Upwork

Problem I had with them was regarding managing payment methods. I work on different projects for different clients and I use their respective credit card to pay freelancer. Therefore, I added multiple card cards to my account. Only to know, they don't give an option which card to use when hiring a freelancer. I talked to their customer service letting them know it charged the wrong card and did not give me an option to choose a card.

Also, I asked them to revert the transaction and charge the right card or else I (on behalf of my client) will have to file a dispute.

Their response was, I cannot file dispute because that is against their terms and conditions. If I do, then they will terminate my account. Additionally, the option to add multiple cards is for backup. In case if first card doesn't work they can charge the second card.

To use different cards for different clients, I will have to create a separate "team" even though only one person is managing all the projects.

At the end they said, create a new "team" and talk to the freelancer if he is OK to cancel the order and resubmit it from the new "team". The freelancer was hesitant but he agreed. Since all my instructions/messages were in default "team" account, I continued and decided to cancel it at the end of the project. At the end, the freelancer didn't feel comfortable therefore he refused to cancel the job and I ended up paying him from wrong client's card.

I ended up having one client write a check to pay the other.

What a mess....

I often need to farm out small jobs and previously used Upwork (we have one major project ending soon, we'll be hiring the contractor directly after that). The fee rise if the main problem for us: we don't see we get 20% value from Upwork.

What are our alternatives, HN? Any recommendations?

Are the customers of Fiverr drowning Upwork? Just seems kinda odd that it has become such a mess as of late, I dropped Upwork just before their most recent fee increase though...