How does Arbitration work for freelancers if you have already delivered your work? – Inglés

If you’ve completed and delivered the agreed-upon work for a project, but your client refuses to release the funds or unfairly rejects your deliverables, you don’t have to lose your money.

To resolve this situation fairly, you can use Workana’s Arbitration process.

⚠️ Before starting the process, the client and freelancer must ensure that all access to the client’s accounts that the freelancer used to complete the work—including usernames, passwords, and permissions—is handed over to the client.

1. What is Arbitration and when should you use it? Arbitration is the dispute resolution stage where Workana’s support team steps in as a neutral judge. We thoroughly analyze the case and decide what percentage of the escrow deposit belongs to you for the work completed and what percentage goes back to the client.

You should use Arbitration only when:

You started a Mediation (the prior mutual agreement process) but could not reach a consensus on how to split the funds.
The client rejects your cancellation proposal or sends a counterproposal that you consider unfair.

2. Golden rules to protect your work in an Arbitration For the Workana team to rule in your favor, it is mandatory that you comply with these platform security guidelines:

Everything within the platform: All communication, agreements, scope changes, and especially deliverables and final files must be uploaded to the official chat of your project on Workana.
No external validity: Any screenshots, WhatsApp chats, emails, external links, or work developed outside the platform have no legal or technical validity and will not be considered for the final decision.
Exclusivity: If it is detected that you exchanged external contact details (such as emails, phone numbers, or social media), your account may be penalized and you will lose your arbitration rights.

3. How does Workana make its decision? Once Arbitration begins, the support team will request both parties to present their arguments and evidence. To make a fair resolution, we evaluate three key factors:

The initial agreement: We review the proposal accepted by the client, the agreed delivery deadlines, the file format, and the scope defined in the project messaging.
Development and deliveries: We analyze the partial and final deliveries you uploaded to the Workana chat, as well as the feedback and corrections the client made throughout the process.
Evidence presented: We evaluate the additional information both parties submit once the case is opened to back their positions.

⚠️Attention! Projects under $30 USD - go through automatic arbitration where 50% of the amount is released to each party.

4. Costs and impact on your profile

Service fee: Keep in mind that if the project is closed through Arbitration, the 4.5% Workana service fee is non-refundable for either party.
Policy Violations (Breach): If the Arbitration team determines that you did not meet the deadline or the conditions initially agreed upon, a Violation (Breach) will be applied to your public profile.
Remember that if a professional exceeds 50% of their projects with breaches, their account may be permanently suspended.
After arbitration, the parties are not entitled to rate each other.

⚠️ Arbitration costs $10 USD.

If the person who requests arbitration does not pay the applicable fee within 96 hours, the process will be automatically canceled, and the project will return to the “In Progress” status.

If the same person requests arbitration again and fails to pay the fee within the established deadline, their account may receive a violation or be suspended.

On the other hand, if the client or freelancer who requested arbitration and paid the fee receives 100% of the disputed funds, the arbitration fee will be fully refunded.

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