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Comment by altacc | Hacker News Reader

Remember, companies will always look after themselves before anyone else. If Upwork is the middleman here providing a payment platform, then I'd expect them to swallow the cost of card fraud, not the freelancer. I suspect individual freelancers have a theoretical dollar value in their calculations and it's never going to be bigger than the company accepting a financial risk.

I do wonder why the author is still on Upwork, their rating & exposure on there must be worth more to them than working several weeks for free, but personally I'd walk. I also don't understand why the pay back is not pro-rata instead of full time, allowing freelancers in this position to earn some money to pay the bills whilst paying back the chargeback (although they shouldn't be paying it at all). If the author is in the same country as the client then they should also be taking legal action to reclaim the money (which again, Upwork should be doing).

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From the article, it sounds like like they do cover the costs of card fraud if the time is tracked using their tool. It's only when hours are manually entered that they don't. And honestly, I get that. It's very hard for Upwork to tell the difference between this and a conspiracy between freelancer and client to steal money from a credit card.

Even so, my initial sympathies were with the freelancer. But then I looked at the main page of his website. he is a "Blockchain & AI Focused Tech and Investment Consultant" specializing in "investments related to Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Artificial Intelligence". It seems to me that a) somebody claiming this level of business sophistication should be walking the walk, and b) anybody working in the cryptocurrency space should vet clients very carefully given the high level of fraud and insanity in the space.

So I think what I'd really like to see here is Upwork saying, "We're very sorry the client screwed us all over and we suggest you consider suing them to get paid. Have your lawyer contact us and we'll turn over any records you need to that end."

Their tool is a spyware. They eat 20% of all their freelancers earnings and it's up to them to verify the client credit cart and identity so they should do better and cover this. What is worse is that it took then 2 years so the freelancer possibly paid taxes and withdrawing fees. Fraud sucks but I don't think someone should be able to make a refund years past an event. Due time is important.

It's utterly ridiculous. If you want to be the 'merchant of record' then you absorb the risk, it's that simple. What tool gets used has nothing to do with that, then they need to improve their KYC work.

>It's utterly ridiculous. If you want to be the 'merchant of record' then you absorb the risk, it's that simple.

Are you saying that as something to aspire to, or something that's standard practice? I don't think most people would have a problem with bigcorp absorbing the risk, but in practice most e-commerce platforms pass the chargeback risk to their sellers.

It is the expectation they create, by taking care of the drudgery of having customers Upwork puts itself in an excellent position to reap a chunk of the turnover of the freelancers they put to work, but it also puts the onus on them to ensure that customers pay their invoices and do so promptly and properly.

Note that there is absolutely no dispute at all about the work being performed or the quality of the work, and if there was they might have a leg to stand on, even if that came to light this long after the fact (though, again, that would point to some process errors at Upwork).

The responsibility of payment processing and due diligence with respect to which customers they do business with and how they arrange the various payment options lies entirely with Upwork. In this case Upwork is the seller. They buy the product from someone else and that's two separate relationships, Upwork now suddenly wants to pretend that they weren't part of the transaction after all and that the relationship ran directly from buyer to their supplier but that isn't the case.

> They buy the product from someone else and that's two separate relationships, Upwork now suddenly wants to pretend that they weren't part of the transaction after all and that the relationship ran directly from buyer to their supplier but that isn't the case.

Upwork asserts that they own the relationship between client and freelancer/agency, to the point that freelancers or agencies must pay Upwork thousands of dollars if they want to move their client off of Upwork.

Upwork would presumably say that freelancers who don’t use the Upwork tool are deciding they’d prefer for Upwork to not be part of the transaction. In particular this seems unambiguously right for “service not delivered” chargebacks, where managing chargeback risk kinda requires being able to prove that the services were performed.

That's a pretty weird reading of the concept of the gig economy. Upwork clearly wants to own the customer relationship, which is why they do what they can to avoid being cut out of the deal. In a world where Upwork would be happy to be compensated by freelancers invoicing customers directly for work found through Upwork you'd have a point, but that is not the world we live in. Upwork processes the payments, and both clients and freelancers are aware of this and that Upwork takes a cut for providing the matchmaking and process services they offer.

Service not delivered is normally dealt with by services like Upwork through escrow like arrangements or review procedures where the customer will only pay for approved work. Upwork chooses the second method, which means they have all of the control they need to ensure that freelancers only get paid if they deliver, substantially reducing the risk of such chargebacks.

And if these do happen, then the problem, again, lies with Upwork and the fact that they choose a payment method that offers that possibility. They could choose wire transfer instead if they were concerned with customers charging back after approving the work.

It's not a one-sided problem. They could do wire transfers, but that would be a substantial cost for their client side users, since most (American) banks charge $20-30 for outgoing wire transfers. It's not obvious to me why avoiding chargeback issues should dominate all other concerns, as bad as it is.

I think the point is the insecure payment method was Upwork's decision (they don't even allow their freelancer to propose an alternative their own payment solution) as was accepting the stolen card; risk management of non-reversible payments has a cost too, but that's a decision Upwork made. The only security decision the freelancer made was not to use Upwork's spyware. Which would give Upwork valid reason to default to siding with the client over the freelancer in the case of a dispute about completed work, but not to demand a freelancer reimburse them because Upwork had chosen to accept reversible payments with a stolen card and couldn't easily recover funds from their client after the chargeback.

Apparently the cost of credit card processing amounts to $12.5K, on account of something that the freelancer could not have been aware of. The thing to watch for is whether Upwork improves their processes on account of this happening, changes their terms of service (supply side) changes their terms of service (demand side) or does nothing at all. That will tell you all you need to know.

Credit cards also have fees. When you start talking thousands of dollar transactions CC start being more expensive.

At 1000 dollars 4% is $40.

Then Upwork would have no claim to a violation of their TOS. Upwork can't choose between protections and risk.

> We continued working via Upwork while locating in Zurich, as to not violate any Upwork terms.

If that’s the case I would expect Upwork to charge a lower fee when freelancers are not using the tool

There are different types of platforms:

If you sell something through Amazon and the buyer commits fraud, Amazon will still pay you provided that it was credit card fraud.

If you sell something on your Shopify store and integrate with Stripe, you are responsible for your KYC, and will have to take a loss for fraud.

The former takes a larger percentage of your sale for handling KYC, while the latter lets you keep more, but you're responsible for KYC.

The problem with Upwork, Airbnb, etc. is that they act like the merchant of record but not when it comes to fraud. They try to pass that onto the seller.

Generally, in the payments space, the “merchant of record” is who the banks go to with chargebacks and disputes. I haven’t heard of this as an industry standard.

Large platforms where the customer thinks they are paying the platform, such as Lyft or Uber, take on the chargeback risk. Etsy, Shopify, and others where the customer is paying a vendor tend to pass on the fees to the vendor.

Ultimately, it’s up to the platform how they want to handle this. It’s most likely listed in the terms of service.

I don't disagree (nor totally agree) with your opinion about the matter. But they don't take a 20% of all their freelancers earnings, they take 20% on the first $500 of your per-client earnings, then %10 of the next $9500, then %5 of any more work with your client. Also, you are free to work with any client outside the platform 2 years after you start work with them.

True.

And therefore when there's a chargeback they take 20% of the hit.

He needs to go after the thief. Upwork certainly ought to help with that, rather than trying to get the bank to not do the chargeback and screw over the fraud victim after all.

> Even so, my initial sympathies were with the freelancer. But then I looked at the main page of his website. he is a "Blockchain & AI Focused Tech and Investment Consultant"

Whilst I have little time for the crypto world, this is totally irrelevant. They were using a large & popular freelance platform for legally acceptable work and the exchange of fiat currency for billable work. People use platforms like Upwork in the (often mistaken) belief that it adds a layer of trust and safety to a working arrangement, including billing.

I think it is relevant. If you work for crypto scammers, problems are more likely. If you work for normal clients, via upwork or some other way, problems are less likely.

Upwork handles payment. The freelancer has no ability to verify the card used for payment.

If you work for "crypto scammers" just take partial or complete payment up front, in crypto which can't be retroactively taken from you.

tbh he might try not to pay back anyways, but they might close his upwork account, so the payment method is irrelevant here, isn't it?

>anybody working in the cryptocurrency space should vet clients very carefully given the high level of fraud and insanity in the space.

Normally I'd agree, and I'd just flat out refuse to do crypto work for people over Upwork.

But these payments came over the course of two years. After the first few settle, I can't blame him for assuming everything is hunkydory.

What's insane is that the bank is letting someone do chargebacks going back two years.

How do we know they did chargebacks for two years? I see 6 items, which I'm guessing is the 6 months that my card issuer limits chargebacks.

If that's the case, then the freelancer could still be well ahead on his slice of the credit card fraud.

Even if track time with their tool Upwork can take money back from you. I’ve witness the case where client paid $40k with Amex card and then chargeback. Poor freelancer lost $40k because Upwork took that money from his account as soon as it saw chargeback from Amex.

It's not a time tracking tool per se. It counts keystrokes, mouse swipes, takes screenshots, and so on. It's a spyware nanny cam.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/upwork...

> It's very hard for Upwork to tell the difference between this and a conspiracy between freelancer and client to steal money from a credit card.

I agree that it's hard to tell the difference, but do not believe that gives Upwork the authority to require a refund from the freelancer. The freelancer made an agreement with Upwork that, in exchange for payment from Upwork, the freelancer would perform work as directed by the client. By requiring a refund, Upwork is claiming that the freelancer either (a) did not perform work as directed or (b) is conspiring with the client to scam Upwork. In the case of (a), the client may give evidence against the freelancer. In the case of (b), the burden of proof lies with Upwork to prove that such a conspiracy existed, not on the freelancer to prove that no such conspiracy existed.

Upwork has four ethical options going forward. First, Upwork may accept the cost of fraud as a part of doing business, and continue working with this freelancer. Second, Upwork may accept the cost of fraud as a part of doing business, but limit that cost by refusing to hire this freelancer in the future. Third, Upwork may recover payment from the client through the courts. Fourth, Upwork may accuse the freelancer of being part of the client's fraud, and may recover payment through the courts. Instead of taking any of these options, Upwork has chosen the unethical option to require payment from the freelancer without first establishing any culpability on the part of the freelancer.

> he is a "Blockchain & AI Focused Tech and Investment Consultant" specializing in "investments related to Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Artificial Intelligence". It seems to me that a) somebody claiming this level of business sophistication should be walking the walk, and b) anybody working in the cryptocurrency space should vet clients very carefully given the high level of fraud and insanity in the space.

I agree, considering Blockchain and Cryptocurrency as realms of unmitigated fraud whose entire existence consist of nested pyramid schemes. However, I do not think that establishing a precedent allowing abuse of a power differential in somebody's livelihood is acceptable, even when the victim is part of the larger Blockchain/Cryptocurrency scheme.

> So I think what I'd really like to see here is Upwork saying, "We're very sorry the client screwed us all over and we suggest you consider suing them to get paid. Have your lawyer contact us and we'll turn over any records you need to that end."

Except that the freelancer's agreement is with Upwork. The client screwed over Upwork. A bank is responsible for verifying the identity of somebody accessing an account, and may not pass on the costs to the account holder. Upwork is responsible for verifying the identity of a client's payment, and may not pass on the costs to the freelancer.

> The freelancer made an agreement with Upwork that, in exchange for payment from Upwork, the freelancer would perform work as directed by the client.

Do you have proof of any of this? I'd bet cash money that everything that happened here is entirely covered the actual agreement.

> gives Upwork the authority

It is the rules Upwork sets that gives it the authority, rules everyone agrees to before entering in a relationship.

Contracts are constantly litigated and various terms get struck all the time. It’s not that everyone agreed with Upwork that gives them control it’s the near impossibility of litigating amounts in question without losing money. Upwork in the other hand has extreme incentives to make these terms stick because they have a lot more at stake than just ~12k.

The time tracking is to protect the client from the freelancer scamming. Time is not even being disputed here. Upwork is handling payments, and taking 20% fee for that risk (as I recall), so they need to eat it when they screw up by allowing payment with an unauthorized card. There is nothing the freelancer could do to know that payments are valid, because upwork is supposed to do that.

The actual problem is that chargebacks are possible when using credit cards, and chargebacks are possible because of the legal concept of card fraud (i.e. the person holding the credentials could actually not be legally "authorized" to realize the transaction), and the legal concept of card fraud exists mainly for two reasons:

1. Banks are bad at security.

2. People are bad at security.

3. The responsibility in the case of fraudulent transactions is not clear. Who is to blame? The bank or the user?

Cryptocurrencies either solve these problems or neutralize the negative consequences of these problems:

- There is no bank to impose dumb security rules

- When credentials are "stolen", the user has no one else to blame than themselves.

- There's no concept of fraud. Whoever holds the credentials (private key or nmemonic seed) is authorized to realize transactions using the credentials.

- There are no chargebacks. Once a transaction is confirmed, the receiver can be certain that their money is not going to get pulled back.

Shifting all liability to users ("the user has no one else to blame than themselves") is probably one of the most anti-consumer moves ever. Especially in the context of digital credentials that people do not know how to secure and for which good usable security mechanisms do not exist.

Also, what happens in transactions where the seller does not deliver the right item? What if I buy a laptop off eBay, but I receive a box of rocks instead?

> Banks are bad at security.

I disagree. I live in Europe and all my online card transactions over a nominal sum (~$10) are tied to a certificate-based security application that requires confirmation on my phone. This same application is used by all banks and most government entities.

There are of course banks in the world that are bad at security, but “banks”, as a general term, most definitely are not.

The fundamental problem is, of course, that security is annoying, so any fundamental security improvement to online banking needs to be mandatory and centralized, and if there is no will to push something like that I’m not surprised nothing happens.

So you are saying that cryptocurrencies are better because if I get scammed I have zero recourse to get my money back? Wow. And I was wondering why this modern marvel hasn't taken the payment industry yet.

Charge backs are not only intended to solve card fraud. It's the most convenient tool you have as a buyer to deal with seller fraud. If you have good evidence, you can win them consistently.

zero recourse transactions sounds like a nightmare. screw everything about that

> Have your lawyer contact us

That alone would cost several thousand dollars.

Upwork should provide free lawyers for incidents like this as part of their package.

There may be an arbitration agreement in their EULA, and that may allow them to settle this more cheaply than using lawyers.

> If Upwork is the middleman here providing a payment platform, then I'd expect them to swallow the cost of card fraud, not the freelancer.

Yes. To me, it's whoever's in the best position to reduce fraud that should be responsible.

It's Upwork who can verify payer details, implement identity verification, require back-up payment methods, etc. If Upwork isn't the primary entity feeling the pain when a stolen credit card is used, then they're not as incentivized to address it. And there's nothing the freelancer can realistically do, aside from maybe limit risk by breaking the project up into smaller costs.

Upwork does almost no verification of clients, and they won't because it would add friction to the onboarding process. For freelancers, however, they have extensive vetting processes.

Reminder to anyone reading this:

NEVER EVER give access to your bank account to ANYONE.

e.g. INTUIT (They personally scammmed me out of a month's worth of subscription that I never used).

Do NOT give your bank account to Paypal, they WILL withdraw money if they have any excuse.

You can however, give all of these your credit card, as any wrongdoing can be ammended via a Chargeback, but there's no chargeback for direct-to-bank withdrawals.

Not ANY wrongdoing...

Despite Air Canada cancelling the flight (we didn't cancel our tickets), despite a public campaign waged to get them to refund passengers, despite the US Department of Transportation fining them $25 million (reduced to $2 million because US gov't), despite Air Canada changing their public website multiple times (I saved screenshots to include "we will fully refund") but then not actually allowing your ticket to be processed, despite me submitting DOZENS of responses to Chase for clarification on why all of this is wrong of Air Canada...

Chase: "I'm sorry, if they don't want to refund you, even if they said they would, there's nothing we can do."

https://viewfromthewing.com/dot-issues-largest-fine-ever-aga...

Odd.

Did you use the magic phrase: “I need to issue a chargeback. They charged my card for services not rendered. I called their number to contest it and they did not issue a refund.”

That (or “they charged my card but did not send the product”) has worked 100% of the time for me. I’ve never provided documentation beyond that.

Chase has a strong financial incentive to issue the chargeback (Air Canada ends up paying Chase a fine), and it’s no sweat off Chase’s back if Air Canada sues you.

Card issuers have no incentive to investigate further, and (in my experience) never ask for further documentation.

I second this comment. Your chargeback request needs to color neatly within the lines of their procedures if you want a smooth process. How you phrase your request is incredibly important. Do not go crazy on details specific to the situation, use a template.

If Chase was already involved, it seems like Chase denied the chargeback request. Banks have an incentive to not let bad chargebacks through to major merchants, it would reduce the value of the card networks over time, and hence incentivize less use of the card networks resulting in less profit for the banks.

I would have taken Air Canada to court though, assuming all the facts are true. A small claims court would have definitely supported them.

Not sure where this person is, but in the US chargebacks exist because they are required by law. There is also an arbitration processs they are required to provide for disputes, which is pretty cheap.

In my experience it’s almost too easy to create a chargeback and the whole system is grossly inefficient and ripe for abuse.

I once called in to make a price protection benefit claim (would refund the price difference of a purchase). The agent assured me it was done and I find out later all they did was create a chargeback and I got refunded the entire price because the merchant didn't respond to it.

The dispute resolution system seems like it gets no investment or attention from any stakeholder, a merchant could easily get DOSd by spam disputes if some sort of consumer protest were organized. That’s how overpowered of a consumer tool it is.

I have had trouble with charge backs with Chase. Generally, I think they are pretty good to work with, but I would not suggest them for any large purchases.

You are correct about credit card companies, but for whatever reason, Chase has different incentives.

Chase seems to be one of Air Canada's credit card rewards program partners[1]. My guess is that this relationship has something to do with Chase's refusal to issue a chargeback.

[1]https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/aeroplan/credit-car...

that seems like a stretch to be honest.

These programs are worth billions for larger airlines according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_revenue When there are billions at stake, it does not strike me as a stretch that the credit card partners would bend the rules to benefit their airline partners.

Right! This is why I always chuckle when the HN thought-leaders always say "just do a chargeback" as if it's easy and guaranteed. I've rarely had success doing them.

The difference is often your bank. Some of my banks don't even have a way to initiate the charge back process (you have to write a free form email), presumably to reduce overhead and to avoid losing cases needlessly, while the others make it very easy with a web form.

Anecdotally, I've never had one fail. I've probably done maybe 4 or 5 in 10 years. Though I despise Chase and don't use them, so that may be the key. Amex and Discover are top notch in that department.

Have you thought of going to consumer court? Either that, or a class action lawsuit (if multiple people can group together) should definitely help you see your money. You might also be able to find a lawyer pro-bono as the case is clear cut in your favor (and charge for legal fees in the compensation).

Same experience with an Air Canada ticket here.

This varies country to country. In the UK, direct bank withdrawals (via Direct Debit) are guaranteed forever. Ie. in 30 years time you can reverse a transaction from a company and get all the money instantly, even if the company no longer exists.

How does it work if the account is closed, company out of business etc? Does the bank eat the amount? if so, seems easy to abuse.

The bank (or transfer provider) eats the amount. And yes, it gets quite some abuse. It's especially abused against gas and electric providers when they've gone bankrupt since people tend to have paid those companies tens of thousands over many years, and when the provider has gone bankrupt it's unlikely they'll provide any evidence to dispute any chargeback.

Though as a point of interest my small UK-based B2C has seen significant abuse of card chargebacks (i.e., chargebacks issued against legitimate charges and the banks rejecting our dispute) but never a single abusive reversal under Direct Debit, even though in theory the Direct Debit has that indefinite liability attached. I suspect this is because in practice you can issue a chargeback because you didn't like the way someone sneezed and a lot of banks will uphold it while you normally have to give a valid reason to reverse a Direct Debit transaction.

Probably because you can't dispute for any reason. But if there wasn't enough notice. If you don't give 10 working days notice (unless initiated by the person). An immediate refund can be requested.

Bad service isn't a reason for a refund. And if the person doesn't say "This debit was in error. I wasn't given notice" or similar the bank will usually say this is a legitimate direct debit [0] https://www.directdebit.co.uk/DirectDebitExplained/pages/dir...

My bank doesn't even offer a dispute option in direct debit transactions.

you have to call them.

This bank and banking system specific. My bank (Canada) doesn’t offer any dispute option either.

> NEVER EVER give access to your bank account to ANYONE.

The thing is, that’s the only way to do direct deposit. It makes me uncomfortable too, but that’s been the standard for decades.

To allow someone a direct deposit they should only need your name and bank account numbers. You shouldn't be giving them access with things like your password.

Giving them your name/account number is all that's needed for someone to withdraw from your account. That's how gyms work. They just require your account number and/or a void check (which has your account number). They don't need you to sign into your bank account.

I don't think any responsible bank would let you withdraw using just an account number. What kind of security would that be? My bank certainly doesn't - allowing a debit requires me to authorise via 2FA - they obviously can't just take money.

>> I don't think any responsible bank would let you withdraw using just an account number.

That is literally how checking works in the united states. You can withdraw money from a bank account if you have a routing number and bank account number and "permission." The permission could be a signed check, it could be an auto-pay ACH you set up by handing a paper form to someone, it could be a web-form you signed without looking over the fine-print.

Most extractive companies (e.g., gyms, verizon) have so many fine print and so many lawyers that they can literally take anything from you without recourse. You'd spend tens of thousands in lawyer fees without getting the money back. You could go to the attorney general's office for your state. Good luck with that, unless its a common issue, you just have to eat the cost as part of being American.

Or it could be nothing. In this case, its still on you to figure it out and get the money back in time.

My state prohibits gyms from requiring ACH exactly to prevent this sort of abuse. It doesn't stop them from trying, or structuring their fees.

The gym industry is very predatory and it needs far more regulation.

It should be noted that in the US, some banks will allow you to request a default ACH block/lock on your account, and I highly encourage you to ask for such.

That's not only a States thing. Direct debit works similarly in Europe.

That said I haven't heard of companies or fraudsters abusing it

Direct Debit in Europe has strong guarantees in favour of the customer, e.g. reversing charges.

"A no-questions-asked, fast and simple Refund procedure available within eight weeks of the debit date."

Within 8 weeks of the charge, you just phone (or otherwise) your bank and ask them to undo the charge.

> That's not only a States thing. Direct debit works similarly in Europe.

Maybe it still works that way in some parts of Europe, but in others it has been changed to work differently, or doesn't exist anymore and has been replaced by other systems, depending on how you want to put it.

>I don't think any responsible bank would let you withdraw using just an account number

What do you think a check is? It's a piece of paper with your account number, who to pay, and how much. There's a signature field, but it's not checked too closely (I don't think my bank even asked for a signature sample when opening my account) and signatures are trivial to forge.

> What do you think a check is?

My bank doesn't give me a cheque book any more - haven't see a person use a cheque in about a decade. I can't believe they'd let someone cash a random cheque with no authorisation.

Just guessing by "cheque", are you outside the US? The checking system & ACH might be more of a US-centric phenomenon. It's been busted forever, but it's just how we do things around here.

> It's been busted forever, but it's just how we do things around here.

Which is why the rest of the developed world wonders: So why don't you stop that and catch up to, say, the 1990s?

I do that when people send me money for birthdays once a year. Stick the check in the atm, i get money and the person wasn’t asked.

My bank allows me to deposit a check just by photographing it with their smartphone app. No more visits to ATMs needed.

This is every bank in the United States.

Our payment infrastructure ... has some legacy features.

> I don't think any responsible bank would let you withdraw using just an account number.

It happens in Australia as, just fill up a direct debit form which has the client's name, account number and sign.

Are you talking about the paper forms you find at banks, because they dont work that way.

I got the form from the rental agency which directly debits from my bank account for the rent.

Honestly it's absurd that that we have two distinct numbers (account and routing) but you always use both, they don't change, and they are good for both deposits and withdrawals. It would be so easy to only require an account number for deposits and to have a unique routing number for each withdrawal. Maybe for convenience you have some fraction of your assigned routing numbers be good for repeat withdrawals but only for the amount and frequency specified for the first instance. Thus you can hand out your bank account number to anyone without concern, and they can give you money easily, but only those who you legitimately desire to pay can take money from you and their opportunity for abuse is limited, and all the infrastructure remains relatively unchanged.

This is not the case in the rest of the world.

I assume checks in the USA have the equivalent of sort code and account number printed on them (as well as name of the account holder) like they used to in the U.K.?

Checks in the US have two numbers; the number that identifies the bank, and the account number. That’s all you need to transfer money between bank accounts in the US.

You should be funneling income into a separate account and moving it elsewhere after.

I do this as well.

This reminds me to look into a long standing request of mine. I want Chase to give me an account that has no external bank access allowed. Money can only be moved into/out of it from the other Chase account under my ownership. My immediate look a few years ago did not reveal any built in way to make this possible.

I have a friend that is extremely wealthy. He can pretty much buy whatever he wants.

He does this all the time. He has a "cannon fodder" bank account that gets just enough for the expected payments.

> but there's no chargeback for direct-to-bank withdrawals.

This isn't correct within SEPA (the Single Euro Payments Area). You do need to issue the chargeback within 8 weeks, though. [1]

[1] https://stripe.com/docs/payments/sepa-debit#disputed-payment...

If the transaction was unauthorised (i.e. the collection does not relate to the signed mandate), the payer can ask for a refund up to 13 months after the direct debit.

Is this advice really practical. Where I come from my social identity number is public and not a secret, and my bank info is something we hand out all the time if we want someone to transfer to our account (as it is designed for).

Moving to America and finding out that these two are your top secrets certainly seemed odd at first, but then I found out that no matter what you are doing you always have to give out your at least your SSN, but also your date of birth and sometimes your banking info.

The amount of times you need to give out information which is supposed to be private is so often that for any normal person it is unreasonable to assume they know when their not. That is, there are so many situations where you are unable to refuse handing out this information, that when the time comes where the right thing to do would be to not give out the information, you won’t know it.

This system seems optimized for scams.

It's easy enough to use one of the various online banks to establish a separate bank account for Paypal and the like.

Upwork is not the only middleman. There is deep network of middleman(s) going on Upwork which we have discovered in the span of last 8 months. We have also posted this on upwork https://community.upwork.com/t5/Coffee-Coconut-Break/Why-com...

May be there is a need of new Upwork. Shall we start a new platform given the fact that remote work is going to be the future.

> May be there is a need of new Upwork. Shall we start a new platform given the fact that remote work is going to be the future.

Even if you make your own Upwork, how are you going to avoid those exact same problems?

> I do wonder why the author is still on Upwork, their rating & exposure on there must be worth more to them than working several weeks for free

why should they have to walk away? why even suggest such a strategy?

UpWork already has a 10% market share. so if there were 1000 employers, 100 of them would be the same company.

i'm not sure if you're aware of all the gigification and precaritization of digital labor going on? it's emerging as a frontal assault; a full-force attack on labor rights.

"For all of its forward-looking ‘innovation’, there’s something suspiciously feudal about Silicon Valley. Tech royalty compete for dominance in platform wars [...] They hoard resources while showering key personnel with lavish gifts to ensure loyalty and peddling a compelling story about their right to rule. Meanwhile, the remaining workers, dependent on ‘gigs’ for their livelihood, are made to battle with each other for scraps."

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley

I think looking at devs contracting as "gigifying" is abusing that word and cheapening it for actual gig jobs which is an actual issue. Devs have been doing independent contracting since it was viable to do so and we can make a lot of money doing so. Upwork provides a platform to get contracts but it's not quite the same as the auto priced marketplaces like Uber, Lyft, Doordash etc.

The last time I was looking at contracting I was negotiating $100+/hr contracts through Upwork. I had high leverage and negotiating power whereas gig jobs do not. I also had recourse for stuff like what happened here as long as I worked it into the contract I was signing, again not something you get in a gig job.

For 12.5 grand my next words to Upwork would have been, "My lawyer" and if that didn't make any headway I'd be going after "Robin" in court too. These are not avenues that a typical gig job have either because the amount of money doesn't make it worth it or their contracts which are created by the company don't give them the option.

> I think looking at devs contracting as "gigifying" is abusing that word and cheapening it for actual gig jobs which is an actual issue.

author is not a dev.

> Upwork provides a platform to get contracts but it's not quite the same as the auto priced marketplaces like Uber, Lyft, Doordash etc.

yes this is a great point that makes me reflect on the term 'gig', thanks for sharing it.

if the author was a dev contractor who was contracting through UpWork, i would agree completely with your statement about 'gigifying'. since he's not, i'd argue that this non-dev work is still part of the gigification because 1.) it's part of the shift where more and more administrative and creative labor, which was formerly structured as full-time (and in Europe, unionized) jobs, is being atomized and increasingly mediated through faceless unaccountable corporate platforms (where labor rights are shit on, exactly like in author's story), and 2.) one's reputation is stuck/held hostage on a third party platform (where things like author's story happen often [1]) who can essentially ban you and erase you (and your reputation/testimonials/positive feedback) anytime.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=upwork+banned+site:www.reddi...

Forgive me, I read the article but I really didn't look at more than that. I checked it again and saw that their title is on the left on the menu. That does change my thoughts a bit.

Before places like Upwork you might have to found a consultancy and pay staff to manage the overhead and spend more time sourcing contracts where as Upwork handles that overhead and takes a cut, which is lower than having staff or doing it yourself. That's why people are driven to these platforms.

I'd argue that as anyone that is skilled labor, like the author, has the option of moving off of Upwork and doing things the old fashioned way even though it is more costly and laborious, whereas a gig worker, as I think of them, does not have the option at all. So while I don't think it's all the way there since a skilled worker has more leverage and optionality I admit that Upwork here still does have much too much power and is partly gigafying/commoditizing this work.

yeah no but i appreciated your take. no need for forgiveness. thanks for sharing your perspective.

> skilled labor

tangent: i'm curious what you think about this:

https://twitter.com/arne__ness/status/1478805922306744320

https://twitter.com/faithfxl_wyfe/status/1478998605935558657

12.5k seems like a difficult amount to recover. Would the time/legal costs involved really justify it, considering that Upwork presumably employs many lawyers who will make it as painful as possible?

I had a client stiff me for 6k once and it seemed like the only reasonable options were to go to small claims court and hope for a small portion of that or take the hit and move on, which is what I did :-/

They should file consecutive small claims cases (one for each charge). If they file concurrently, the lawyers will get them consolidated.

If my entire market was based on getting my freelancers good jobs, I wouldn’t be trying to screw them over.

This could have been an article about how Upwork is awesome and ate 12.5k for this dev. They could write about how they go to bat for their freelancers and are prosecuting the scammer.

That story would still be upvoted and the free advertising would far exceed the cost. Instead, they bought tons of the worst kind of publicity (hitting peoples wallets) and their best outcome is now an apology that nobody will actually believe and eating the cost anyway.

This is because the customer for Upwork is not the freelancer it’s the entity hiring the freelancer.

It may appear they’re on the side of the freelancer however that’s not the goal of the company. They make money off the other end and likely think that even if n percent of freelancers drop the platform there will be more in their place

That's the calculation they'd be doing too though. Paying an army of lawyers to defend against my 12.5k claim sounds more expensive than eating it for me.

If it was the same situation, Upwork would likely ask why you added so many hours manually. They warned the writer many times they had no chargeback protection if they billed manually.

It’s hard to reasonably blame a platform for capping its losses when confronted with a client who chooses the highest risk billing, despite knowing the risks well enough to write about them at length.

I don’t see where you or the writer would have a case. Heck, you can’t just ignore hundreds of warnings, discover they were good things to be cautious about and claim the company was wrong for enforcing the terms it told you about constantly.

I mean you can't just not validate the payment method when your sole purpose is to act as a payments facilitator so you can skim money off the top and then lump that onto the freelancer when you fail to catch fraud. I consider this a fraud issue between Upwork and Robin because they never validated Robin was the correct card holder. Whether manual hours or tracked through Upwork, Upwork has a duty to validate that the person paying isn't a fraudster and they failed to do that over a multi year period. That strikes me as strictly negligence by Upwork and the burden shouldn't be on the contractor.

And they skim 20% of the earnings which is a lot for doing almost nothing.

> why should they have to walk away? why even suggest such a strategy?

Why would you want to continue doing business with someone who will unpredictability charge you large sums of money?

That’s right. It can happen again. And again.

My friend got scammed in a similar way via CashApp.

He sold something a few weeks ago and received payment via CashApp. Two days ago he's informed that the customer disputed the charge through his bank, and CashApp is taking the money back from my friend. CashApp says there is nothing they can do, they are simply the middleman.

That's funny. I paid for something using my CashApp debit card and the merchant took the money and never delivered it and CashApp say there is nothing they can do there either.

I just got banned from Twitter for posting the contact details of their VPs :|

My understanding is that this is not possible in Venmo and Zelle; their transactions are permanent.

> If Upwork is the middleman here providing a payment platform, then I'd expect them to swallow the cost of card fraud

Of course! How else would you be able to protect yourself if someone else is handling the payments?

If the author is in the same country as the client then they should also be taking legal action to reclaim the money

But they still seem to be on good terms with the client. If I understand correctly the problem is that they insist on getting paid through upwork:

"When things were not making sense, I still followed the rules. I could’ve easily gotten paid from Robin outside of Upwork. Heck, he was physically in front of me. "

I think the OP's point in that sentence is that he was being a good Upwork customer and expects Upwork to hold up their spirit of the bargain, not that he hasn't realised that "Robin" isn't a scammer would have paid him with stolen money (which his own bank might have returned if charged back, but not if it was cash...) and isn't the guy who still owes Upwork money for the work. The stuff about being on good terms is all in the past, when he trusts Robin.

The key bit is "Let me translate this. Robin has been using someone else’s credit card for two years, and this other person realized that money was being withdrawn in the previous two years on a platform called Upwork without his consent." You'd have to be a pretty massive idiot to still trust someone after realising that...

> If I understand correctly the problem is that they insist on getting paid through upwork

Yes, because this is reeks of scam.

If you're in the same country and meeting physically... why on earth are you transacting via Upwork? Upwork was collecting 10-20% of the net payments. There's no reason to do that if you're physically meeting.

Because those are Upworks terms?

The point is that after the initial few contracts, the two parties could have very easily conducted all further business and contracts without the middleman, Upwork.

Exactly --

You use Upwork to facilitate international payments and for proof of work via their spyware when you don't trust the contractor. These two do neither.

You have to be obtuse and believe they just gave Upwork $1k from the goodness of their hearts... or there's some sort of scam. I don't know what the scam is; just this behavior is irrational to the tune of more than $1k if there isn't a scam involved.

You actually have to buy your way out of these contracts—-according to Upwork’s TOS.

You can still move it offline without saying anything but if you have a lot of credibility on either side you are doing what you can to avoid getting on the wrong side of Upwork.

So sometimes it is easier to leave it be. Also past $10k it is a 5% take which isn’t that bad if you’re rate is set to handle it and things are just cruising.

They can't just walk, Upwork will go after them. 12k is an amount that is worth sending at least a few strongly worded legaleze letters by UW's legal dept. Essentially in this situation OP just owes 12k to Upwork. As much as it's a shitty situation, it's a debt. You can't just walk.

There are a lot of articles out there about how the contracts the freelancing platforms impose on contractors are bad. Maybe they dont leave freelancers with a lot of options in these cases?

> If Upwork is the middleman here providing a payment platform, then I'd expect them to swallow the cost of card fraud, not the freelancer.

I don't understand why. This isn't how it works with other systems. If I get a ton of chargebacks on Paypal, they'll try to take the money back out of my bank account. And if they can't they'll grab it later the next time someone pays me (what Upwork is doing here). And if even that won't work, they'll just close my account. There's no scenario where PayPal is expected to continue working with me, because I'm now a fraud risk in their eyes.

Ditto on Amazon: get a bunch of returns and you'll need to make that up or be cancelled.

People are not really understanding the situation here. The OP's complaint isn't that Upwork is suing him or otherwise attempting to force payment. It's just that Upwork won't work with him anymore unless they get their losses covered.

And... maybe that's not fair, but that's how life works on the internet of payments. Upwork's behavior is very typical here, and no one should be surprised.

That it works that way in other systems is not a defense of those systems. Rather, it is indicative that those other systems are similarly broken. Upwork has the ability to vet clients, which the freelancer does not. Therefore, Upwork also has the moral responsibility to perform the vetting of clients. If Upwork views a freelancer as a fraud risk, they can terminate their ongoing relationship with you. They may not require you to return payments for work done in good faith.

There are two separate agreements in play here.

1. The freelancer made an agreement with Upwork. In exchange for the freelancer performing work for a client, the freelancer will receive payment by Upwork.

2. The client made an agreement with Upwork. In exchange for arranging for a freelancer to perform work for them, the client will send payment to Upwork.

If the client fails to adhere to agreement #2, that doesn't give Upwork grounds to unilaterally cancel agreement #1. Upwork has been scammed, and unless they are claiming that the freelancer was part of the scam, they have no moral right to cancel agreement #1.

Edit: In support of this interpretation, Upwork's tax requirements indicate that freelancers must file a W-9 with Upwork, not with the client. This indicates that Upwork is the entity paying the freelancer, not merely acting as a payment facilitator between the client and the freelancer.

[0] https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211067918-Tax-R...

The contract of sale is between you and the buyer. The contract for work is between UpWork and the contractor. Find the difference. eBay doesn't take a 30% cut for that reason.

Upwork isn't in violation of their contract. They paid the OP. The question is if they should be required to continue working with the OP under new contracts. And obviously nothing forces them to do so.

Upwork is asking for return of payment from the OP. From the article's title: "Upwork is asking me for a $12,500 refund". From later in the article, this is not an isolated incident: "A day after, a few other freelancers whom we were working with, started contacting me saying that Upwork is asking all of them for a refund as well."

This is not the same as Upwork refusing to continue working with the freelancer. This is Upwork attempting to modify the terms for previous work done by the freelancer.

They’re only modifying the terms for future work done. Namely, the freelancer won’t get any money for it. They’re not requesting them to pay back $12500 right now.

I'm not a contact lawyer, but that sounds like it would be an invalid contract for lack of consideration. In the terms for future work being done, Upwork is requiring the freelancer to do more than a month of work without Upwork providing any consideration in return. No payment for work done, no promise not to extract the same unpaid labor again.

This is one of the most disingenious and bent takes i have seen in my life.

its like arguing that homeopathy shitheads that 'helps with cancer' are not scammers because of placebo effect

the credit card is also a party. a significant one in that they do the chargeback. this is why credit cards are not that popular in europe.

The only time I've been to Europe was an airport layover, so hopefully you can answer my dumb question: what sort of payment cards are popular in Europe? We periodically see threads on HN in which people who claim to be Europeans chastise Americans for our use of cash and/or checks. I had assumed that was because you thought credit cards were great. That may be wrong, but now I don't want to just assume you think debit cards are great. Maybe there is another sort of payment card?

As others have replied, debit cards. Credit cards, too; I've had at least one or two for over a decade. And have, uh, at least four; more probably five or six, at the moment. Only ever used... Three or four, in total, and I think only ever two in the same year.

One form of actual piece-of-plastic physical card that's popular here in Finland is the combination debit-credit card. When I insert it into the checkout payment terminal it first gives me a selection of "Debit / Credit?", then I tap in my PIN, and then it either charges my bank account or my credit card, depending on which I selected in the first step.

These same cards work in ATMs, and abroad too. I lifted cash in Turkey ten years ago, I think from Visa (IIRC my bank switched to MasterCard after that). In Sweden, supermarket payment terminals have one or two steps more: you need to confirm the amount, and if you want you can tap in an additional amount and have the cashier hand you cash in stead of going to an ATM. (Can't recall the order for sure; I think confirming the amount came first, before even selecting credit/debit, and the additional withdrawal last.) Never seen the amount confirmation in Finland; I suppose here it's taken for granted that it'll be the same as what the cashier just told you (and what you can see on the customer-facing display of their register, usually right next to the payment terminal). The additional cash withdrawal does exist (or at least did, can't recall when I last saw it) in some shops, but it's rare.

Debit cards are certainly the majority in my country. Banks offer subaccounts for people who reasonably don't want to connect their life savings to their payment card, or new vendors like revolut are popular for similar reasons.

Bunq is another alternative. I use both revolte and bunq

The reason they're not that popular in europe is differing attitudes to short term debt and the fact that the cap on interchange fees prevent many of the rewards schemes that US credit card companies use to incentivise credit card use from being profitable.

I don't think chargeback policies are a major influence either way.

I don't think you can group Europe all as one. For example, in the UK credit cards give "section 75" protection which means it's often better to use a credit card than a debit one. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/section75-protect-...

Right, it is one of the reasons not the only one.

If someone made a bunch of purchases from you with a stolen credit card, Amazon expects you to eat that cost and pursue the buyer to be made whole?

I don't think Paypal would be the correct comparison here. Something more like eBay or Etsy.

I (naively) think the best comparison would be how we want such a company to work, one that protects the actors within it's ecosystem, especially de facto employees, and takes responsibility for accepting fraudulent transactions.

Paypal, Amazon, eBay and Etsy all behave the same here though. If an account is a vector for fraud, they want compensation or else they won't work with it anymore. Literally no one continues working with an account with $12k of chargebacks, that's the point.

The account with 12k chargebacks is not the freelancer, it is the person who employed them. Their account is the one at issue. This is not a normal chargeback from fraudulent behaviour on the end of the freelancer.

It is a chargeback because of fraudulent card misuse which should have been vetted by Upwork OR the payment provider. It is not the freelancers responsibility to do the payment or vetting. If it was their responsibility, you could cut Upwork out after the first transaction, but you can’t.

One of two people should be missing out here: Upwork for failing to verify the credit card or the actual persons bank for kit identifying fraudulent transactions.

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