Upwork

The customer support at UPWORK is terrible. The departments are seperated and the only way you can talk to a real person on upwork with no automated and generic replies, is with the customer support phone line. However, they can only solve problems to a certain extent because the department that handles the REAL problems can only be reached through e-mail.

My account was suspended because my client asked if I accepted payment outside of upwork--to which I said no. Who knew that just by ANSWERING that question, it was considered "discussing" payments outside of upwork which followed with my account being suspended. When I asked to resolve this, I only got automated and generic replies from upwork. When I tried to talk to customer support on the phone, they told me that they have no way to deal with this since it is not their department and that I can only reach that department through e-mail. I constantly tried to get through to the department so I can have a REAL conversation to try and resolve this matter, but NOPE. Generic copy and pasted replies, instead of someone who genuinely is there to listen and work things out.

This little mistep caused my permant suspension and ban from upwork. I would definitely advise people not to use Upwork in general. There are so many "little" misteps that are hidden underneath Upwork's agreement. I certaintly did not know that just by replying to a quesiton, it was considered as discussion, which left me with my account being permantly banned and with no one wiling to openly help resolve my case with care.

I hope you read this doc till the end.

Hi! How are you?
I just wanted to discuss my business idea for both of us.
I'm never a faker or a cheater and I am really serious.
I am a full-stack web developer with good experience of 7+ years.
I want to work on a Upwork.com site.
I have worked at Upwork.com before and my Upwork account was closed for some reason a few days ago.
Upwork.com prefers European and American freelancers and they are well treated. (in the price of their works)
So I need a European or American account to get more money.(Other nationality maybe possible)
If I don't pay you, you can close the account any time, because you will have all access and the profile image is yours.
In this case, it will be a great lost to me. So there is no need to worry about the payment.
If you are interested in me, please contact me through Skype.
We can discuss more detail.
If you dislike mine, please don't be angry with me.
Business is business! But I want you.
To think once more. Believe me.
If you agree, I should work on your pc using anydesk or teamviewer because of my location.
**********************************************************************************************************
On your PC remotely, I ONLY use your computer for searching jobs on upwork.
I won't access/use any of your data on your computer but just need to access Upwork.com and work there only.
After I get hired, on my PC I will work on a project.
If I login to Upwork on my pc, the account will be closed soon. So, I need to work on your pc.
***********************************************************************************************************
Eventually you will get money earned. You can choose one of 2 kinds of payments
• 10 % of my monthly income.(I can earn 3000$ after two months)
• 100$ per month.

My skype id:
Live:. Cid. 60f655b74ac5ada8 (username: ladyhand)

Thanks for reading.

Great Upwork, Recomended site freelance site for working online remote to meet client at worldwide, the best Upwork

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 they 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?

Just go to the link: https://hackernoon.com/why-you-should-never-use-upwork-ever-5c*******bdf46#.8e2qxi5jx

I've worked with several freelancers from Elance with about 60% success but recently I had a horrible experience with one of their freelancers and received very unsatisfactory support. The freelancer is Scoped Design. Here is what happened.

I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO PROCEED WITH CAUTION. This freelancer completely swindled me out of $500 and did not deliver the work of customizing a wordpress theme based on Zeyn theme. S/he is the most dishonest person I've dealt with on this service. I had significant correspondence with freelancer prior to accepting job. Scoped_Design then contacted me stating that one of his jobs had cancelled for the week and offered a discount. Now, I of course know why the previous job backed out. They smelled something fishy. He asked for $500 up front stating that he needed to pay the outsourced SEO team, so since we'd had so much correspondence and he was very responsive I (stupidly) released funds. INSTALLED INCORRECT THEME: At that point, Scoped_Design installed a completely different theme on my wordpress site that I'd requested. This process took over a week. TOOK THE MONEY AND RAN: When asked to conform to original job request he did finally install requested theme and then I never heard from him again. ELANCE SUPPORT refused to assist in getting the monies back. They approved my claim agains Scoped Design but since the funds had been released, they seemed to have just dropped it. Good luck with them if you ever need assistance. I'm dismayed that they don't police their freelancers any better than that.

This review and message is for the people sitting on hot chair of Upwork's payroll:
'YOU', people being placed at the top most position, would treat this mail / message like any other junk mail and be if ignored by. But still would be taking out my frustration and pass on this message to you.

As per what happened recently, we are all incapable of earnings, who received the irregularities in our account. We landed up to your site of upwork in a hope that we might get into a life changing deal one day.

We also know, these things come up from the higher management to reduce number of people ( freelancer -who are of no use to your company).

You are throwing us out of your system like we have committed serious crimes and are held responsible for imaginary fraud activities. It gives us a feeling like we don't belong to your cream layer and we are just the corner dirt lying on the road.

The day when I saw that my account is getting closed without prior intimation, it was like I was being punished for serious offence, and I did cross check too that did I really cross any line while searching job. But hey! It took me 3-4 days to accept it that I am not a valuable person on this Earth, not because I committed some fraud, but as not being a consistent earner.

I have purchased the connects, still half of it unused. Yes 12$ it is which I spent to buy connects to see your robotic mail chain that ' irregularities in your account', "cross check, and found hard core evidence against you, " ' we may not be able to reply to your message', ' once closed you would be kicked out of the system even when you are a genuine user.

I have earned around 30+ $ till date and spent 12$ to take your services to search job. This is how you build trust in the company? Are the job providers going to believe your commitment to provide same freelancer who are in project, whom they trust?

Being a multi-million or billion company doesn't mean you have the right to blame people for what they didn't do, it's the guts in which you say it right on the face that ' you are just tiny piece of electron in my universe and are not capable of earning till date', not that we are hard core criminals. Just such filthy feeling I got out of those robotic mail chain. It's being fooled even after paying for the services.

I asked for reimbursement of my payment for services, for which they reply the ticket is closed and give you feedback about upwork. So this mail is my feedback.

Current situation might be favoring you, but one day when clients trust break, you all would be standing behind us in this queue of jerks..

Upwork allows freelancers of all sorts to apply for jobs posted by clients. The freelancers can have free accounts where they purchase "connects" that can be used to apply for jobs, OR the freelancers can have a paid account and he/she will be given 70 connects each month. It used to cost two connects to apply for any job, but Upwork has now started charging 2,4, or 6 connects to apply for a job, depending on the value of the job. Upwork used to charge freelancers $10/month for a "Plus Account" (where they would get 70 "free" connects) and they have now started charging $15/month. Freelancers can buy additional connects for 15 cents each in various quantities.

What all this really means is that freelancers are now paying WAY MORE for the privilege of bidding on jobs. On top of this, Upwork charges 20% commission to the freelancers for the agreed contract price. This is DOUBLE what Freelancer.com and some other freelance websites charge!

Upwork pushed a video explaining the price increases, saying that the new system would decrease the number of freelancers bidding on jobs and therefore increase a freelancer's chances of getting a job. THAT WAS TOTAL BS! The exact opposite has turned out to be true. Many freelancers are now only applying for low value jobs in order to only be charged two connects rather than 4 or 6 connects.

Bottom line: Many of us are paying way more to work on Upwork and we are getting fewer and fewer jobs. WHATEVER YOU DO, STAY AWAY FROM UPWORK! HORRIBLE! GREEDY! AND THE WEBSITE IS ALWAYS HAVING PROBLEMS!

I should add that many of the clients who post jobs on Upwork are looking to have work done at RIDICULOUSLY LOW PRICES. Some ask to have designs submitted before hiring the freelancer. Be VERY careful and try to judge the client before you bid on a job!

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 they 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.