Disputes and mediation

A dispute is the formal process for deciding where money goes when the two sides cannot agree. It is not a complaint form and it is not customer support: it is a decision procedure with an evidence stage and a reviewer, and its outcome moves real money.

Before you raise one

Most disputes should have been a conversation. Two steps first, genuinely:

Ask for a revision. Most contracts include an agreed number, and most problems are a misunderstanding rather than a failure. Requesting a revision keeps the money in escrow, keeps the relationship workable, and resolves the large majority of unhappiness. State specifically what is wrong against what was agreed — "this is not what I wanted" gives someone nothing to act on.

Say what you need plainly, in messages. A surprising number of disputes come from someone who was unhappy for two weeks and did not say so. The other side usually cannot tell.

If you have done both and it is still wrong, that is what disputes are for. Do not feel bad about using it.

What raising a dispute does

The moment a dispute is raised, the escrow freezes. The money stops moving in either direction. The client cannot release it, the freelancer cannot receive it, and auto-approval stops running. Nobody can force the outcome by waiting.

Both sides are notified, and the contract shows as disputed to both of you.

The window

Disputes must be raised within a set window that runs from the milestone event they relate to. The window is shown on the contract.

This exists so an engagement eventually becomes final. Once the window has closed on a milestone, it is settled, and money that has been released and cleared has genuinely gone to the person who earned it.

The practical implication: if you are unhappy, act. Do not wait a month hoping it resolves itself. Raise the revision request immediately, and the dispute inside the window if it comes to that.

There is also a limit on how many disputes can be raised on a single contract, so the process cannot be used to stall a contract indefinitely.

Evidence, which is what actually decides it

Both sides are asked to submit evidence, with a time limit for responding.

What carries weight:

• What was agreed, in writing. The job description, the offer, the milestone description, and the messages where scope was discussed.
• What was delivered. The files, the commits, the links, the deployed thing.
• The gap between them, stated specifically. "The agreed scope was five pages, three were delivered" decides itself. "The quality is poor" does not.
• The record of trying to resolve it. Revision requests, and the responses to them.

What does not carry weight: how frustrated you are, how long you have been a member, what you believe the other person's motives are, or how much you need the money. Not because those do not matter to you, but because a mediator can only weigh what can be checked.

The single strongest thing you can do is keep the agreement and the delivery on the platform. Scope agreed in a private channel is scope a mediator cannot see. This is not a technicality, it is routinely the difference between winning and losing a dispute.

Respond within the evidence window. A dispute is decided on what was submitted, and missing the window means yours was not.

Possible outcomes

A mediator reviews both submissions and decides one of:

• Release in full to the freelancer. The work substantially met what was agreed.
• Refund in full to the client. It did not, or was not delivered.
• A split. Part of the work was delivered or usable. This is common, because reality is usually partial.
• Return to work. The engagement is workable with a specific correction, and continues.
• Cancellation, with the money handled according to what was actually done.

Splits are more common than people expect. A dispute where one side is entirely right and the other entirely wrong is the exception.

Settlements above a threshold require a second reviewer to approve before anything moves, so a single person cannot unilaterally decide a large sum.

How long it takes

There is a target for first contact with a new dispute, and an evidence window for both sides. The overall time depends mostly on how quickly both parties respond.

You can see the state of your dispute on the contract at any point. If it is waiting on you, it says so — and it will sit there until you act, so check.

After the decision

The outcome is applied to the escrow: money is released, refunded, or split, and both sides are notified with the reasoning.

Where a settlement is paid to a freelancer, it goes through the usual clearance rather than instantly. See How and when you get paid.

A mediated decision is intended to be final. If you believe the process itself went wrong — evidence not considered, a factual error in the reasoning — raise it through support and it can be looked at. Disagreeing with the conclusion is not itself grounds to redo it; a process that reopens whenever someone is unhappy with the result is not a decision procedure.

What a dispute cannot do

It cannot recover money that never entered escrow. If work was agreed off-platform or started before funding, there is nothing held and nothing to award. This is the single most common reason someone cannot be helped, and it is entirely preventable.

It cannot decide taste. If a deliverable meets what was agreed and you simply do not like it, that is a scope problem, and the answer is a clearer specification next time. Mediators compare delivery against agreement, not against your preferences.

It cannot force somebody to keep working. An outcome can end a contract; it cannot compel a person to continue.

Reducing the odds you ever need this

• Write the scope down, in the milestone description, not just in conversation.
• Use smaller milestones. Five small stages surface a problem at stage one. One big stage surfaces it at the end, when everyone has spent everything.
• Say something early. The cost of raising a concern in week one is a conversation. In week six it is a dispute.
• Keep it on the platform. Everything a mediator can use is here. Nothing they can use is in a private channel.

What each side should actually do

If you are the client raising one, be precise about the gap between what was agreed and what arrived. Attach the agreement — the milestone description, the offer, the messages where scope was settled. Attach what you received. Say what outcome you are asking for and why that is proportionate: full refund for nothing delivered is reasonable, full refund for work that is eighty per cent right is not, and asking for it weakens an otherwise strong case.

If you are the freelancer responding, resist the urge to argue about attitude. Show what you delivered against what was asked, item by item. If part of the complaint is fair, say so and address the rest — a response that concedes a real point and defends the others reads as credible, while one that denies everything reads as reflexive. If the request was outside the agreed scope, show what the agreed scope was.

Both of you: keep it factual and keep it short. A mediator reading two thousand words of grievance is looking for the same handful of facts they would have found in three hundred.

Timing, and why acting early helps

The dispute window runs from the milestone event, so a problem raised in week one has options a problem raised in week six does not.

Early, the money is all still in escrow, the work is fresh, and the record of the conversation is recent and complete. Late, some milestones may have released and cleared, and those are settled.

There is also a practical asymmetry that people underestimate: raising a concern early, before it becomes a dispute, very often results in the other side fixing it for free. Raising it late, after they have moved on to other work, results in a fight.

What happens to a contract during a dispute

The escrow freezes, but the contract does not disappear.

Auto-approval stops running, so nothing releases on a timer while the dispute is open. Neither side can force the money out. Messages still work, and it is worth using them — a good number of disputes settle by agreement once both sides have written down what they actually want, and a settlement you both agree is better than one imposed.

If you reach agreement, say so and the dispute can be closed on those terms.

After it is over

Whatever the outcome, the contract closes and both sides can review.

Two pieces of advice about reviewing after a dispute. Be factual rather than vengeful: a review written in anger reflects on its author, and experienced readers can tell. And do not treat a review as a second appeal — the outcome is the outcome, and using the review to relitigate it simply makes you look like somebody difficult to work with.

If you lost a dispute you believe you should have won, the useful response is to look at what evidence you could not produce. Almost always the answer is that something important was agreed somewhere the platform could not see.

Related

• How escrow works
• Staying safe on Open Lance
• Contacting support