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Upwork just stole $10k from me

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342 points dustedcodes | 2 comments | 25 Feb 23 10:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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ajb ◴[25 Feb 23 11:44 UTC] No.34935878[source]▶
One of the reasons that criminal acts are criminal is that they destroy value. For example, when metal prices go up, criminals steal wires from railway lines. This gains them a couple of hundred bucks of metal, and costs tens of thousands in disruption and reinstallation.

This kind of action by companies should be criminal, because they just destroyed economic activity worth at least $10000, because they didn't want to spend a little more on due diligence. Which could even have been put up as a bond by their client. My guess is that it would have cost <1 hour's work to validate this guy, and obviously he would rather bond that than lost the $10000. But no.

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Xylakant ◴[25 Feb 23 11:52 UTC] No.34935935[source]▶
I would expect that to be illegal already in most jurisdictions. I believe in Germany you could argue it constitutes fraud. Either the client received the work and it’s fine, then the contractor is owed payment for the work. Or the client did not receive the work, then they are owed the payment that they made. Upwork permanently keeping the money from both sides is almost certainly not an option. They might be permitted to keep the funds temporarily while they seek a resolution, but that should have a clear threshold.
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1. prmph ◴[25 Feb 23 12:39 UTC] No.34936204{3}[source]▶
Quickbooks has taken almost $2000 of money, that my client paid for work done, for more than a year now.

I registered for, and received the payment through, their merchant account, but later found out I did not qualify for it since I was not in the US. I understand if their fraud detection systems flagged something, but all they needed to do was to talk to the client and verify that it was a legitimate payment.

They have refused to release the money to me, or to send it back to the client. They also disabled all my Intuit accounts, some of which I had paid a subscription for.

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2. Xylakant ◴[25 Feb 23 13:34 UTC] No.34936536[source]▶
Likely a similar situation - either you or your client would be entitled to the money, but enforcement is impossible because of the prohibitive costs.

We have a few clients in the US and I’m always factoring in this issue when making contracts with them. If they decide to not pay a small to medium sum, collecting it will be impossible most of the time if they don’t have a subsidiary in Germany.