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The question is: have they actually refunded Robin? He (his friend, in who's name the card was) received the chargeback? If not, then this is a scam and you ne

The question is: have they actually refunded Robin? He (his friend, in who's name the card was) received the chargeback? If not, then this is a scam and you need to call the police. But i believe he did. If so, what is the problem about asking Robin to simply pay again? And the situation is trivial: no platform would survive if they allowed freelancers keep the money earned by carding, because it would be flooded with carders. Full disclosure: i made over $2M on Upwork.

cyberpunk 5y ago
That sounds like rather a lot of money. If you don't mind my asking, doing what and over what kind of timeframe?
- desdiv 5y ago
  He has his upwork profile linked in his HN profile. Sounds like he has a niche and he's very very good at it.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    Actually the rates don't even seem that high (GP would make 80% of that right?) The total hours they've listed as completed would take me at least 13 years to complete, probably longer.
    - anovikov 5y ago
      My actual lifetime average commission paid to Upwork is under 10% actually. People who repeat the claim about 20 (or 30! in this thread itself!) commission just don't read the rules. I interpret the rules as "commission is 5% plus $550 per client", which makes it sound a lot lower. How much does it cost to get 1 client "from the internet"? I know the answer and it's not pretty at all. And yes i'm on the platform for precisely 13 years, but bulk of money comes from fixed price contracts anyway, and effective rates there are ca. $300 an hour. Most of money was made in the last 2 years anyway.
teitoklien 5y ago
The thing is, upwork in this scenario did not vet whether client was the actual owner of the card he was using to pay creators, this is a fault in upwork's fraud detection algorithm, their freelancers should not have to pay the penalty for this. Upwork takes a 30% cut (or lower, depending on your income on the platform), they are taking this cut, to create a safe and trust-able environment for its users by verifying both clients and freelancers. Considering this incident is a lapse on their end, the penalty should be paid solely by them. If doing so means they will go bankrupt, it just shows they failed as a company to create a safe enough platform to justify taking that 30% cut.
freemint 5y ago
> no platform would survive if they allowed freelancers keep the money earned by carding, because it would be flooded with carders. The collary is true too though. No freelancer could survive if they don't receive money from carding, because they still worked for these hours and deserve to be paid. And since it is Upwork, not the freelancer, doing the payment processing. It is them who should be held responsible as the freelancer don't even get access to the card information so the could check for fraudulence themselves
ajb 5y ago
I see your point, in that if they allowed freelancers to keep the money, carders could launder money money via upwork. But here's the thing: generally it's a principle of good law for a risk to be laid on the party that can mitigate it. How can you, as an upwork worker, mitigate the risk of a client using a stolen card? Answer: you can't because you are not the one processing the card. So there is a moral hazard in that choice too.
notahacker 5y ago
The irony is their policy here seems carder-friendly. Instead of pursuing legal action against the person who owes them 12.5k (which the freelancer would presumably support) they express no interest in legal action and simply don't pay the freelancer. If the freelancer got scammed by the carder, the carder wins. If a carder sets up a freelancer account to pay himself, that freelancer account is going to withdraw the funds ASAP, and Upwork informing that account they must do the next 230 hours of work on the platform for free isn't going to be an issue because they don't have any real reputation to lose or real work with pending payments so they can move on to the next dummy account. But yes, the ultimate solution is getting "Robin" to pay. Upwork which owns the client relationship and has the resources to pursue fraudsters should be leading on that though.

cyberpunk 5y ago

That sounds like rather a lot of money. If you don't mind my asking, doing what and over what kind of timeframe?

desdiv 5y ago
He has his upwork profile linked in his HN profile. Sounds like he has a niche and he's very very good at it.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Actually the rates don't even seem that high (GP would make 80% of that right?) The total hours they've listed as completed would take me at least 13 years to complete, probably longer.
  - anovikov 5y ago
    My actual lifetime average commission paid to Upwork is under 10% actually. People who repeat the claim about 20 (or 30! in this thread itself!) commission just don't read the rules. I interpret the rules as "commission is 5% plus $550 per client", which makes it sound a lot lower. How much does it cost to get 1 client "from the internet"? I know the answer and it's not pretty at all. And yes i'm on the platform for precisely 13 years, but bulk of money comes from fixed price contracts anyway, and effective rates there are ca. $300 an hour. Most of money was made in the last 2 years anyway.

teitoklien 5y ago

The thing is, upwork in this scenario did not vet whether client was the actual owner of the card he was using to pay creators, this is a fault in upwork's fraud detection algorithm, their freelancers should not have to pay the penalty for this. Upwork takes a 30% cut (or lower, depending on your income on the platform), they are taking this cut, to create a safe and trust-able environment for its users by verifying both clients and freelancers. Considering this incident is a lapse on their end, the penalty should be paid solely by them. If doing so means they will go bankrupt, it just shows they failed as a company to create a safe enough platform to justify taking that 30% cut.

freemint 5y ago

> no platform would survive if they allowed freelancers keep the money earned by carding, because it would be flooded with carders. The collary is true too though. No freelancer could survive if they don't receive money from carding, because they still worked for these hours and deserve to be paid. And since it is Upwork, not the freelancer, doing the payment processing. It is them who should be held responsible as the freelancer don't even get access to the card information so the could check for fraudulence themselves

ajb 5y ago

I see your point, in that if they allowed freelancers to keep the money, carders could launder money money via upwork. But here's the thing: generally it's a principle of good law for a risk to be laid on the party that can mitigate it. How can you, as an upwork worker, mitigate the risk of a client using a stolen card? Answer: you can't because you are not the one processing the card. So there is a moral hazard in that choice too.

notahacker 5y ago

The irony is their policy here seems carder-friendly. Instead of pursuing legal action against the person who owes them 12.5k (which the freelancer would presumably support) they express no interest in legal action and simply don't pay the freelancer. If the freelancer got scammed by the carder, the carder wins. If a carder sets up a freelancer account to pay himself, that freelancer account is going to withdraw the funds ASAP, and Upwork informing that account they must do the next 230 hours of work on the platform for free isn't going to be an issue because they don't have any real reputation to lose or real work with pending payments so they can move on to the next dummy account. But yes, the ultimate solution is getting "Robin" to pay. Upwork which owns the client relationship and has the resources to pursue fraudsters should be leading on that though.