[leveraction]

The freelancer's story seems a little suspicious to me.

"Let me translate this. Robin has been using someone else’s credit card for two years..." followed by "I’m on very good terms with Robin."

Clearly, 'Robin' is a thief and it is entirely possible that Robin and the freelancer are one and the same. That the freelancer is not asking Robin for the money even though he knows him personally is telling. Does the freelancer wonder what his good client Robin thinks about the fact that Robin ran up a 12K credit card bill(payable to the freelancer, ultimately) that Robin never paid?(And we know the bill was never paid or there would be no need for the claw-back)

And I did not see any mention of where Upwork contacted Robin. Strange considering he was the one with “a credit card connected in his account that wasn’t actually his”. Is he still on the platform?

And then he sent two years worth of work to Upwork to substantiate his claim to the money. But how could Upwork know that the work he sent was legitimately related to the transaction? Could he not have created a project request for something he had already built?

Then he apparently logs ALL of his 'time' outside of the system. He said that this time was for "a brainstorming session and a few meetings" with Robin. 230 hours worth!? I notice that dates of the charge-back transactions were not provided. Was this 230 hours the entirety of the project or just a very small slice. He wrote that he had made more that 100K on Upwork and that he had other clients. That leads me to think that this 12K represented all or most of the billing on Robin's project. Was there any billing for actual implementation, or is it all brainstorming and meetings?

This story does not add up to me.

edit: I see in the graphic that apparently the work on Robin's project was for 1533 hours, so the 230 hours would have been just a portion. It makes me wonder what/how many other credit cards were used to pay for those other hours. Hard to believe Robin was above board for the first 1303 hours and then started paying with a stolen credit card.

[crispyambulance]

It's incomprehensible to me why "Robin" isn't at the absolute center of the shit-storm here.

What kinds of slick jedi-mind-tricks is Robin using to keep the OP from going after him and instead pleading with Upwork conflict resolution drones?

Getting lawyers involved is always a nightmare scenario and a last resort, but in this case it certainly seems like that's a valid course of action.

[jVinc]

> What kinds of slick jedi-mind-tricks is Robin using to keep the OP from going after him and instead pleading with Upwork conflict resolution drones?

The absolute center of the problem here seems to be that Upwork has engineered a system where Robin is not in any way involved with this case. This is a case of a credit card owner creating a chargeback request against a developer. The fact that the developer can prove that the payments where given for delivered work doesn't matter to Upwork, because when they took that proof to the bank of the credit card owner and said "See there is proof services where provided for the payments" the owner said "I did not request that work".

Back in reality, this is absolutely a problem for Upwork, and a problem that really should be at the very core of their business. If people can successfully chargeback any amount of money at any time scale because they payed with a creditcard they don't own, every single start-up should start making borrowing circles of credit cards for their first 10 years of development so they can claw it all back if they go bust and need to pivot. The very core of upworks business is to establish a truth worthy process for payment for services, and in this case where the process fails they are simply going "Oh, to bad for you, now go do the dishes until you've payed for the bill of the dinner dashers who just sprinted out after legally agreeing to pay your dinner as payment for 2 years work".

[SpicyLemonZest]

The question is whether Upwork actually did what this person is accusing them of. The most likely reason that the author isn’t mad at Robin, in my view, is that the author is not being entirely honest about what happened here.

[BoorishBears]

People are commenting here with 0 idea of how Upwork actually works.

You have no client on Upwork. It doesn't matter how long you've spoken to them, you have no client on Upwork.

Upwork is the client, and Upwork has a million and one contractors, so Upwork does not care if it messes with you.

And I say "messes with you" because the ways Upwork is willing to short a contractor are truly an open ended collection of actions. Revise hours because of a vague complaint, erase deliverable payments, randomly withhold money. Upwork does not care.

-

You also have 0 recourse against someone who hired you through Upwork. None. Upwork will almost always side against you, and Upwork will not expose someone to liabilty for hiring with it.

You could have a signed notarized statement from the client saying "Haha I sure scammed you good on Upwork!" and Upwork would close your account for disparaging a client.

(Ok some light hyperbole... but that's the mentality to take when reading OP's article)

-

Now you might be thinking "well that sounds so comically terrible there's no way these people would be in business, who exactly is keeping them alive?"... the clients are.

Treating contractors horribly is their raison dêtre: it allows people to hire from a pool of freelancers with absolutely 0 stress about if they'll ever be cheated.

You cannot be cheated by a freelancer on Upwork.

By becoming the way to casually hire freelancers (since you never get cheated) they stay alive, but at a great cost to the freelancers who market there. It's similar to what eBay was (?) like when it came to seller rights.

And remember Upwork is extremely accessible from countries where wages are very low, lower than minimum wage in the US for example: so you have a steady stream of freelancers who will replace anyone who leaves after being mistreated, since even the worst jobs on the site are comparable to solid work in their home countries.

[m12k]

Maybe lawyers are just super expensive where I live, but I honestly wouldn't expect to be able to find one that could see this kind of case through to completion for less than $12560.

[altacc]

Depends on jurisdiction but some countries have a court claims system for small debts, which costs a few percentage of the amount being claimed. The claim is reviewed by the process and a court judgement passed. Really useful when you need it.

[crispyambulance]

Yeah, of course, it depends. Lawyers don't necessarily "see the case through completion", however. Sometimes all that's needed is for the lawyer to write a letter and/or give some seasoned advice particular to the situation. In those scenarios it could end up costing several hundred dollars. Is that enough? Is it worth it? That's not at all clear but it may be worth a shot for someone in an intractable situation.

[yashap]

Looking at the “Who’s Al” page of the blog:

> Each string of the violin possesses the power of coherent control. Call me a business violinist. Hi, I’m Al. In the business world, there’s talent, there’s hard work, and there’s the synchronization of these two “strings”.

> I’m the merger of an investment consultant, a tech specialist, and a fintech enthusiast.

> …

> I specialize in investments related to Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Artificial Intelligence, among other tech ventures.

Thick BS language, and operating in a space that is chock full of fraud and criminal activity, I think you’re right to be suspicious. Clearly the client was a fraudster, using a stolen credit card, and re: the consultant being a fraudster, the chance of someone describing themselves as a “blockchain cryptocurrency investment consultant” being involved in fraud seems significant to me.

[awillen]

I agree - what I don't get is that you can generally only reverse charges for a limited period of time, even for fraud. He said he worked with Robin for two years, but probably only 120 days worth could have been charged back. So yeah, like you said, based on total earnings, the amount of work charged back and the time he says he worked with Robin, it seems like the vast majority of his work on the platform would've been with Robin.

And yeah, where's the righteous anger at Robin? All OP says about him is positive things, even though the situation is unambiguously one in which Robin is a scumbag and a thief if we accept the facts.

Just a lot that seems sketchy here, and especially the way his profile has stuff like "84.2% of the businesses I worked with, got an investment & provided their investors with an ROI of more than 6X." - that kind of very specific stat about a particular return for a particular percent of people just feels very dubious to me.

[hajile]

If they did 90k of good business and are charging $50 per hour, the risk in scamming for such small rewards seems weird.

If you’ve got a good client who’s paid on time, never caused issues, and you’ve met in person (and seems nice), then you don’t think too much when they explain away a small change in procedure.

This is so common that most corporate training on fraud will mention this scenario one way or another. Its the natural confidence scheme that predators have used for millennia.

[lobocinza]

I log my hours "outside the system" because I have a better system (timewarrior) and I don't want to install a spyware on my computer. I don't fraud my clients and never had an issue in getting paid.

It's not outside the system but just manually reported and you have till Monday 12:00 GMT to log past week work. What worries me is the lack of due time from Upwork and the bank. Fraud happens and is the cost of doing business and I wouldn't care about losing a week of work but two years is just surreal.

[bjornsing]

> This story does not add up to me.

Agree. It's weird that there's no mention of either Upwork or the OP trying to get "Robin" to pay what he owes... But it could be benign. In a complex and emotionally charged situation it's all too easy to focus on the wrong things.

[saalweachter]

... is "Robin" a pseudonymous reference to "Robin Hood"?

[shagie]

Robin is one of the gender neutral names that doesn't expose any information or bias beyond the reader's.

I've often used "Pat" as a name for a person where I don't want to imply one gender or another.

[usefulcat]

Exactly. Author seems to go out of his way to point out what an upstanding person “Robin” is, yet never even mentions the possibility that Robin maybe ought to pay the freelancer what he’s owed for services already rendered?

[mizzao]

I see... although I feel empathy for the author if he was scammed, it's important to make sure this isn't just an instance of laundering stolen a credit card through Upwork.

[Cederfjard]

Then why draw attention by blogging about it?

[n4bz0r]

To speculate on a scam scenario a bit:

I think the entire plan would be built on attracting those who'd jump on the bandwagon without thinking critically about the situation much, creating as much resonance in the Upwork community as possible, and thus "bullying" Upwork into paying the money before they'd have a chance to properly investigate.

Given the attention the post has already received, I can't imagine how the "scammers" would be getting away with all this. But criminals aren't generally known to be very bright so I'd incline towards a risk assessment error on their part as, at this point, the situation seems be creating resonance not only among Upwork community, but probably among legal entities as well (which is quite ironic).

[Operyl]

At the same time, the post clearly states that the investigation is over. Nobody is rushing Upwork here, they’ve already finished.

[tlogan]

Scammers are not really bright. We get even angry support emails from users using trying different stolen CC - go figure…

[conductr]

Chargeback time window has probably passed for the first 1303 hours since they waited so long to issue chargeback. It could be a card associated with Robin’s previous employer which would also explain why the charges were left undetected for so long. Why wouldn’t he have logged the hours if he’s a scammer? Why would he go public with the story?

[LorenPechtel]

It might not be a stolen card. Note that it simply says "someone else's card".

Maybe it's a corporate card, somebody in accounting decided to cause trouble. That goes along with why he's not mad at Robin--he realizes Robin was acting in good faith and the card owner is causing the trouble.

[jackatttack]

I don't understand why that matters. If Robin was acting in good faith, he would pay the owed amount. Then the contractor would pay Upwork and everyone would be back where they started—the contractor would be made whole, Upwork would no longer have a 'lien' on the contractor's account, and Robin would be back in good standing.

[LorenPechtel]

I'm thinking Robin isn't the primary, but an employee. Robin isn't going to pay out of his own pocket for what should be a corporate expense.

[cowvin]

Yep, this story sounds like an attempt to get social media pressure on Upwork to try to get them to cave.

I mean if Robin used someone else's card to pay, he never paid anyone for the services he received. So it sounds like instead of being angry at Upwork, the author should be angry at Robin.

Strange that he's not.