A tough journey that freelancers face
Freelancing is a great career path. It allows great flexibility, better pay, and exposure. But one of the biggest hurdles in freelancing has always been getting paid for your work and avoiding fraudsters. Here is one such story of a freelancer where her client defrauded her by not paying her for her work.
A payment that never came through
Howard Mcmillen contacted Ayushi for an academic assignment of approx 1500- 2000 words for a payment of Rs. 5000. Aysuhi accepted the assignment and submitted the work to Howard both through LinkedIn and email. Howard promised Aysuhi that the payment will be made within 2 days but payment was never made. He started ignoring Ayushi’s follow-ups then on the 7th day blocked her completely.
Ayushi’s call-out on Linkedin
Ayushi decided not to let this stand and called out Howard on Linkedin by tagging Howard and narrating the entire incident on a post. The post soon started trending with a lot of reaction and insightful comments on how to avoid this in the future
Linkedin communities response
Jaafar responded by asking Ayushi to post assignment online so when someone checks for plagiarism it will be flagged
Shagun stated that freelancers should never work with taking an advance for their work
Several others responded, saying that they too have been scammed by Haward. Others commented saying that they will report him on LinkedIn. But posting on social media can help you get sympathy but can never help you recover from your loss!
How can you avoid getting scammed?
- Always ask for an advance.
- Divide larger work into milestones and ask for payments for each completed milestone.
- Vouch is a sure-shot way of safeguarding freelance payments from frauds.
Follow this for all freelancer payments: When in doubt, use Vouch!
Safety is not just about protecting your credit or debit card number. It's about having control of your money till you've delivered the product or service you contracted
This is Fraud Story #10. Check back here for more fraud chronicles and scams that you can protect yourself from.
Note: This is a good-faith initiative to educate the world about how to avoid frauds like these. Do you have a fraud that you would like to report? Please write to us at letstalk@iamvouched.com
