Canceling a consultation
If you cancel more than 24 hours before the consultation, we’ll give you a full refund.
But if you cancel within 24 hours, we won’t refund your money and we’ll release the payment to the consultant.
Rescheduling a consultation
You can reschedule in the contract workroom by choosing another available time from your freelancer’s calendar that falls after their minimum booking notice.
If your freelancer needs to reschedule, they will contact you first to discuss a date and time that works for both of you and that falls after their minimum booking notice. Then they can reschedule on their calendar. Freelancers do not have access to your calendar.
Late policy
While we encourage you to be on time, we understand things come up. You can be up to 5 minutes late for the consultation. After 5 minutes, the professional consultant can consider you a no-show.
No-show policy
If you don’t show up, you won’t get a refund and we will release your payment to the consultant.
If something happened or you had an emergency, we’re happy to talk with you about your options. Please follow the process for requesting a refund.
Confirmation policy
When you buy a consultation and submit the required information, the consultant has 24 hours to review the information you’ve provided and send you a message. If they realize they’re not the right person to help you, they can cancel and we’ll give you a full refund, including the contract initiation fee
Payment protection
We provide Payment Protection for clients for payments to freelancers on consultations if you meet the following eligibility requirements:
- You cancel your consultation more than 24 hours before your scheduled meeting time, or
- You are less than 5 minutes late for the consultation, and
- You don’t receive the documents (e.g. meeting summary, project plan, time, and cost estimate) you purchased as part of the consultation. Note that if you opted out of receiving documents when you purchased the consultation, you’re not eligible to file a dispute over the payment after the consultation has occurred.
- Note: If you get a refund before payment has been released to a freelancer, such as due to cancellation by the freelancer or your own cancellation more than 24 hours before your meeting, we’ll also refund the contract initiation fee. If you get a refund of a payment that was already released to the freelancer due to a dispute, we will not refund that fee.
Harassment policy
We won’t tolerate harassment or violence toward other Upwork users. You can report harassment or violence by reaching out to customer service or using the report flag throughout the site. You can review all prohibited behaviors, including our prohibition on harassment and violence, in our Terms of Use.
Frequently Asked Questions
We’ll cancel your project if you don’t share mandatory requirements with your consultant within 24 hours. Your consultant uses this information to learn what you want to talk about. Without it, they may not have time to prepare or the right background information to know how they can help you.
Once you file a dispute, our dispute team will review what happened through our current dispute and refund process. They will take into consideration that the no-show was the reason for a refund request.
You can request a refund from the consultant. If they reject your request, you can file a dispute. However, the consultant will also have the opportunity to show what they provided. Since value is subjective, we encourage you to work this out with the consultant and provide feedback about your experience.
Please wait at least 5 minutes. If the consultant is more than 5 minutes late, you can consider them a no-show and request a full refund, either by asking the consultant or filing a dispute
If you’re more than 5 minutes late, the consultant can consider you a no-show. They’ll still get paid even though you didn’t attend the meeting.