all are fake profiles to grab commission from clients, if everyday 1000 clients job is not done and every client Upwork charge fees 3.5% which make them already good money why need to focus to complete work.

If Upwork is genuine company they should have Rule if Freelancer fail to complete work or full of Errors.
Freelancer will not be paid and Upwork fees of that project client will not pay for Upwork fees freelancer will pay if these freelancer are Genuine profiles they will take only that jobs which they can do they will not waste client time and money.

Honestly if you ask my opinion clients should make Reviews about Upwork and you will see how many clients are not happy with Upwork service.

Anyone can read these messages and understand

Anyone can see Freelancer did not finish work.
For this Upwork asking to go Arbitrage and pay 291 USD more.

Ok i will pay if Arbitrage said ask coder to complete the work and then client pay.
I already paid additional 291 ISD
Still i have to use same coder and pay him money.

I start believing there is no Arbitrage.
ALL money goes to Upwork and later they will say Arbitrage said pay coder if he complete work.

For this i will lose 510 USD.

It it Worth to use UPWORK for all this SCAMS Upwork is doing with clients.

I will file a case against UPWORK in consumer court for this SCAM.

It is widely known that fraudulent freelancers post their services on Upwork. Such has been reported in multiple web articles, multiple yelp reviews, and multiple complaints on the better business bureau website among other platforms. Unlike Facebook, a site that is attempting to remove fake accounts, harmful content, and misinformation, Upwork not only refuses to reprimand and eliminate fraudulent businesses on their platform, Upwork create an environment that supports such frauds. They do so by, among other steps, 1) creating an unreasonably finite window of opportunity to dispute a claim, 2) removing themselves from involvement in any dispute between a freelancer and a customer, 3) instructing their customer service team to facilitate toxic interactions with customers that complain, and 4) involving themselves in transactional payments by customers' banks in order to prevent customers' banks form reversing charges for fraudulent business.

One could only imagine why a company such as Upwork would want fraudulent businesses to flourish on their platform. An observation of Upwork's payment scheme eliminates any further imagination. The greater the amount of fraudulent business on their platform that remains unaccounted for, the greater the revenue for Upwork. Importantly, it is the fact that the fraudulent business is unaccounted for that permit's greater revenue for Upwork. Typically, when vendor is fraudulent, a customer has the recourse to halt and reverse payments from his or her bank, and report that vendor to authorities that ultimately reprimand and prevent further fraudulent behavior by the vendor. As widely reported on these yelp posts and on reviews of Upwork's service elsewhere, Upwork's customer service is itself a fraud in that their goal is not resolve issues for customers rather their goal is to forcefully impose their stringent terms of service in order prevent any disturbance to their continued revenue stream, regardless of the outcome for the customer. Further, Upwork prevents any intervention from one's bank even when the reversal of payments is appropriate. Further, Upwork allows fraudulent businesses that have been on their platform for a number of months to expunge reviews critical of the vendors' service. As a result, fraudulent businesses flourishes, unsuspecting new customers continue to pay fraudulent companies, and Upwork gains the associated fees.

Similar to the experience on Upwork of the many of the reviewers here and elsewhere, I was the victim of a fraud on Upwork and, needless to say, the Upwork customer service team was not only unhelpful, but attempted, forcefully, to end and undermine my complaint in order to facilitate continued service from their fraudulent vendor. Fortunately, the fraudulent vendor is currently in a lawsuit and has been unable to scam further unsuspecting customers, however, unfortunately, I have spent the last 5 months disputing the fraudulent transactions with my bank, only because Upwork has been fighting hard to prevent keep the vendors' fraudulent business afloat.

As noted elsewhere in these reviews, it is unsurprising that Upwork's stock price has declined sharply from $20.99 after their IPO in October 2018 and $22.72 in February 2019 to $14.66 today, despite the fact that the S&P 500 peaked to its highest position since the beginning of the index, yesterday. I imaging the company is going to continue to fail because a business model based on fraud and a lack of customer service may be successful in the short run but cannot be successful in the long run.

I've hired so many people. But what happens is it takes months to find someone good, and a few months later they're gone. You can't find reliable, consistent freelancers.

Elance, and upwork are just a marketing company that gives you marketing talk but not results. I was ripped off ($800) by a freelancer. Because I'm not a programmer and I wasn't able to find out that the code wasn't right, I spent months to fill the database... The result is there, the job requirement is there. I'm the one who is right, elance Nor it's upwork didn't do anything about it. And Upwork kept this freelancer there. They didn't allow me to update my 5 star review that I posted for the freelancer.

The quality of freelancers is horrible. If you're running a business, and you need things that get results in business then you won't find so many options on those websites.

There will always be a hassle. Most of the freelancers are not qualified for a real world job. And most of them are there because they can't get a job for the reason that I mentioned.

Plus most of them has attitude. Plus DO NOT BELIEVE the samples. I've caught too many samples were fake. Copies are not written by them, they just claim it. If you hire them, what they will deliver is not even close to the quality level of their samples.

Web developers, SEO geniuses are mostly not qualified. They can not deliver results but they will keep you busy and hopeful for awhile. So basically, in most cases, you're paying for keeping yourself busy and hoping for a good results will come. In the end, no results that bring results will come. Examples about results:

- Let's say you hired a copywriter for your direct mail project. After you send out the mails you won't get sales. Despite that you liked the copy. Liking a copy doesn't sell in real world. Copywriters there don't have a clue with BRANDING and IDEA.

- SEO will make you hopeful. In the end your ranking, most likely will improve on crap keywords only, that no one search for. There's a great chance that you pages will be blocked by google for using cheating techniques.

- Web development. They will make it half way. What I mean by saying that, either the code will need fixings, or they will put you in a wrong direction and couple years later you will end up starting over. The website will be slow. They will keep charging you for "extra work" that was actually what they were supposed to do at first place. Let's say you have a car that need body work and paint work. For a car it's easy to know. Since you're not a programmer, you won't know this. With the website developers on those website, they will do paint job first. They they will tell you you need a body work so it will be great. After body work they will say paint job again. By the time you're done, you will know that your car is not allowed to drive or it's not efficient to drive at all. You'll buy a new car... That's what the hell is goping on with web "development crap" on those website. Part of they don't really know what they're doing and they do guess work. And some of the freelancers are just evil they deceive you.

The worse thing is, after all these are done to you you end up hearing marketing talks from the freelancing websites... you can't take anyone to court, you can't have the freelancers to fix the obvious bad work.

The prices are not low anymore. The prices came to a point that you can hire a local, trustable person or company for 10-30% more if not same level, but headache free.

WHO ARE YOU REALLY HIRING

Upwork has lots of fake and fraudulent freelancer profiles. If you see someone with a profile location of the USA, UK, AU, CA or any other first world country you should be very, very careful that Upwork are who they claim to be.

Many Nigerians and other similar nationalities with no real qualifications are posting fake resume work skills, fake profile images and fake country locations. Ok let's just call them for what they are "scammers".

Upwork does not really seem to check the listed profiles of many freelancers very well, it costs a lot of time and money for Upwork to do this correctly so you know what the priority is going to be for them.

If you think you are hiring John Smith from the USA but you actually have Abieyuwa Okafor from Nigeria doing your work that ends up being terrible, well you will then enter into a never ending cycle of time wasting from Upwork if you try and get your money back.

TERRIBLE JOB = MORE COSTS ON THE WAY

Upwork will not make judgments regarding the work quality if the job goes bad and you open a dispute, even if the work is obviously a terrible job or a scam Upwork will not rule in your favour. They will only "help" in any dispute, so basically they will just sit on the fence and let you go backwards and forwards with scammer Abieyuwa Okafor with no resolution in sight.

Any disputes that you have can be moved to third-party arbitration for a final ruling on both the funds held in escrow and any previously released payments made.

But here is the best part of this BS, the arbitration comes at a cost of $875 which is split between Upwork, the client and the freelancer ($291 each). You are going to have to spend $291 USD to have any chance of getting your money back on a bad job. This fee is non-refundable regardless of the outcome of the arbitration case.

It seems like someone is making a tidy profit off any disputes that may arise.

FEEDBACK SCORE FACADE

If you think that leaving a poor rating for a terrible job is any way to get your own back well think again... Upwork allows freelancers to remove any negative feedback posted after a 3 month period.

This allows freelancers to have a higher ranking that is not truly accurate of the work they have done before. So that great rating you see on a profile may just be really BS just like so many other things on the Upwork platform.

PS

Don't get me wrong, there is many good freelancers on Upwork but the platform is allowing deceptive practices to thrive for their own benefit.

First off let me say this. I was a long time freelancer on Elance and then was moved to Upwork when Upwork merged. I held a 98% Success score for years, I was on their Enterprise Bench - which you don't know what that is you have to be invited by Upwork to be on. I was an elite freelancer and only had 1 bad review in 6 years, and even that one was edited by Upwork because they felt it wasn't fair. That being said, as an elite user, I had a direct line (phone) to their customer service.

Over the course of this year (2017) I discovered, from the inside as an elite user, that two main features of Upwork are NOT what Upwork says they are.

The first feature is the Time Tracker they claim protects freelancers and clients alike. It does not work. It will cut itself off at random. When it does, all a freelancer can do is enter the missing time manually. As soon as you do that, you are no longer protected. All guarantees are null and void. I had tickets open to address the problem for months, Upwork never fixed the problem. They know the problem exists, but has never corrected it.

The second is the JSS (or Job Success Score). This "secret" algorithm is supposed to show a freelancers or clients success rate. It doesn't work at all. It's complete crap and a lie Upwork uses to draw in new freelancers and clients alike. For example, if a client leaves a contract open assuming they will have work later on, Upwork claims that is "Neutral" and does not affect your score. That is a lie, it does drop your JSS score. Any feedback given by a client to a freelancer that criticizes Upwork in anyway will be edited by Upwork. And vice versus. My score in particular dropped from 98% to 88% because of contracts that were open, but had not been active for a few weeks. That doesn't mean the clients or myself did anything wrong or negative and we should not have been penalized. We were.

For a company that takes 20% of any job and monthly subscriptions, these two features should have worked properly. They do not. In my case, Upwork was making easily $600 to $800 a month off of me. For that much money a month, EVERYTHING should work. Yet Upwork knows and has not corrected either of these problems.

In addition, the customer service completely sucks. They do not abide by their own Terms of Service. They routinely ban both clients and freelancers for raising these issues. They edit feedback, forums, anything that criticizes Upwork as a company.

So at the end of the day, you are paying for nothing. The reviews are edited, the scores are not accurate at all, the guarantees are worthless, nothing on that site is true. If you are a freelancer, you will be exploited. If you are a client, you will be lied to. Period.

In my opinion, this site should be hit with a class action lawsuit and forced to return every dime it has ripped off from clients and freelancers. And that's coming from me, one of their chosen elite.

As long as one finds the professional(s) she was looking for, the system works. It's sloppy (as of the UI), but works: money put in escrow, the freelancer does the job, gets paid when finished and both parties are happy.

The issues come when any, literally any problem raises, especially for when the freelancer fails to deliver:

As of Upwork handling your money: It runs back from escrow to your bank account. There are no other options for this. Can't be held in escrow, no "client account" in the system or anything. Means, if the job must get done, so should be posted again, it should also be financed again while one waits for the escrow money to arrive back to the bank account...
Adding to this, if the freelancer doesn't approve this action (e.g. She was gone for good, so won't be around to do so, or simply doesn't care), it takes a good 12-14 business days (in my experience) to get the money back.

As of Upwork handling you, as the "valued" customer: If one asks for help, gets the standardized, copy-pasted answer. If one asks for a solution, gets the same thing, as well as an excuse (mostly "our system works like that"...). If one complains stating this is not good. Gets a negative remark on her account...

I understand those who rate this site 3+ stars. I felt the same way for my 1st, minor project as I found the right candidate and the job was done.

BUT as soon as things go serious, investment goes high and actual professionals should be found for the large scale job, the system starts stuttering, the safety net is gone and one has to realize this site is useless, its processes are killing and very, very silly, as well as the support is impotent.

I definitely do not recommend using this site ever, for any business. Find someone better. It won't be difficult, go to any other provider...

I have been on UpWork for roughly 4 months now and overall I'm happy with it. It's a very healthy marketplace that makes it very easy to quickly find a job. I never needed to buy any credits because I got contacted pretty much on a daily basis by companies looking for my skills, so that was very encouraging.

There are, however, a few flaws that I'm hoping UpWork will work on to improve the experience for freelancers:

1) The types of jobs tend to be on the less strategic side and fairly straightforward. I have a lot of corporate experience that could come to good use, but I can't find jobs at that level.

2) I know that UpWork has an enterprise tier, but it's unclear how as a freelancer I can access those jobs.

3) UpWork has several badges for freelancers to recognise their skills. However, it's not clear how those badges are assigned. UpWork keeps the rules about that deliberately secret, to avoid freelancers hacking them. Whilst I do understand where Upwork are coming from, it is a bit frustrating for freelancers who work well, have consistently high reviews and have been on the platform for long enough, to not get any badge at all and not be able to understand why that is the case.

4) What I really, really don't like about UpWork is their desktop timer. First of all, I had to contact customer support twice in the space of a month because of serious bugs. Given that a freelancer's revenue depends on that app, it should work 100% flawlessly. Second, it takes six screenshots an hour and sends them to the client as proof of your work. You can stop the screenshots from going out (you might have done some internet banking and don't really want your client to see your bank statements, for example). But if you prevent screenshots from going out, it detracts some working time from the desktop timer. What's worse, they recently also introduced some tracker that counts keyboard strokes and mouse movements and again adjusts the timer accordingly. That's really not, for a number of reasons: a) it's highly intrusive and against GDPR regulation in Europe; b) UpWork never asked me for permission, nor does it make it clear on its website that it tracks this way; c) linking revenue and quality of work to the number of keystrokes or mouse touches is plain silly and goes way too far.

5) UpWork's customer service team is very friendly and quick in responding. They genuinely care about freelancers, or at least that's my impression. However, the engineering team took around a month to fix the desktop timer. Again, freelancers' revenues depend on that timer, so to take a month to fix it is seriously burdening on freelancers, who then have to explain the issues to their clients.

So, overall it's a good platform to find jobs, but I do have some issues with it which I hope will get fixed soon.