Cancelling Fixed-Price-Contract (prematurelly)

[ccf9bd09]

Hello. I made a milestone with a freelancer, that he's going to learn some stuff for 5k per month. I changed my mind, bcz many other freelancers already know the stuff and want the cancel the milestone. He was learning for 4 days. I talked to him and he said milestone was set and mistake is on your side, so just give the whole 5k. Which I consider kind of greedy. Can I cancel the contract and pay only proportional sum of money (meaning 250 per day)?

Thank you

Robert

[AleksandarD]

Hi Robert,

You can request an escrow refund by following the steps outlined in this help article. Once you do that, your freelancer will have seven days to respond to the request. If they accept or do not respond within the timeframe, the funds will be refunded to you. If the freelancer feels that the refund request is not warranted, they can dispute it after which, our team will be reaching out to you via email and you can either accept or reject the dispute. 

Additionally, you can choose to release a partial milestone payment and then, end the contract and request a refund of the remaining funds. For more information on that, you can check out this help article.

Let us know if you have further questions.

Thank you.

[ccf9bd09]

Thank you all for your responses! I've read them well and helped me.

Finally we agreed on $1400. He told me I had to pay the 1400 on top of the 5k, so I did and released the 1400 milestone. Now he says I have to release even the 5k milestone and he would give me the 5k back. And when I do not release it, it will release automatically in two weeks. Which I tend not to believe to. I have to approve that, am I right?

I shortened the communication very much, he said like 100 times more words. Overall I think he tends to use customer's innocense and low knowledge of how the website works to manipulate him into paying much more then he deserves. It's a little nightmare with him.

Please could you help me to not to pay him the 5k?

Thank you

R

[tta192]

You should have released a partial amount from the 5k milestone. The freelancer then would have accepted the partial payment, so the rest would have been returned to you. It's not clear how you were able to create another milestone and release it without first finishing the initial one. But don't count on the freelancer returning any money to you once you release the funds. 

[ccf9bd09]

I see! I wanted to do it like that. He told me it was not possible ...

Okay, so next time 🙂

And the second milestone was created by him ... so it is for sure possible 🙂

Or maybe it was not a milestone but smth else.

Thank you!

R

[prestonhunter]

Robert:
Upwork freelancers who behave professionally and ethically should ALWAYS be willing to accept a proportional resolution to a fixed-price contract.

Which is what you proposed.

For example:
A client set up a contract for $100. The freelancer has finished 10% of that contract. The client asks the freelancer to end the contract. Upwork freelancers should ALWAYS be willing to immediately accept 10% of the pay and should refund the rest of the money to the client.

This is my opinion, and I believe this position is widely shared among high-quality Upwork freelancers.

However: This is not an "official" rule. And as I'm sure you can imagine, there is no way for the Upwork user interface to "enforce" such a thing, even if it WAS an official rule. How could a computer algorithm or user interface button "know" that a freelancer has finished a certain percentage of a fixed-price task? That's impossible.

What you requested from the freelancer was reasonable and proper. I'm sorry that the freelancer did not agree.

The freelancer IS correct when he said that the "mistake is on your side."

Had you known then what you know now, you would have done one of the following:

- set up the freelancer's learning time using an hourly contract

- set up the freelancer's learning time using a fixed-price contract with just one milestone per day's worth of learning

- not offered to pay the freelancer for learning time, but instead hired freelancers who already possess this knowledge

What happens next?
You have a ticket in with Upwork Customer Support.

IDEALLY, the freelancer will be willing to work with you and will accept your offer of a partial payment for the time he spent thus far.

If you have already asked for that and the freelancer declined, then you could tell the freelancer that you want him to be treated fairly and you could invite him to come to this thread to explain his position. Right now we only have your side, and it would be helpfull to hear him explain things from his perspective.

If that doesn't happen, this may need to go to a dispute, etc.

[tta192]

The escrow exists specifically to guarantee you don't change your mind in the middle of the contract. Although you're making it sound like requsting a proportional refund is an honest solution, you may have used the funds when negotiating the price, too. So maybe the freelancer accepted this price because you offered to fund one month-worth of work instead of one week or one day, or one hour. Then he may have reserved the time in advance for working exclusively on the project, by refusing other engagements (or by not pursuing other work). That means you cannot get out of the deal with just a proportional amount, unless the contract says so. If nothing is specified in this regard you'll have to propose better terms, if you wish to present them as fair, which is your only option at the moment.

There's nothing unethical to enforce the terms of a contract, since both parties entered voluntarily into it.

[prestonhunter]

A client ALWAYS has the option to simply close a contract and release all remaining escrow funds and be done with it.

There is nothing that a freelancer can do to prevent a client from doing that.

And that is what I USUALLY recommend a CLIENT do.

For example:

"I hired a freelancer to draw a picture of a cat wearing a cowboy hat. The contract was for $50. The artist has already started work on this, but now I don't need the drawing. What should I do?"

Answer: Release the $50 payment, close the contract, and thank the freelancer for the work he has done up to this point. Ask him to send any work he has already completed, but tell him that he doesn't need to work on this any more. Then throw away whatever he sends, but don't tell him that you didn't use it.

That is what a client SHOULD do in most cases, because it saves the client from having do waste time and resources disputing anything. That is simple enough to do for a $50 contract. For $5000? Yeah, I understand that isn't such a simple thing to do in this situation.