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4832935c
Community Member

What to do when hourly hire's work needs multiple revisions?

I had a very specific format I wanted the work put in and had asked for that a couple of times and though it was clear. I am still getting material that I did not ask for and not getting material that I did ask for. We've reached the hourly limit and I don't want to pay for redo and revision. The hourly work expectations were made clear up front and the first time they asked for feedback.

 

Can I put a hold on payment until I receive the revisions?

 

I suppose my project should have been a one time payment to avoid this issue. 

13 REPLIES 13
prestonhunter
Community Member

Kaden:

In answer to your questions:

 

No, you may not put payment on hold for these reasons. By choosing to use an hourly contract, you have agreed to pay for the freelancer's time, and not for a deliverable outcome.

 

This means that you pay for the freelancer's time even if the files she is providing to you are unusable.

 

You wondered if you should have used a fixed-price contract in order to avoid this problem. You are correct.

 

It appears that there are aspects of the fixed-price contract model which you appreciate and which would have been helpful to you. But that is not the contract model you used. You can not mixed the two contract models together.

 

Your real problem here is that you do not appreciate and avail yourself of the power you have as an Upwork client. You MAY CLOSE A CONTRACT AT ANY TIME, for any reason. Or for no reason. You should have stopped working with this freelancer a long time ago. She is not a bad person, but she is the wrong person for this task. You should have closed the contract and stopped paying her for work you can not use. Instead, you should have continued working only with members of your team - other freelancers you hired - who understand your instructions and can follow them and provide you with the files you need.

 

Using a fixed-price contract with this particular freelancer is not the right solution, because she still would have had the same difficulty following your instructions.

I asked the freelancer to revise the work about 3 times now and not much has changed. Today I mentioned in message that in order to give a good review for the work, the deliverables have to be work I asked for and the work has to be correct. I then added that we can either alter the hours to be reflect the ratio of work that could be useful vs the work that was not done/done correctly - or keep working to revise and fix the issue. 

 

Reviews are client tools of last recourse. I'm not being vindictive at all. Every freelancer wants and may expect a 5 star review, but we can't provide a glowing 4.5-5 star review if the work wasn't done to spec or done at all (give me something else instead of what I asked for).

 

I didn't kow things were off-track until they had already manually put in 3 hours. I won't make this mistake again. The best thing to ask for in the future is a test item. Now if we could limit hours to '1 hour' in order to have a paid test. 

 

How would you do a paid test of something short in an interview to avoid future mismatches?

re: "I asked the freelancer to revise the work about 3 times now and not much has changed."

 

Kaden: You don't want the work this freelancer produces. You asked her to do something that is beyond her capabilities. If she provides you with work, you will always know in the back of your head that it is problematic. Your data will be corrupt and the results of her efforts will undermine your goals.

 

re: "Today I mentioned in message that in order to give a good review for the work, the deliverables have to be work I asked for and the work has to be correct. I then added that we can either alter the hours to be reflect the ratio of work that could be useful vs the work that was not done/done correctly - or keep working to revise and fix the issue off the clock."

 

You are spending your time and energy with somebody who is undermining your goals. Your competitors in the marketplace are not doing that.

 

re: "Reviews are client tools of last recourse. I'm not being vindictive at all. Every freelancer wants and may expect a 5 star review, but we can't provide a glowing 4.5-5 star review if the work wasn't done to spec or done at all (give me something else instead of what I asked for)."

 

You are putting the needs and interests of this freelancer ahead of the needs of your project. Upwork does not expect you to do that.

 

You can be a NICE person and a POLITE person without undermining your own project by continuing to work with a freelancer who is not a good fit for the project. That's all this is: a bad fit. It's not personal.

 

re: "How would you do a paid test of something short in an interview to avoid future mismatches?"

 

If you are interested in hiring a freelancer, then assign her to do a smaller amount of work, and review that work after a short time. Maybe after a half hour of work has been done.

 

If the freelancer's work is not what you are looking for, then close the contract and stop working with her. Only work with the freelancers whose work you value the most.

 

For work like this, trying to determine how a freelancer will work out through an "interview" is mostly a waste of time. You need to hire people and evaluate their work to determine if they are capable of what you need.

I will do that in the future. They put something together in about half an hour, asked me how it was, I gave specific feedback and reiterated what I needed. Then they logged three hours and submitted work and it wasn't what I needed. This is awkward and a short review assignment may prevent that, but there is no promise that it would. A one time fee and edit until it's correct it what I will do next time.

Kaden:

It sounds like you have an expanded awareness of the differences between hourly and fixed-price contracts, and the comparable advantages and disadvantages of each.

 

I wish you well in your future hiring efforts.

 

re: "A one time fee and edit until it's correct it what I will do next time."

 

Even if you do that... you may wish to hire multiple freelancers, for short assignments, and then continue working only with the very best ones.

 

What if you hired 4 people and ONE of them submitted work quickly that was formatted perfectly, and the other three took you longer to work with because you had to go back and forth correcting their mistakes? Only by hiring multiple freelancers can you know if some are better than others.

petra_r
Community Member


Kaden M wrote:

Today I mentioned in message that in order to give a good review for the work, the deliverables have to be work I asked for and the work has to be correct. I then added that we can either alter the hours to be reflect the ratio of work that could be useful vs the work that was not done/done correctly - or keep working to revise and fix the issue off the clock. 


Your freelancer would be entirely within their rights to report you to Upwork.

  • Feedback manipulation
  • Asking for free work.

Both are violations of Upwork's terms of service.

 

4832935c
Community Member

Noted. Questions. What rating do you give when the work submitted per your instructions or was not the work you needed? Is it okay to warn the freelancer about your perception of the quality and expectations, or is that considered a violation of TOS? I would rather know the direction of my rating ahead of time, rather than wait for it to be a surprise.

 

What do you do when corrections are needed but you only planned to alot a certain amount of hours and you already asked for changes but they were never made? 

 

What if you suspect the hours reported were spent focussed on work I didn't necessarily ask for? How do you ask an hourly person to correct and make revisions? Do you just let the hours accumulate to do that?  

 

Some work is suitable for hourly. Some work where revisions are needed are probably best suited for milestones based projects. 

re: "What rating do you give when the work submitted per your instructions or was not the work you needed?"

 

Clients are not actually asked to give "a rating."

 

Clients are asked to rate freelancers in 6 distinct categories, on a scale of 1 to 5.

Screen Shot 2019-02-10 at 7.40.09 AM.png

For example, "Communication." The client would think of the freelancer's communication only, and leave an appropriate rating in that category.

 

Clients also have the opportunity to type out a note about their experience with the freelancer.

 

Clients also are asked to rate the freelancer on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of how likely they would be to recommend the freelancer to others. This score weights VERY HEAVILY in the freelancer's on-profile Job Success Score. This is the closest thing there is to providing a singular rating (or "A RATING").

 

Screen Shot 2019-02-10 at 7.41.50 AM.png

 

This is a private rating that the freelancer will never see.

Clients are encouraged to be honest in all of their ratings.

 

So if you thought that a freelancer's communication skills were excellent, EVEN THOUGH their work product was poor, you should give the freelancer a high score for communication.

 

You specifically asked about what to do if you thought the work that the freelancer provided was NOT what you needed?

 

I would consider that fact when scoring the freelancer in these categories:

- Quality of Work

- Skills

 

Once again: Upwork actually WANTS you to provide honest freedback. Upwork does not want freelancers to automatically provide "all 5's" when rating freelancers.

re: "...you are trying to correct for that by asking for revisions?"


I was coaching a football team.

 

One player was an excellent defensive end. Great on defense.

 

But he also wanted to kick field goals. He couldn't do it!


Every game we played, when it came time to kick a field goal, he asked me to let him try. EVERY TIME, he failed.

 

I kept telling him: When you kick the ball, make sure it goes through the goal posts.

 

But he never did.

 

We literally lost game after game because he failed to kick field goals.

 

Finally, my assistant coach told me:

"Have SOMEBODY ELSE kick the field goals."

 

That solved the problem. We put in another player when we needed to kick field goals. This new player never missed.

I knew I wouldn't give them a single rating, but doesn't the overall job get aggregated into a single rating? Some items were good. The work quality I guess is where I am concerned. I see I made a lot of mistakes now in my haste to hire someone. Their cover and question responses were the most detailed. 

 

So Preston. What do you recommend for the best most efficient way to find a client/freelancer match? What steps do you take from post to hire? I will accept your answer as the solution and move on from this 🙂 

re: "What do you recommend for the best most efficient way to find a client/freelancer match? What steps do you take from post to hire? I will accept your answer as the solution and move on from this"

 

There are different types of work. Some types of work may indeed merit careful consideration, interviewing many candidates, etc.

 

For the type of work you are describing, which is more "entry-level" and involves lower hourly rates:

 

I hire freelancers VERY quickly.

I check their work carefully early on.

I fire them quickly if their work doesn't meet my needs.

I do not know the specifics of this job of course, but one issue that often arises is the client thinking because they know it well, everyone else will understand it immediately. This is a problem with most things in life. We take for granted that we've been thinking on a subject for an extended period and have created specific domain expertise around it. We then start to talk to someone else about it and assume a baseline of knowledge and understanding that the other person cannot possibly have. It may even seem completely trivial and obvious to us but again we forget the other person might not even have a frame of reference for what we are talking about. The moral here is to make sure you take many steps back and allow for a Q&A. Also expect there will be revisions because the freelancer hasn't spent 100 hours thinking of this exact solution like you - the originator of the idea - might have been prior to engaging. 

 

Again, this might not be germane to the specific job in question here. I have no idea. However, it's something to consider if even another client sees this down the line. 

I would like to give credit to this as part of the solution if you will. There were a lot of ideas I probably had in my head about how things should be done, that probably didn't get translated into the messages and instructions. I should have made my instructions more specific and then followed up to make sure the instructions were clear. I also should have set up a hierarchy of priorities and established that in the interview and at the start of the contract. Milestones or checkins would help. 

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