Need Advice: Frequent Freelancer Changes by Agency

[2b29b5e0]

Hello everyone,

I'm relatively new to using Upwork and recently started a project with a bookkeeping agency here. However, I've encountered a situation that I find a bit puzzling and would appreciate your insights on.

Within the first month of our collaboration, the agency requested to switch the contract to different freelancers twice! The reasons provided were somewhat vague, relating to issues with the Upwork time clock and each individual freelancer reaching their client capacity. I'm not sure why a platform as sophisticated as Upwork doesn’t have a better solution to this issue, but maybe I'm missing something. Why would they be doing this? 

I'm also wondering if it's possible and more practical to engage with the agency directly, bypassing these individual freelancer changes. Is this frequent switching of freelancers a common practice? It seems a bit irregular to me, and I’m concerned about the continuity and quality of the bookkeeping services being provided.

As I am not very familiar with the ins and outs of the Upwork system, I'm uncertain about how to address this with the agency. What should I ask them or look out for to ensure this situation is handled appropriately?

Any advice or experiences you could share would be greatly helpful!

Thank you!

[0ca42f20]

You can try and contact customer support 

[williamtcooper]

Sorry about your situation.

Consider working directly with freelancers in the future versus going through an agency.

Typically the best freelancers work for themselves not an agency.

[bobafett999]

Here is what I speculate might be happening.  Agency gets the contract and they hire a freelancer.  They may not pay enough so the freelancer quits or after hiring they go shopping for cheaper one.  Many agencies are reputable with solid work records.  Many agencies are wanna be agencies.

As Bill mentioned, there are many excellent freelancers who work for themselves.

[lysis10]

Bait and switch. It's common with agencies on Upwork. They bait you with a a more expensive but great freelancer, and then switch you to someone cheap so they can skim more off the top.