Raising a dispute already froze the money and told the other side. What it did not do was tell anyone who could actually settle it — there was no list of open disputes anywhere, so finding one meant already knowing which deal it was on. A dispute could sit untouched while the funds sat frozen. That is what this release fixes, along with making disputes available on the parts of the platform that were still missing them.
A dispute now reaches someone who can settle it
- Every open dispute lands in one queue for the platform team , oldest first, showing who is involved, what the disagreement is, how long it has been waiting, and how much money is frozen behind it. The first time we opened it, it surfaced a dispute that had been waiting six days with nobody aware of it.
- They are alerted the moment a dispute is opened on a booking that has been paid for , rather than finding out when someone emails to chase it.
- Settling a dispute now moves the money. Ruling for the buyer queues their refund; ruling for the creator queues their payout. Both then wait for a person to actually make the transfer, and you are told it is queued — never that it has been sent before it has.
- If a ruling cannot be applied to the money — because the funds have already been released, say — the platform team is shown that plainly instead of a success message that isn't true.
You can raise one on more of your work
Disputes existed on some kinds of work and not others, for no good reason. The same control — with the same three rounds of revisions before it, and the same freeze while it is open — is now on all of them:
- Brief deliverables
- Items inside a package deal, so one wrong item can be raised without freezing everything else in the package
- Collaborations between creators on a shared deliverable
- Work you have delegated to a vendor
Only you can withdraw your own dispute
Previously either side could close a dispute on campaign work. That was harmless when nothing was held against it, and stopped being harmless once campaign work could be paid for in advance — it meant the person being complained about could dismiss the complaint and release the money to themselves. Now only whoever opened a dispute can withdraw it. Anyone else has to let the platform team rule on it.
Tell us what you need
- A contact form on the public site. Name, email, and what you are after; it reaches our team directly rather than sitting in a mailbox nobody watches.
- You can attach a file to a bid , not only to a message — so a rate card, a deck or a sample can travel with the offer it belongs to.