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riparian
Community Member

Negative feedback about freelancer not showing

After spending US$42,000 and investing 2 years of my time  I stopped a contract because of ineptitude of the freelancer

I left negative feedback to help protect other employers but now find the feedback is not showing with "No Feedback given" being displayed

Before starting the contract I was curiouse as to  why there were other employers that had spent around $40,000 or more all with "No Feedback given"

Given that my negative feedback has been blocked to protect the big income earning freelancer I find it not believable that the other employres would spend tens of thousands of dollars and give no feedback.

If in fact the other high dollar value employers have their feedback bocked then I have been mislead by upwork and would not have employed the freelancer company in the first place  and then  lost all of my money.

 

I note that only smaller jobs done by this freelancer, all with 5 star,  are showing

 

Please explain why my feedback and that of the others is not being displayed.

 

Contract ID
15714488
51 REPLIES 51
cupidmedia
Community Member

Brian, if you only just left this feedback, it will show up after either the freelancer leaves feedback for you or 14 days, if they leave you no feedback. It also can sometimes take a few hours to be updated after one of those conditions is met.

bobafett999
Community Member

what kind of project was that?  Did you just suddenly find out that your freelancer is no good after 2 years and $42,000 later?

muradmkts
Community Member

Hi Brain,

 

You should send a paid test project before hiring longtime, I think this is the best way to hire in freelancing marketplace. 

Upwork have a lot to answer for !

In my opinion all employers are bing mislead into the  belief that upwork are in fact above board and can be relied upon to be up front , honest and providie information that can be relied apon to make an informed decision whether to employ a freelancer or not 

 

While upwork alloy Freelancers and agencies to have the ability to remove negative feedback that they do not want displayed, Upwork is  far from providing a reliable service for which they are being handsomely paid.

 

Not knowing that freelancers and agencies could remove negative feedabck  I employed an agency with 10,000 hours complaint free and large jobs in the tens of thousands of dollars. I now know the reason they were complaint free.... because Upwork allowed them to  removed the negative feedback effectively hiding the truth from prospective employers

 

I hope that all employers read this reply that I received from Upwork as to why my negative content was not displayed :

 

************************************

With feedback, there is an option for Top Rated freelancer's to have the ability to remove a feedback per a certain criteria. 

The perk is described as the following needed:

" This perk is available to all Top Rated freelancers and agencies upon entry into the program. Only one job on Upwork's feedback can be removed from your Job Success Score at a time. Jobs performed on Elance are not eligible. At least three months must pass and at least 10 new jobs on Upwork must be completed before you can submit another request. If you personally are Top Rated but your agency is not, you can't remove feedback from contracts that agency.'

The freelancer may choose to have this removed per the criteria above.

Please let me know if you have any further questions at this time.

Regards,"

###########################

 

As you can see from that email, the freelancer/agency have to be top rated, and they can only do that once every 10 contracts, and every 3 months. This means that the vast majority of their contracts have to not need to use the feedback removal option. Also, it shows on their profile as "this feedback has been removed".

 

It's certainly not like freelancers/agencies can just remove whatever feedback they want, whenever they want, as you seem to be implying.

 

More information is available at this help center link (which is publicly available information).

 

If you can't see the contract with the "this feedback has been removed" message, then as I said in my last post in this thread, it's most likely because the criteria for it to show up haven't been met yet.

Hello Brain. Sorry to hear about your trouble with the freelancer, but why did you spend so much without results? Did you have a project manager who had some knowledge of the work overseeing things? Is this an hourly or fixed rate project? If hourly, I personally would only allow so many hours at first and review the work before allowing the project to get to so much, and if fixed rate it would have been best to have multiple milestones of lesser amounts at the beginning. Did the freelancer provide you with any completed work, and have they been paid already in full? If the money has already been released it would be impossible to recover any most likely, unless you ask for a refund directly to the freelancer. Upworks is not the freelancer, they only help freelancers and clients find each other, mediate disputes, and provide a safe way to dealing with each other when you use the site properly.  

 

The perk you are referring too, as Jenifer pointed out, can only be used every 3 months, after 10 contracts are complete and if the freelancer is top rated and not every time an agency or freelancer has a bad review. 

I am still am confused why did it take you 2 years and $43,000 to find that out?  If you need some real help you need to share details about your job.

 

For example, if you had some crazy idea R&D for protyping or doing some experiments the resulta are not guaranteed. 

 

In general Upwork is the most friendly towards clients.

The answer is simple

 

The contracted agency writes an email every day without missing one day in all that time. Not once do you not get an update on what is supposed to be happening.

Secondly, with such fantastic availability and personal attention from the account manager with complete reassurance that everything is going to plan plus that outstanding and wonderful accolades falsly advertised by upwork about this contractor, Then it is completely understandable that you would have faith in the fact that the agency is reputable and would not rip you off.

 

Thirdly once the contracted amount had been exceeded and reached around 10 - 15,000 you tell me how easiuly it is to walk away from this money, again, especially because of the proported reputation that Upwork allowed them to protray.

 

No. I was conned by a false reputation and an agency that produces a good income for  Upwork .

 

Do I take any responsability for this fiasco, certainly, I used a company that I was lead to believe was reputable without doing enough background work .

 

My hope is that nobody else gets caught by this company who willingly take your money while hiding negative comment from their top income earners

 

 

Again, how do you know their reputation is false? Do they have a whole lot of "this feedback has been removed" contracts showing on their profile?

 

It is not possible for an agency/freelancer to just choose freely what feedback and contracts display on their profile and/or affect their JSS. The whole point of the JSS system is to prevent manipulation. For an agency/freelancer to have 100% JSS, the VAST MAJORITY of their contracts have ended successfully. There is no way for them to have 100% JSS with a large proportion of unsuccessful contracts.

Brian, if your contract shows as "No feedback given" then your feedback has **NOT BEEN REMOVED**

 

When a feedback has been removed, it CLEARLY states "This feedback has been removed"

 

It says "No feedback given" if it has been less than two weeks since you ended the contract and the freelancer has not yet left feedback for you. Your feedback will show when the two weeks are up.

 

Are there any "This feedback has been removed" contracts on the freelancer's history? Only those are feedback that has been removed, and you can actually almost always still see it if you know how.

 

Contracts where it says "No feedback given" are contracts where the client did not leave feedback OR that have been closed less than 2 weeks.

riparian
Community Member

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Can you now please explane why an agency or freelancer should  EVER be permitted to remove negative feedback just because they are the privilaged high income earners for Upwork .

 

"This perk is available to all Top Rated freelancers and agencies upon entry into the program"

 

" With feedback, there is an option for Top Rated freelancer's to have the ability to remove a feedback per a certain criteria."

 

 

 


@brian M wrote:

 

Can you now please explane why an agency or freelancer should  EVER be permitted to remove negative feedback...


I think that's a good question. As a freelancer I'm looking forward to getting Top Rated status and being able to remove an occasional bad feedback. But I'm not convinced that the existence of this perk is a good thing.

 

Letting a freelancer choose which feedback to remove is obviously open to abuse, as the freelancer can remove justified bad feedback as easily as they can remove the unfair feedback that the perk is presumably intended for. If the freelancer is really as consistently successful as Top Rated status is supposed to mean, then an occasional bad feedback (among many good ones) shouldn't have a major effect.

 

The OP seems to be suggesting the possibilty of a scam system, where a freelancer does a lot of high quality small jobs to get a good Upwork history, together with a few very big jobs where they charge a lot of money for bad work, knowing that they can remove the consequent bad feedback. Would such a scam be workable?


Richard W wrote: 

The OP seems to be suggesting the possibilty of a scam system, where a freelancer does a lot of high quality small jobs to get a good Upwork history, together with a few very big jobs where they charge a lot of money for bad work, knowing that they can remove the consequent bad feedback. Would such a scam be workable?

 

No, such a scam would not be workable. Top Rated status is a moving target, maintaining it depends on continuing to meet the criteria. Maintaining a high JSS is also a moving target, ,and freelancers are vulnerable to a host of potential pitfalls over which we have little or no control. Some are intrinsic to freelancing and some are inherent in the Upwork platform, by design.

As a Top Rated freelancer, I can remove one bad feedback every three months, as long as I have contracted at least 10 new jobs in between. It is not always simple to detect which client feedback might have caused a JSS dip because sometimes clients leave positive public feedback and ding you in the private feedback. And the JSS calculation is largely a black box. So it is virtually impossible for a freelancer to game the system.

The option to remove is practically the only tool an Upwork freelancer has to protect their profile against clients who are unscrupulous, incompetent, vengeful or some combination. And believe me, the platform is rife with those individuals, just like the world in general. All a freelancer can do, otherwise, is "work hard, do an excellent job on all of your projects, manage your client relationships, etc. and it will all work out." So that's what we do.


 

riparian
Community Member

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Can you now please explane why an agency or freelancer should  EVER be permitted to remove negative feedback just because they are the privilaged high income earners for Upwork .

 

"This perk is available to all Top Rated freelancers and agencies upon entry into the program"

 

" With feedback, there is an option for Top Rated freelancer's to have the ability to remove a feedback per a certain criteria."

 

 

 


@brian M wrote:

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Can you now please explane why an agency or freelancer should  EVER be permitted to remove negative feedback just because they are the privilaged high income earners for Upwork .

 

"This perk is available to all Top Rated freelancers and agencies upon entry into the program"

 

" With feedback, there is an option for Top Rated freelancer's to have the ability to remove a feedback per a certain criteria."

 

 

 


 Sometimes *beep* happens and a contract falls apart. Sometimes this is not the freelancer's fault. Freelancers/agencies who otherwise have an exceptional history on Upwork, as demonstrated by their Top Rated status, can use their perk to remove that contract so they stay Top Rated. Again, by definition this is exceptionally rare, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to stay Top Rated and keep access to the perk. It's nothing to do with them being "top earners", it's to do with them delivering excellent results to clients in the vast majority of their contracts.

Hi Brian,

 

Top Rated freelancers aren't necessarily freelancers with highest earnings but they do have a track record of successfully completing their contracts, following Upwork Tos and maintaining high Job Success Score. Therefore they are allowed to remove feedback only if three months has passed and at least 10 new jobs on Upwork were completed since their last request to remove feedback.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Well Brian:

 

If I were you I would have flown down to the agency's country and look at things personally.  Again you are not saying what the project was.

 

On Upwork both clients and freelancers have to be very cautious about each other.  Just few mins. ago I applied for a job even though most likely it is junk....I had conneccts to burn!

 

Here it goes with redflags

 

"

Looking for an experienced HTML designer to edit source code to Weebly themes to match a specified design for Forbes 500 client. (They would have their own team)The webpage is static, with non-interactive images and text throughout with 2 forms embedded in the site to be stored remotely or directly on the device.

Essentially, the page is already designed from our creative department -- I just need that design on Weebly so we can make future edits.

Only freelancers located in the U.S. may apply.

 

Can you paste examples of the finished product below?

 

It is a very simple job (I don't know there is such thing as Forbes 500 list).  A large company will never ever go with Weebly.

Hi Brian,

 

I'm sorry to hear about the outcome of your contract. Please refer to the information Jennifer and Petra provided here and our agent shared on your open ticket regarding the option to remove feedback, check the Agency's profile once again and let us know if you have any question regarding their previous contracts or feedback they received.

~ Vladimir
Upwork
kat303
Community Member


@brian M wrote:

After spending US$42,000 and investing 2 years of my time  I stopped a contract because of ineptitude of the freelancer

I am very confused about the above statement. During those 2 years, and spending $42,000 didn't you receive ANY work that would account for the money spent and time it took? For fixed rate jobs, milestones need to be created with a percentage of the total amount escrowed and the deliverable/scope of work to be done for that milestone. When the required work is done for that milestone, it should be sent to you for you to look over and approve, If that is the case, then and only then should you released those funds in that milestone and then fund the next milestone etc. For fixed rate jobs, a freelancer is paid for the work they deliver.

And for hourly jobs, - well for hourly jobs, the freelancer is paid for the hours they worked. Each week, you should look over the screen shots of the work that was done. If any screenshots show no activity, or activity not related to your work, you can dispute them and not have to pay for those hours. Even with hourly jobs there could be an arrangement that at the end of the week, before you set the number of hours for the coming week, that the freelancer should deliver the work that was done during that week. If they don't then you pause the contract until you get that work.

I don't understand why 2 years went by and so much money was spent. Didn't you receive anything during those 2 years that would justify you continuing working with and paying this freelancer?

 

I left negative feedback to help protect other employers but now find the feedback is not showing with "No Feedback given" being displayed

Before starting the contract I was curiouse as to  why there were other employers that had spent around $40,000 or more all with "No Feedback given"

If you were curious, that should have been a red flag. If you're curious, or have a gut feeling, then you look for another freelancer. As to why this freelancer still has an active account, I have no idea. I hope Upwork looks into this and perhaps contacts those other clients to get their opinions.

 

Given that my negative feedback has been blocked to protect the big income earning freelancer I find it not believable that the other employres would spend tens of thousands of dollars and give no feedback.

If in fact the other high dollar value employers have their feedback bocked then I have been mislead by upwork and would not have employed the freelancer company in the first place  and then  lost all of my money.

Top rated freelancers do have a perk to block negative feedback. And if this freelancer was rated as a top rated freelancer they could have know that because of their non deliverables that they were going to get bad feedback. and/or if you did give feedback, they could have used their perk and had it blocked.

Upwork didn't mislead you, They are just a website that allows freelancers and clients to connect to have work done. A client contracts out with a freelancer to have their work done, If for whatever reason the freelancer is not providing the service they were contract for, the client can and has every right to terminate the contract at any time. Knowing that this is an Internet site that attracts both clients and freelancers from all over the world, both, need to do whatever is necessary to protect themselves, especially when a job is so huge and so much money is involved. Hiring a project manager to oversee is just one thing, hiring someone locally (located in your country) is another. And just doing, due diligence on your part by not letting things go for so long and continuing to pay out and not receiving anything for it.

 

I note that only smaller jobs done by this freelancer, all with 5 star,  are showing

 

Please explain why my feedback and that of the others is not being displayed.

 

Contract ID
15714488

 

I am going to say what people may be thinking but not 'saying'.

 

To me, this sounds like a long-term contract that went well for a long time and then turned sour towards the end. Are you giving bad feedback because the relationship went south at the end, or because, for 24 months, you accepted substandard work?

 

Those 24 months seem a loooong time to realise someone was not what he or she claimed to be.

Sorry, i might not be in right subject.   But I can't find any help.

I'm stuck in something similar as a client.  I did not know how upwork really worked. I post a job and someone replied.  Now I realize that he went under the upwork structure too get paid direct.  After 10 month of progress but not too many hours, just before going live ''Hell break loose'' bug over bugs.  Started to do a bit of digging on the freelancer's profile.  None of his portfolio are real and he has been picking jobs none stop since he was hired.  

 

How can I trust any one in here now ? I tought that that this site would do a bit of research before letting someone post as freelance.  

 

petra_r
Community Member


@Sylvain C wrote:
  But I can't find any help.

......

How can I trust any one in here now ? I tought that that this site would do a bit of research before letting someone post as freelance.  

 


 How "can you trust" anyone? About as much as anyone can trust someone who conspired with another untrustworthy person to cheat the platform and every honest client and freelancer on it by going outside and paying directly.

 

What "help" would you expect from a company you haven't paid and whose terms of services you violated?

So what you are saying is that both you and this freelancer decided to work off the platform, with Upwork not getting their percentage of the freelancer's earnings, and now you are upset that the freelancer scammed you out of money.

 

So....how is Upwork supposed to solve your problem, exactly? There was NO contract on Upwork. This was a private arrangement between the two of you. How can Upwork be blamed or be expected to do anything about it (except ban both of your accounts for contravening the TOS)?

It is a bit like two people robbing a bank, and one of them then blaming the bank when his accomplice runs off with all the loot................

Wow how did you come to that rediculous conclusion.

Perhaps you need to read what is written before expressing a completely irrelevant and incorrect assumption

 

Each and every payment went through Upwork

petra_r
Community Member


Brian M wrote: ...... read what is written before expressing a completely irrelevant and incorrect assumption

 Good idea, Brian, why don't you try that? 😉

 

sylvain.jpg

I can't beleive what I'm reading here...

 

I did not try to cheat the system...I got contacted by the freelancer.   

I think you guys should look at yourself before throwing the first rocks ...

 

 

As a first time user, and NOW LAST time user.  We just continu the communication. 

If the Upwork freelancer  community cheats and goes outside the box,  Is NOT the fault of the employers who uses Upwork once in while.   

 

I feel like a lot of people here a fast blaming the customer.  

Anonymous-User
Not applicable

Professional freelancers are running a business, we're not employees. We can reject you as a client, just as you can reject our proposals. "The customer is always right" is good in theory, but in the real world it is never absolute.  

 

When you sign up for an account on UW, you sign a contract to play by the rules, so do freelancers. UW mediates issues - but they can't do anything if you don't properly notify them in a timely manner - for both clients and freelancers.

But when you make "each and every payment" on UW totaling $42k, you approved the work, each dollar, each contract. Coming back 2 years later with "I don't like it now" makes it a moot point. 

 

Why is this thread so long? 

 

 


Cairenn R wrote:

 

Why is this thread so long? 

 

 


Because people keep dragging it from its 2017 grave, that's why.

 

18kuxf

0cf616aa
Community Member

I did not try to cheat the system...I got contacted by the freelancer.   As a first time user, and NOW LAST time user.  We just continu the communication. 

If the Upwork freelancer  community cheats and goes outside the box,  Is NOT the fault of the employers who uses Upwork once in while.   

 

I feel like a lot of people here a fast blaming the customer.  

Sylvain,

 

Upwork ToS require clients and freelancers to keep all the payments on the platform. It's done for the security of our users and their funds and it also allows them to benefit from Upwork Payment Protection. Moving payments off platform isn't only a violation of Upwork ToS but also means that the payment won't be covered by the Protection.

 

Please, refer to this help article for more information.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Hello Valeria

 

thanks for the reply,  If I post again, i will make sure to stay within Upwork. That is the reason I came here in the first place. BUT after reading the bashing from a few freelancers, !   ?  If some freelancers are going around your system, they're to blame.  Not the one that comes here for the first time and are mislead.

 

 

Sorry you feel this way, Sylvain. We do expect all our users to follow the ToS they accept when they sign up for an account on Upwork.

~ Valeria
Upwork

I just open an account and posted a job.  May be some people should have the right to answer or speak their free mind when It comes to business.  Calling ''respectable'' freelancer not to work for me was just too much

 

please close and erase my account on this platform.

 

thank you 


@Sylvain C wrote:

please close and erase my account on this platform.

 

thank you 


 ________________

Upwork please do as this person asks.

gerrys
Community Member

Familiarity breeds comtempt.

 

The longer the contract, the more the freelancer is taken for granted.

 

No raises, no perks. Just whining. Time to move on.

I don't believe I made an assumption, Brian. I responded exactly to what was said...it was said the freelancer went under the Upwork radar and was paid direct. How did I make an assumption?

Brian,  this makes no sense and I have to agree with what Irene wrote:

"I am going to say what people may be thinking but not 'saying'.

 

To me, this sounds like a long-term contract that went well for a long time and then turned sour towards the end. Are you giving bad feedback because the relationship went south at the end, or because, for 24 months, you accepted substandard work?

 

 Those 24 months seem a loooong time to realise someone was not what he or she claimed to be."



 

 

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