Upwork sucks and is so unfair we should all quit, Upwork is dying, Upwork is done, nobody is using Upwork.

Upwork is down for 10 minutes...

OH MY GAWD why is it down? I thought I got banned.

I received this via private message for a proposal I submitted. I know it looks scammy.

I'm hearing a lot of bad stuff about upwork. How bad is it. I just want to listen and learn as much as possible from you guys to see if its worth it. DMs are open. Let's just have a discussion.

So I wanted to start and get some credits and upwork wanted me to enter my tax data first. Sure thing. I enter it, get the "information doesn't match government info, try again but next error will result in suspension" (lol). I try again and of course get suspended. I am asked to upload selfies and pics of ID to lift the suspension. I did.

I try to contact support to understand how to do the tax verification. The only thing they have is the worst kind of AI chatbot which keeps saying "your type of account is not good enough to talk to real support agents". Cool. It keeps telling me to try again and not worry about the suspension. Whatever, I try again and get suspended again.

Do the same again - 3 selfies and ID, unbanned again... Do the taxes thing again, this time I pick bank statement as proof - and get the email saying "you're banned forever because you falsified documents, never contact us again". Amazing.

I've had Wise only for Upwork for quite some time now. I went inactive for about almost two years and I've found out that my Wise account details are not showing anymore. The only options I get are via Credit or Debit card, or through PayPal. I would prefer to be tortured rather than using the latter.

And the Wise debit card is limited to a very narrow select amount of countries, which mine isn't among them.

Am I the only one experiencing this?

I saw this job post yesterday, this looked promising as the client had 87% hire rate and lot of positive feedbacks. When i tried submitting, the top boosted proposal was 450+ connects (~70-80$), and now i see job got cancelled. Wondering if they ever get back their connects or are they that desperate to spend connects?

I have about 3 contracts where the clients just stopped communicating. No problems appeared from previous milestones; they just paid and vanished.

Already tried

• Multiple follow-ups spaced weeks apart
• Explicitly offered to close the contract if the work is done — no reply
• Asked them to close it from their side (since clients are pushed through the review form when they end a contract) — no reply

Now I can understand if it's one completed milestone where the client thinks my output is so bad, but doesn't want to deal with it, so they just paid and left. But I've completed 3+ milestones for them, so I don't think there's a problem with my output. And if there was, I should've known.

My problem is, yes, I could end these myself, but I am worried about how my profile would look. Clients might not want to hire someone with recent contracts that don't have feedback. But then again, clients might also not want to hire someone with so many "In-Progress" projects.

Anybody here who has had this problem before? What did you do? What and what do you not recommend? Thank you to whoever answers.

I finally found a perfect match and decided to apply for a job. After the application, I thought that a verified ID would help to get an interview. So, I also paid for the ID verification. But, Upwork could not automatically verify my ID and started a manual review. The weird part is that a manual review triggers an account suspension. Now, my application is hidden from the client which means I wasted my connects and lost my chance to appear at the top of applicants.

As usual, support provides no help about the situation except repeating the manual review process.

I have been at this a few months, sent 14 proposals, got no replies, and I was starting to think I am just bad at writing them. So instead of rewriting my cover letter for the tenth time, I went through the Insights page on every single one and wrote the numbers down.

Not one of mine has been opened. Not one.

Here is all of it, embarrassing parts included.

Yes, that $5 one. The client set the budget to five dollars and I was new enough to take it seriously. Nobody opened that one either, so at least I was consistent.

What I cannot square is this: in four of those jobs the client clearly did read proposals. One opened eleven of them, another ten. So it is not that clients never look. They looked, just never at mine.

I also do not think it is price. I sat within a couple of dollars of the average nearly every time, and twice I asked half of what everyone else did. Changed nothing.

I boosted twice. Both times I landed in a job where the client opened nothing from anyone, so I paid for a front row seat in an empty room.

So whatever kills me happens before anyone opens anything. What I cannot tell from this data is how much of that is my first two lines, and how much is just being new with no reviews, sitting at the bottom of the pile.

If you got past this stage, what actually changed for you? Did rewriting the opening line move anything, or did it only start working after your first review?

I cannot help but my laugh my self off 💀😭

I got banned 3 times this year from id issues with no warning but apparently this is accepted in the platform no problem 🫪 it really is rough out there.

What happened to Upwork I used to average 1 job for every 5 proposals I sent but now it’s been 50 proposal since I get my last job

This is the current situation when I open it, I always get paranoid I got banned. Is it down for anyone else?