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You can understand Upwork's idea: they just want to pass on the risk and recover their loss. It's a normal business relationship. But I think many people are n

You can understand Upwork's idea: they just want to pass on the risk and recover their loss. It's a normal business relationship. But I think many people are not ready for the real world that their skills lift them into: being a contractor really is being your own business, and despite all the schtick about "platforms taking care of their freelancers", it's a business relationship, and really you all need to be looking out for yourselves. At the same time, it comes across as pretty tone deaf of Upwork, and the developer attitude is understandable as well: can you imagine that if you faced similar risk from your financial / payment / banking services (such as, Payoneer or Pay Pal freezing your funds) Upwork would agree to cover you into another account until it was resolved? Highly doubt it. Shouldn't Upwork have insurance for these types of fraud cases so they specifically don't have to pass the cost onto devs? You can just refuse to refund Upwork. They are giving you the collections treatment, you can tell them to stop harassing you as well as report their behavior to the competent authority in your jurisdiction or theirs. Tell them to instead chase down the money from the payer. edit: I remember I deeply reviewed a contract for a Russian Freelancing platform that was precise and fair -- I'm quite sure it had a clause that was like, once the payment hits your bank, it's yours no matter what. But the sensible thing was they had enough other precautionary stuff in the contract about how they handled payments, disputes and clients and so on, that it looked like they could make that work. They basically covered you for any clients that tried to abscond, I think.

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akudha 5y ago
"It is just business" - this kind of thinking is why we have shitty situations like this. Upwork is a billion dollar company, 12K is a joke to them whereas 12k is a lot of money for an individual. The customer paid Upwork using someone else's card, he didn't pay the freelancer. So the party that got duped is Upwork. They should either eat the loss or recover the money from the customer, if that is possible. Notice the only party that is getting screwed here is the little guy? Why is this acceptable? Maybe this should NOT be "normal business relationship"?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > 12K is a joke to them Not that I disagree, but I got the sense from the post that upwork has suddenly detected a lot of this exact same scam from a lot of clients. They may be dealing with hundreds or even thousands of the same situation.
  - akudha 5y ago
    Even if that is the case, that is still Upwork’s problem. Not the freelancer’s problem.
    - graderjs 5y ago
      I know--but that kind of one-sidedness is the same thing that we are accusing Upwork of doing, by making it just the freelancer's problem. I'm not defending them, and I don't know the facts, I'm just saying we should maintain a wholistic perspective about this--it makes our moral stance more credible. And it's better--it makes us better people. Because it's not just like, "well it's good for me, screw you" -- it's: "well it's the right thing to do." I think we need ethics to guide use, as well. In business especially. Even in the small ways that many of us are in business as contractors, we still need ethics. Plus it's gonna lead to better karma for us, and better outcomes. If you protect yourself, tough but fair, know you did everything right, but still stood for your own interests, but didn't miss the chance to try to find a win-win: I think that's the way to go.
- graderjs 5y ago
  Agree, totally. The only thing I disagree with you with is-- > "It is just business" - this kind of thinking is why we have shitty situations like this I mean I get what you mean, that we sort of normalized it. That's one way to take that: lower our expectations, don't expect better. But I think that's missing a really important piece of the picture: the main other way to take that. So the statement that, in other words, facing that reality calmly and being prepared for it--is causative of that reality. I don't agree with that. That reality is caused by shitty human behavior (what I like to call "ape brain shit"), it is not caused by people accepting this is the way things go (sometimes, right? not always), and taking precautions to protect themselves. Being ready to defend yourself doesn't normalize crime, it does the opposite, I believe. Because fraud may be enabled unfortunately by people not doing that--without at all pushing any responsibility for fraud onto victims--the more you can protect yourself, the less fraud you risk you will face. But none of this practical preparedness makes it OK, nor does it take away from what a shitty situation it is. Very very shitty. Most definitely. But that's what we humans still are, right now, at this stage of our development. Otherwise we would not be so shitty to each other so often. So...exactly, we got to protect ourselves. But you can't do that effectively unless you realize these things go on. People will push risk downhill. It's how it works. So you got to be prepared to handle that. Unfortunately, that's normal business relationship. I agree that it "shouldn't" be that way. But then a lot of things in the world "shouldn't" be the way that they are. When it comes to money, why should we expect that to be any different? I think we can expect that to be worse. Because of how much greed, and obsession and dependency there is on money...But I firmly believe the way to deal with that is to face it with eyes open and work out ways to handle it. Rather than hoping, "Man I wish the system was different." I sure would like to tho...Would love to just let my guard down, not give a shit about contracts. Not think I need to "protect" myself. Would love to do that. But I'd feel I was being irresponsible to myself if I did that--if I expected that somehow someone else was gonna look for the little guy--for me--except me. I'm the one's that got to do that. And I hope you all do that, too--so you stay safe and protect yourselves. Know the world can be crazy out there, people can rip you off--so figure out ways to handle it, and even avoid it, if you can! More power!

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akudha 5y ago

"It is just business" - this kind of thinking is why we have shitty situations like this. Upwork is a billion dollar company, 12K is a joke to them whereas 12k is a lot of money for an individual. The customer paid Upwork using someone else's card, he didn't pay the freelancer. So the party that got duped is Upwork. They should either eat the loss or recover the money from the customer, if that is possible. Notice the only party that is getting screwed here is the little guy? Why is this acceptable? Maybe this should NOT be "normal business relationship"?

commandlinefan 5y ago
> 12K is a joke to them Not that I disagree, but I got the sense from the post that upwork has suddenly detected a lot of this exact same scam from a lot of clients. They may be dealing with hundreds or even thousands of the same situation.
- akudha 5y ago
  Even if that is the case, that is still Upwork’s problem. Not the freelancer’s problem.
  - graderjs 5y ago
    I know--but that kind of one-sidedness is the same thing that we are accusing Upwork of doing, by making it just the freelancer's problem. I'm not defending them, and I don't know the facts, I'm just saying we should maintain a wholistic perspective about this--it makes our moral stance more credible. And it's better--it makes us better people. Because it's not just like, "well it's good for me, screw you" -- it's: "well it's the right thing to do." I think we need ethics to guide use, as well. In business especially. Even in the small ways that many of us are in business as contractors, we still need ethics. Plus it's gonna lead to better karma for us, and better outcomes. If you protect yourself, tough but fair, know you did everything right, but still stood for your own interests, but didn't miss the chance to try to find a win-win: I think that's the way to go.
graderjs 5y ago
Agree, totally. The only thing I disagree with you with is-- > "It is just business" - this kind of thinking is why we have shitty situations like this I mean I get what you mean, that we sort of normalized it. That's one way to take that: lower our expectations, don't expect better. But I think that's missing a really important piece of the picture: the main other way to take that. So the statement that, in other words, facing that reality calmly and being prepared for it--is causative of that reality. I don't agree with that. That reality is caused by shitty human behavior (what I like to call "ape brain shit"), it is not caused by people accepting this is the way things go (sometimes, right? not always), and taking precautions to protect themselves. Being ready to defend yourself doesn't normalize crime, it does the opposite, I believe. Because fraud may be enabled unfortunately by people not doing that--without at all pushing any responsibility for fraud onto victims--the more you can protect yourself, the less fraud you risk you will face. But none of this practical preparedness makes it OK, nor does it take away from what a shitty situation it is. Very very shitty. Most definitely. But that's what we humans still are, right now, at this stage of our development. Otherwise we would not be so shitty to each other so often. So...exactly, we got to protect ourselves. But you can't do that effectively unless you realize these things go on. People will push risk downhill. It's how it works. So you got to be prepared to handle that. Unfortunately, that's normal business relationship. I agree that it "shouldn't" be that way. But then a lot of things in the world "shouldn't" be the way that they are. When it comes to money, why should we expect that to be any different? I think we can expect that to be worse. Because of how much greed, and obsession and dependency there is on money...But I firmly believe the way to deal with that is to face it with eyes open and work out ways to handle it. Rather than hoping, "Man I wish the system was different." I sure would like to tho...Would love to just let my guard down, not give a shit about contracts. Not think I need to "protect" myself. Would love to do that. But I'd feel I was being irresponsible to myself if I did that--if I expected that somehow someone else was gonna look for the little guy--for me--except me. I'm the one's that got to do that. And I hope you all do that, too--so you stay safe and protect yourselves. Know the world can be crazy out there, people can rip you off--so figure out ways to handle it, and even avoid it, if you can! More power!