Unresponsive Buyer

I received an escrow payment of $40 along with a notification that a buyer accepted my offer of a translation. As a condition of the offer, I require the buyer to send me the text that they want me to translate. The buyer did not respond to the request. This was 19 days ago and I understood from community posts that the escrow payment would automatically be returned to the buyer. I have no way of cancelling the job, links to Help articles on dealing with this issue are broken, and the only community posts I see are from four years ago, expressing frustration at the lack of support. I have now received an email saying the work is 19 days overdue and my reputation will suffer if Indo not complete the work or refund the buyer (whose payment I have not received and can’t access because it was in escrow). I’ve raised a ticket but there seems to be no action I can take other than (possibly) to close my account (which I haven’t tried yet). This kind of interaction has the characteristics of a scam. The only other offers I have received are in broken English from people asking me to hire them, even though it should be obvious that I am not hiring. It is disappointing that the most credible buyer so far has not responded and has put me in this position of having to take a hit to my reputation for the appearance of non-completed work (which they haven’t provided) or possibly be required to refund a payment I haven’t received.

Official comment

Community

January 04, 2022 14:17

Hi Helen, thank you for getting in touch and we're so sorry for the delay.

Please be aware that our Customer Support team was unavailable on Monday 3rd January. This combined with no weekend cover (over the 1st and 2nd January) is why you have experienced a delay - sorry about that. They will be catching up today and will try to respond to any queries within 2 working days. I can see that you submitted a support ticket on Saturday, hopefully, it will not be long until you get a response from the team.

We appreciate your concerns here and after looking into this, we want to assure you that you won't be won't be penalised for the buyer being unresponsive. You should try and get in touch with the buyer via workstream and ask for the necessary details of the work or ask them to request a refund. If the buyer remains unresponsive for more than 48 hours, you should then proceed to contact the support team by emailing support@peopleperhour.com and they will arrange a refund without any penalisation.

Hope this helps and best wishes,

The Community Team

Unresponsive Buyer

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