Ask HN: How do you get paid properly on Guru?

So I have one contract that I am working on up but what happened was this: I created a safepay request for 50% of the total. Employer approves it. Guru takes 9% cut. Employer squeezes in outside of scope stuff not described in original specs. I am forced now to complete those or not even get paid because Guru keeps the money until the employer is satisfied, and may return the money if not satisfied. Why am I paying extra so that the employer has an edge over me? Now do I create another safe pay so Guru charges me another 9%? Or do I create a Guru Invoice? It's staggering to think that I'm going to be giving away 9% of my earnings already. I think I will think twice about doing such jobs on Guru. It's as awful as I expected and the favor seems to be shifted to the exploitative party. Is there a freelance site for North Americans that crazy people don't post jobs on? From what I can see the person creating these type of jobs are essentially unwilling to spend so that they can keep most of the margins themselves for a rate they are charging a real life client in person. I wonder what the hell I am even doing on these freelance sites bottom scraping.