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emma-goodman
Community Member

Advice needed on a barely responsive client

Hi everyone! I have been on Upwork for around half a year now, and this is my first community post (Yay!)

 

I need some advice on a client. Here's the deal:

 

Client and I initially agreed on 3 $50 milestones. First two went fairly smoothly and were approved. The last one was a bigger, more involved piece of work for which I had to do a decent amount of research and writing (so it's worth following up - also just out of principle). I sent her the work, and she told me her mother was in palliative care, and so she was putting everything on the back burner at that moment. Of course, I understood her situation and told her to take her time. Here's the timeline:

 

April 16: Sent her the work

April: 20: Enquired about if she'd recieved it. She responds the same day to inform me about her mother to which I responded as above

May 28th: Gentle enquiry on whether she needs more time, to which she respoded "was just thinking about you yesterday and that I need to read through what you have done so we can finalise it."

June 17th: Enquiry to her to ask if she'd got round to it

June 24: response back ('not yet')

July 2nd: Enquiry from me again

July 8th: Response back that its all fine, just a couple of changes here and there that she will take care of. She also asked me to do an additional piece of work which was not part of the initial agreement. I respond the same day and inform her of this (also quoting where we agreed on the initial work), but tell her I'm happy to do the additional work for an additional milestone. The milestone for the third piece of work still has not been reactivated and approved by her. 

July 15th (today): Still no reponse back from her. Still no payment. 

 

She has been respectful and apologetic throughout our communications, but I just want my payment for the last milestone (I don't think I want to do any more work for her to be honest). Gentle enquiries are getting me nowhere. However, I'm worried if I start to use more forceful / demanding language ('Please pay my milestone' without any smileys or fluff), she will give me a less-than-desirable review. I am a top-rated freelancer with a near-perfect (99%) success score and want to keep it that way.

 

What do you advise? Should I become more demanding, or refer it to an Upwork support person? Or something else? Frankly, I'm over it. 😕 

 

 

6 REPLIES 6
petra_r
Community Member


Emma G wrote:

 

What do you advise? Should I become more demanding, or refer it to an Upwork support person? Or something else? Frankly, I'm over it. 😕 


If the 3rd milestone is not funded or active, there is nothing to refer to Upwork support.

There is also nothing you can do.

 

Only work on funded and active milestones.

So I'm supposed to just give up, even though I did the work and she will use it for her website (and we agreed on it before)? 😕 Doesn't really seem fair...I thought Upwork was supposed to protect freelancers from things like this


Emma G wrote:

So I'm supposed to just give up, even though I did the work and she will use it for her website (and we agreed on it before)? 😕 Doesn't really seem fair...I thought Upwork was supposed to protect freelancers from things like this


Upwork protects freelancers who use the system as intended. If you work on unfunded milestones, you are not using the system as intended and have decided not to use the protection offered,


If the client uses unpaid material on her website, you can demand for the unpaid portion to be taken down and issue a DMCA Takedown notice.

Have you actually told her that the third milestone was never paid? Explain exactly what it is you need from the client and hope that she just forgot. If she doesn't fund the milestone though, there's nothing Upwork can do. Your protection only extends to amounts that are funded. The funding step enables both the freelancer and client to confirm that they want to move forward on a project. (If the client doesn't fund a milestone, they aren't committed. The freelancer can end the contract once they've collected payment on each funded milestone.) 

prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "Should I become more demanding?"

 

No.

 

re: "or refer it to an Upwork support person?"

 

No.

 

Clients are not required to be responsive.

When a client hires me... it is her project, not mine.

 

If she doesn't want to respond, that is her choice. If she doesn't want to do things that move the project along, that is her choice. If there are five milestones needed to complete the project, and she only wants to fund two of them, that is her choice. She has not broken any rules.

 

As a freelancer, I work on funded milestones. If a milestone is not funded yet, that is the client's way of communicating the fact that she does not want me to work on that task yet.

d687d555
Community Member

I am newbie here, but i can do anything. Even if, its hard to find a client.

 

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