What do you dislike about Upwork?
I had an incredibly disappointing and financially damaging experience as a first-time user of Upwork, and I want to warn others—especially new business owners—about what happened.
I hired a freelancer (Yacco Vjin) for a $1,000 project to redesign and rebuild my company website in WordPress. What I received was a Google Doc mockup, largely AI-generated text (which I verified through ChatGPT), and none of the promised design or functional web deliverables. No Figma, no wireframes, no templates—nothing a developer could actually use to build a site.
The freelancer showed me a previous client's project as an example of what he would do for me—then delivered a generic document and told me we’d “get to the rest” in a later milestone. He then tried to charge me more then double for the next step and revoked my access to the document I had paid $650 for. When I asked for it back, he ignored me, blocked me on Upwork, and later sent me outdated drafts that didn’t include my feedback.
Even worse: the sample work he showed me at the beginning? It turns out he had reused a previous client’s private materials—violating their confidentiality and clearly breaking Upwork's rules.
I reported everything to Upwork, and although they intervened to ask him for the work, I was never given the final version I paid for. The document was deleted, and the freelancer falsely claimed the outdated drafts were “final.”
To be clear:
I never received the actual deliverables I paid for.
The freelancer revoked access and blocked me out of spite.
He shared client materials that were not his to share.
The content he produced was AI-generated filler, not professional work.
I attempted to resolve everything through Upwork before escalating.
Upwork needs to do more to protect clients, especially first-time users. They’ve allowed a freelancer to misrepresent services, share confidential materials, and destroy paid work—without consequences. If this kind of behavior goes unpunished, it makes the entire platform unsafe for honest clients.
I’m still hoping Upwork will do the right thing by issuing a full refund and removing this freelancer from the platform but because they follow a mediation process where both the freelancer and client have to agree it's unlikely. Until then, I urge potential clients to be extremely cautious—and consider other platforms with better accountability. Yacco had high ratings and had earned 500k on the platform and I still ended up being scammed. There is no vetting process for freelancers on upwork all you have to do is signup. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
