Freelancer Missing Deadlines. Possibly Seriously Ill But I See Possibly Still Working...

[cb438194]

Hi, I'm a client.  My freelancer whom I like has fulfilled 3 of the 4 milestones. There's one $125 milestone remaining. Almost two months ago, he let me know he had COVID and then let me know that he got sick again. I told him not to worry until he's well again but I did recently see in his profile that he did some work for someone.

It's been a couple of months now. Looks like he did this other job for someone in early Feb but with no rating or review. 

With my last milestone, he places my pixel in my landing page, shopping cart, and loads ads/etc., into Facebook ads manager, and then shows me via Zoom how to run and monitor the campaign. None of the three previous milestones, targeting spreadsheet, ads copy, are useful to me without the fourth one being completed.

I've paid $375 to date. Have another $125 due upon that last milestone being met. The last milestone was due January 9th. We communicated again on January 24th and he asked for more time, given his illness.  Our communication is all through Slack. Any dates or rules I need to be aware of? I want to be sensitive, times being what they are but I also want to be sure I don't miss an opportunity for resolution.  Thank you for any ideas you may have.

[gilbert-phyllis]

Definitely a vexing and potentially distressing situation. If you saw a recently closed contract in his profile, was the start date also recent? If not, it could have been an old, dormant contract for work completed long ago that just finally closed. (I've had clients pop up a year or two after the work was done and close their contract. Yes, I have a very high threshold for clutter.)

In your shoes, I would reach out and say (1) you're concerned about him and would welcome assurance that he's OK healthwise [which is true], and (2) you really need to get the project wrapped up and the two of you either need to agree on a definite deadline or you need to find someone else to finish it and the two of you will need to discuss how that hand-off occurs because you can't really use what he's done so far until the final set of tasks is completed. If he's too sick to work, he may or may not be able to participate in that. If he's no longer sick but really far behind in meeting commitments, then you want to be enough of a squeaky wheel to get on top of his list.

Good luck (and I also hope he's OK--Covid sucks).

[cb438194]

Thanks, Phyllis!  Yes, I have been super understanding and encouraging him to just get better.  More was wondering if there's anything that closes down a contract after it's dormant for a while.  Thought I read something about that but not sure.  I'll reach out to him again once I look again for the timing rule thing I thought I saw.  Anyway, yes, COVID so sucks.  Those were the same words I sent his way.  Thanks again for responding and your very supportive words.

[prestonhunter]

If deadlines are important, of course I have more than one person working on the project.

[gilbert-phyllis · Accepted solution]

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Sara D wrote:

Thanks, Phyllis!  Yes, I have been super understanding and encouraging him to just get better.  More was wondering if there's anything that closes down a contract after it's dormant for a while.  Thought I read something about that but not sure.  I'll reach out to him again once I look again for the timing rule thing I thought I saw.  Anyway, yes, COVID so sucks.  Those were the same words I sent his way.  Thanks again for responding and your very supportive words.

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No, a contract sits idle forever unless the client or the FL closes it. (Unless it's with an Enterprise client in which case it does close automatically on a date determined when the contract is set up. Different kettle of fish.)

Yes, there are time limits on refund requests. I think on fixed-price contracts you have up to 30 days after the most recent payment was approved -- but look it up, don't trust my memory.