Changes needed for dispute resolution
Last week I raised a dispute due to a buyer apparently not being satisfied with some work I completed. I won't go into full details because I already did this a few days ago, but it has raised some serious concerns about the dispute resolution process.
The person who raises a dispute must pay to do so. I don't really have a problem with this as I can understand that the process is time-consuming. However, what I have a real issue with is that the other party does not need to respond to the dispute. The dispute resolution team simply looks at the workstream and from what I have seen via this community, in most cases decides on a 50/50 split in order to, I'm assuming, keep everyone happy.
If the other party does not need to respond, how is it fair for the PPH dispute team to make any decision? As I mentioned, I understand that the process is time consuming but it also takes time for the person raising the dispute to put forward all the information and evidence.
I sincerely hope PPH admin responds to this post as I would very much like to see the dispute resolution process to demand the other party responds to the dispute and put forward their information and evidence. If they fail to do so within a given period - eg. 7 days, the decision automatically is decided in favor of the person who raised the dispute.
In my case, I believe if the buyer had been asked to respond to my dispute, her arguments would have fallen flat (as she ignored all requests for feedback from myself and PPH Admin) and she would not have been awarded a 50% refund.
Unless both parties put forward their information and evidence, it's not really a dispute, is it?
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Official comment
Hi Jasna, thanks for your message and for providing your detailed feedback. As part of our efforts to ensure our processes are updated and improved, we will take this feedback on board and share it with our product team for future review.
In the meantime, we're sincerely sorry to hear that you feel let down by PeoplePerHour and our dispute process. Currently, the final decision is always made based on the workstream, specifically, the discussions between the parties involved and the proof of work provided/delivered by the freelancer.
This is because the dispute itself can only be raised by a freelancer, and not by a buyer. Therefore, this is why further information is required from the freelancer only and not the buyer, as the freelancer is the one disputing the claim. Because of this, a resolution for a dispute can only be made based on the information gathered from the workstream and from the freelancer.
We're afraid at this time, the payments team will not be changing their decision regarding your dispute. We apologise for any inconvenience and frustration caused by this decision.
All the best,
The Community Team
Comment actions -
Hello Team
While I do appreciate your response, I'm still baffled that the dispute team based the decision on the "workstream". In the workstream, it is evident that I sent the buyer the original project brief that was missing critical information as well as the updated one where they snuck in the information AFTER I finished the work.
In spite of all this, I still went back and revised the work only to have the buyer claim I did not understand the brief or the topic. When I pushed for more detailed feedback, this was ignored and when I brought this up with PPH online support, they also sent the buyer a message requesting they give me detailed feedback. This was also ignored. It seems the dispute resolution department only looked at one thing in the workstream and that was the buyer stating she was not satisfied.
It's obvious this buyer did not want to admit to her higher-ups that she omitted critical information in the brief and rather than admit to this omission, decided to make me the scapegoat. Had the dispute process been geared to coerce buyers to respond to disputes, the buyer, in this case, would have been exposed.
The 2 conflicting briefs were sent to the buyer in the workstream and I sent them to PPH via the dispute process and subsequent emails so I am still quite baffled as to how the dispute team could justify a 50/50 split and still charge me USD $8 for a dispute.
It's time to make the process fairer for your freelancers/sellers and make buyers respond to disputes.
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