Can they leave feedback after disappearing, the 14 day period ends, and payment's applied?

[7ba56d1a]

Hi! I've read various posts as well as documentation and still have questions. Naturally they're related to keeping my JSS as high as possible.

This is a fixed price contract with money in escrow for the first milestone, which I did submit work for a week ago and haven't had any solicited input from. We did a LOT of communicating up to that point, which included preliminary submissions of audio tracks so that the client--and their client--could approve of the sound before the entire voice over was submitted. The intermediary, my client, gave me the go-ahead to complete the task and submit the work in its entirety. The last message I recieved three days later was just "Hi Amanda." That's it. I responded asking how things were with my work, if anything else was needed, and if not may we approve the milestone. He's since disappeared, and I don't want to keep messaging him. However I do sense that I was not able to deliver what his cleint wanted, which was actually different from the sound of the audition track I submitted and my client approved of before initiating the contract.

My understanding is that after 14 days the money from the funded milestone will be delivered to my account. I don't know if he knows this, and if he'll like it. Can he still leave feedback at that point--or do anything, really, that will harm my precious JSS? I care about that more than the money, honestly.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[ericaandrews]

Within this 14 days, the client can do any of the following things:

1. Login and approve the milestone and release the money

2. Do nothing, and the money will automatically be released for that milestone by Upwork at the end of the 14 days

3. Request more changes, which basically restarts the 14-day 'clock' after you resubmit the work  (I hope your contract included a limit on how many changes they can request, because if not, they could request 'changes' 1,000 times over and over again.  Clients can use this to ask for lots of work out-of-scope or to delay/avoid having to pay by asking for an endless number of 'changes')

4. File a dispute if they really don't like the work

5. Request a refund from you  if they really don't like the work

5. End the contract, which would force the funds for the milestone to be released

Either way, nobody can leave feedback (the freelancer or the client) until the contract ends, unless you have a long contract and ask for 'mid-contract' feedback from the client.  After the contract ends, each of you have 14 days to leave feedback

If you are truly concerned that the client might leave bad feedback and care more about your JSS than the client paying you, you have one other option to protect your JSS from any bad feedback:  Issue a full refund and close the contract.  If there is zero-dollars paid on a contract, it disappears from your work history and no feedback can be left by the client or you.  It's basically 'erased' like it never existed.

[7ba56d1a]

Hello. So, after the 14 day period of no contact or action from the cleint, payment is automatically depostited to my account, then they have another 14 days to leave feedback?

Also, how do you get cleints to define what your terms are in the contract that they initiate? "Please add there will be no more than two revisions within a two week period of sumbitting work for milestones," i.e.?

[rverang]

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Amanda S wrote:

Hello. So, after the 14 day period of no contact or action from the cleint, payment is automatically depostited to my account, then they have another 14 days to leave feedback?

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This only begins after a contract is closed, not after release of a milestone, etc.

[sofia2008]

If there is a full refund, it will remove the visible feedback, but the client will still be able to leave a private feedback at the closing of the contract, and private feedback has a bigger impact on JSS thank the public feedback (stars). So a full refund does not erase everything.

[7ba56d1a]

Thank you. Does a full refund alone affect JSS?

[sofia2008]

As Top Rated, you can use this 

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/219801228-Feedback-Removal