I hired a freelancer but don't know if I should pay him for doing this?

No, it isn't ok for him to bill you for a day of no work. It's up to him to provide himself with equipment that works, not you.

You're paying him for a specific job. He told you he could do that job. His computer, his problems. Don't make them your problems.

I wouldn't pay him.

Yes, I agree with Thomas. You will ONLY pay him when he does that job that you want him to do

- Ethan

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Pretty clear to me, no payment.

You only pay him for the work he has done for you. His computer etc is his own problem. He looks like a crazy guy for billing you without providing any work to you.

I'm a freelancer and unless I had stated that installing a working environment would be billed as part of the project then I would not expect you to pay me for it. That's a risk that I take. Especially as it appears that the problem was down to the Windows installation and not the specific software.

Having said that, you might want to have a little sympathy because these things happen. Trust me. See how the project goes and if you are more than satisfied with the work post start then consider a small bonus.

Personally speaking I have more than one PC and would expect to be getting on with other stuff while waiting for Windows to install.

Thank you for clearing that up for me guys.

Just to be clear, he hasn't said he would bill me for that day. We live in different time zones and I'm going to talk to him about this in a couple of hours. I just wanted to know for sure in advance. If it does come to a discussion about this, at least I know I'm right in not paying him for that day.

he should be paid for the job done only that should be the rule.

That wasn't the job you wanted him to do so don't pay him. Easy

If that was basis to getting paid, a lot of freelancers would start faking Windows errors

Not only are you not obligated to pay for that, if you did you could be setting yourself up for some unintended consequences.

Taking responsibility for his work environment makes you look more like an employer than a client.

If you were ever audited, that is the kind of thing that could affect your tax scenario.

Far fetched and unlikely? Maybe. But now is the time to be smart about such things, not later.

This says it all. It is not your responsibility to provide the software for him. If you hired someone to make a logo for you it's not your responsibility to buy Photoshop for the designer.

Steve

You don't have to pay till your VA set and ready. You can cancel the order if you have to, because your time worth.

You should not pay him for the first day, because you did not get any result from him, I think the freelancer will never ask you to pay him also. in this case you can give him a second change to work with you again when you need the work.

He did not get anything done on that day, so you should not have to pay him.

There are no clear results from him so he should not charge you anything. The tech problems are his problem and not yours.

If he asks for payment or even hints at anything extra, stop working with him. It's going to be a pain, and he'll probably continue to charge you for random time spent in the future.

You shouldn't pay hourly.

You only need to pay him for the work he actually did. Most freelancers know this and most actually make an effort to keep their software and hardware updated to avoid problems like this.

No freelancer will ask you to pay him at this situation. You can pay him after getting your work only. Payment will be depends on the how much work you have gotten. So you should not pay him for the event.

Is the freelancer asked money to you? I think the freelancer did not ask money to you. So why you are in anxiety? No freelancer will ask money before doing work. The freelancer did not work yet. So the freelancer will not demand money. If the contact is in hourly system there is nothing to do. No time tracked. No money.

you shouldn't have to pay without clearing your work from the person .

My partner has been in a situation like this , was paying the guy weekly, he was lying that was almost there, and this "almost there" took weeks...and at the end, he never delivered, just dissapeared....$700 that was....

Definitely not, you pay for work done, not for setting up

It's amazing the amount of people that think their time of oh crap moments are owed by the customer. I do charge some customers/clients for work by the hour. Sometimes I do add hours to the quote for the unexpected. It's always much better to go back to a client and say "I was able to complete the job in 4.5 less hours than originally quoted." Here is your invoice. They like those emails.

When you mess up, you mess up. It's not in the clients budget to pay for the mess ups.

Tell him to suck it up.

Ok, a little update. Hiring someone is always a risk. Turns out I've misjudged this person.

So, the first day of work got lost, he did agree to not bill me for this. The morning of the second day, he sends me an email he will start calling. i've hired him to work 40 hours per week.
At the end of the day he sends me a message he called about 95 leads, got a lot of voicemails (which is somewhat to be expected), a bunch of wrong numbers and 4 solid callbacks for tomorrow.
He also added there were problems with the google voice number I set up for him and he used his own number to call my leads. I have no problem with that.

You'd think he knows I can see his call history, since it is my google voice account. So, i looked at the calls and almost all of them were to cities where I am not doing business. He was supposed to call the los angeles area, but called the Milwaukee area 120 times that day using my number. So, apparently there weren't any connection problems. He was just using my time and phone number to call for another business. He did call some of my leads, 10 in total out of 120 calls made that day.
Now, he says he also called using his own phone number, which I can't check. But the timeframe and duration of all the calls made using my number doesn't leave any time for doing something else, unless he can split himself in two.

So, I just took screenshots of everything and submitted everything to elance and asked to have the contract cancelled.

I hope the next person I hire will do a better job.