Upwork Inc I payed for a service that was not delivered. Mountain View California

I hired a freelance web developer through their site, to work on my website. I gave him very specific tasks. He said he could do them. I would pay him $15 an hour and it would take approximately 25 hours to complete.

Except it actually took him 50 hours and some of the tasks I asked for were never completed because the web developer was unable to do it. So he lied to me about his level of skills but also had he told me sooner I would have cancelled the contract and not have wasted my time and delayed my project. But no he didn't tell me he couldn't do it he did a botched job and has left me with a shitty looking website that I now have to pay someone else to fix.

I requested a refund, not for all the money, but for the tasks he couldn't complete and that I will now have to find and pay someone else to do. He rejected my refund, so I escalated the situation to Upwork.

They have also rejected my dispute because their policy is that I pay for the time that is spent on the tasks. They have a program that records screenshots of the freelancer's computer while he works and logs hours. Now I am arguing this is a massively flawed system because I have a wrongly sent message to me from the freelancer telling me he has completed work on a certain website. Only he is talking about a different website and has sent me a message meant for a different client. But at the same time, he is sending this message saying he has completed work on a different website he has still been logging hours on their program that he has been working on my website. So which one is it? who's website has he been working on?

But also they allowed this freelancer to lie about his skills, do they even test these people before they allow them to advertise on their site? Had this chap been honest and said this is above my skill set we wouldn't be in the problem, but no he got greedy and upwork allow him to charge people for hours of work that isn't finished and that he probably knew from the start he couldn't finish.

And then just to top it all off, I pointed out to them that on their website it says "upwork payment protection policy, only pay for a job well done" and then within a couple of hours they speedily changed it to say 'Upwork payment protection policy, only pay for the work you authorise'

This company is just a shoddy mess with crap customer service that has no respect for their customers.