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mostafa_o_anwar
Community Member

Client Issue

Hello Upwork Community,

Hope you all doing great.

First of all, appologies for the long post but I really need your opinion as this has put me through a lot of stress.

I'm facing an issue with a client that I'll describe it in details as I need your advice.

The job is migrate his current production to eks and leverage devops and automation, we had a meeting back in december and after 2 weeks of that meeting we had another one where I specified detailed steps needed and then he offered my a job.
He requested that the details be made in tasks and I told him no worries about the payment one by one.
the four tasks where as follow

- Help in creating dockerfiles

- Create terraform scripts to create eks infrastructure
- Create the required configs for their application to work in kubernetes

- Create Jenkins to be used as the CICD and create pipelines for the application

I began working start of jan and had a meeting with the developer nearly everyweek to teach him and give him knowledge transfer (they had no prior knowledge to docker or k8s or terraform or jenkins) the meeting would span over 3 hours (while it should be only 1 as scheduled), so till mid feb I worked and met with the dev and finished all the above tasks and tested them with him to confirm its working, and asked them both specifically to test their IaC terraform scripts and do a lot of performance testing to mimic their current production exactly.

From mid feb til mid march, I pinged him but he didn't answer until I sent again on the public slack channel and he said hes still testing. Then a week afterwards he scheduled a meeting and pushed it several times and asked me for a documentation, I created a very detailed documentation with all the steps and clarification of everything and got to a meeting with him where I made the changes he addressed to the documentation.

Now, I was frustrated of the long wait but ok I told myself it doesn't matter,

Then the issues started last week, they want to create their prod within the week and they need me to add additional resources to terraform related to ebs controller and kubernetes autoscaler!! ok after some discussions I made the changes needed and then

- Sunday 28/3 , although they should create their prod with terraform, they wanted me to do it using my account, I agreed and created their production cluster with everything needed

- Tuesday 30/3 !!! they started testing and since then they have been asking for a lot of things which could have been mitigated a month before when I finished everything!! literally I replied within 4-6 hours although about 5 hours I'm ahead of their timezone but ok I worked with them through the needed.

- Wednesday 31/3 , they made some changes manually (not with terraform) to a configuration template (changed the instance type) and an issue occured which took a lot of time as terraform failed due to state difference and I had to go in manually delete some resources before fixing everything up again. And additionaly they want to use spot instance and said that they mentioned that in one call! I did the required changes to terraform to use spot instances

- Thursday 1/4, something happened which caused the asg to malfunction somehow and they say nothing occur as they where sleeping (time difference) after some troubleshooting I gave up and went on to destroy everything and recreate all from scratch again.

- Today Friday 2/4, everything is running smoothly but scaling in flag is set to 30 mins, so they want me to fix that in terraform, I went on a wild search to configure worker nodes with asg flags but I couldn't find something useful and told them this change would take time to check and implement, they didn't reply.

At early morning, some pods were failing dns resolve with aws services (rds, elasticache) randomly this is not consistent, so I went on and troubleshoot it with them and they did a scenario with performance testing for about 3 hours and the issue didn't occurr at all! I asked if they did performance testing before in the clusters we created a month ago for testing one said yes they did but that issue never occurred (the only difference is that they are using vpc peering where eks in one vpc and rds, elasticache, etc in another vpc) but the other one said no they didn't do performance testing before.

Now during testing two more spot instances were created and after we finished they didn't scale in, they asked again about the terraform change (to reduce the scale timeout) that should be made, I told them it can't be done, then suddenly the owner/client (on slack) started to get angry and say things like "stupid details" "f**** pods and f***** expensive" and to talk in a totally unprofessional and inaccepteable way for me.

That was it, freelancing is a side gig for me where I do it because I love working with different solutions and technologies and help other people accomplish things so I don't work with that kind of behavior. (I have about 5 years of experience and working within the company with different clients all over the world and this never occurred before)

Anyway, I took screenshots of most of the things just in case, and sent him privately that we need to have a call and listed to him nearly what I said here, he apologized and told me let's continue later on monday.

But the thing is I don't want to continue, I've had it with them and today was the last straw.
Should I go ahead and cancel the contract? I don't want my profile to be dragged down by this if he gave me a poor rating in reply to cancelling the contract, what should I do?
Btw he made the milestones inactive 1 or 2 months ago and randomly assigned and accepted the jenkins one! 4 days ago!

Again, sorry for the long post but you can feel my frustration.

Thanks,
Mostafa

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Mostafa,

 

I won't be able to comment regarding the nature of your specific project and how it would be best to manage it, that would be up to you and your client. However, in general it's recommended that freelancers make sure that they have an active funded milestone before they start working on the task for that milestone. That way the work is covered by Upwork Payment Protection. It's also a good practice to outline the scope of work, all the deadlines and terms before accepting the offer and reference it in case additional tasks are needed. 

To answer your final question, yes, you can close the contract any time. The client will have a chance to provide feedback once the contract is closed and it will be included in your Job Success score.

~ Valeria
Upwork

View solution in original post

13 REPLIES 13
kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Mostafa,

 

I won't be able to comment regarding the nature of your specific project and how it would be best to manage it, that would be up to you and your client. However, in general it's recommended that freelancers make sure that they have an active funded milestone before they start working on the task for that milestone. That way the work is covered by Upwork Payment Protection. It's also a good practice to outline the scope of work, all the deadlines and terms before accepting the offer and reference it in case additional tasks are needed. 

To answer your final question, yes, you can close the contract any time. The client will have a chance to provide feedback once the contract is closed and it will be included in your Job Success score.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Thanks Valeria, I get your point.

One question though, he made the two remaining milestones inactive which I didn't care much about before although I did finish them sometime ago, but now after the work I've done how should I make the milestone active and submit them?
Or Is the client the only one to do that?


Mostafa O wrote:

Thanks Valeria, I get your point.

One question though, he made the two remaining milestones inactive which I didn't care much about before although I did finish them sometime ago, but now after the work I've done how should I make the milestone active and submit them?
Or Is the client the only one to do that?


Valeria already answered your question - you should not work on a milestone until it's active/funded. There's no way for you to activate a milestone yourself or request mediation from Upwork for any funds that aren't in escrow. Do not do any more work unless the client pays you for what you've already done and sets up a new milestone for any additional work.

Thanks Christine, but the thing is I already delivered everything to them with the documentation and created their production which they are testing it now, I know I should added a new milestone for the production part and asked them to activate the remaining parts which were already delivered but I didn't think it would matter, so I guess there's no way now until the production testing is finished and they approve the inactive milestones.
I did contact him to activate the milestone but he told me they will pay when everything is ready in their production.


Mostafa O wrote:

Thanks Christine, but the thing is I already delivered everything to them with the documentation and created their production which they are testing it now, I know I should added a new milestone for the production part and asked them to activate the remaining parts which were already delivered but I didn't think it would matter,


That was a big mistake. There is now very little incentive for the client to fund those milestones, and no dispute mechanism you could use to dispute anything.

Yes Petra, indeed you were 100% right, I've been a fool to trust him till the end.

Now, this is the final state that I'm in, most of it just to talk with you gurus, I know I'm in the wrong for acting out of good faith but at least writing this would give me some relief.

I'll put in points

- They went to production 2 weeks ago and he promised to close the job and give me a positive feedback but an issue in their code made them go off production again, where he took as a chance and asked for enhancements and helping them in some of the issues that weren't planned, which I did.


- On Sunday 25th of April after my last post here, I had another freelance opportunity and asked him to close the job and release the funds as I needed it, he agreed and said he would offer me another job to continue after this one, and offered to send me the money of this job through paypal!!
if I wanted the money quickly, which I refused and told him we need to stick with upwork. He said he won't close the job until Monday where they'll go to production again. so my hope returned somehow

- Since then they have moved their workloads to production, I asked several times through the week with no response from his side.

- Last Sunday he asked me for something else where I said no this time, he needs to close this job first and open the new one as he promised if he needs something else. he said he has an issue with his account with upwork (something to do with verification)
since then he revoked all my access from the environment, bitbucket and deleted me from their slack account! without any prior notice. and send me on upwork saying his account issue is not solved.

- This one is weird, also on Sunday, out of the blue, he deducted 50$ from one of the milestones without any prior notice or valid reason. And, when I asked him he said he was trying something out because he has an issue with his account, now I'm afraid to ask him that he could further lower my rating.

- Now, I don't know when I'll get my money (his upwork account has an issue) and He has everything working in production and I feel he'll give a negative review for standing my ground and not doing the last thing he asked.
I don't want to give him a refund because he is far from a professional, plain rude and dishonest, and it would be a loss loss situation for me where I worked in a very stressful job for 4 months and delivered everything as expected and returned the money!

I have dated screenshots where all the work was delivered and that they are using it, and also a lot of screenshots from slack. Can I report him or something? would I get the money he owes me if I did that? and what if he retaliate and gave me a very bad review.

Is there anything from upwork to be done regarding that? I know promises doesn't stand out, but if he promised to give me a good review and then changed his mind and gave me a bad one.


Mostafa O wrote:

Can I report him or something? would I get the money he owes me if I did that?


No point. The client is suspended already. Unless they resolve their account this is over.

You need to move on and remember not to work on unfunded milestones in future.

 

Mostafa O wrote:

Hello all again! .. you all turned out to be right, this job is affecting my health and I'm seriously considering stop working on upwork when this is all over.


No need. Just use Upwork properly and work on funded and active milestoners.

 


Mostafa O wrote:

My only question is, can I give him a refund of the two milestones he paid (still he don't want to fund the other two) and this job would finished? 


Don't do that. Don't do ANYTHING at this point. Don't do any further work until the client sorts their account and funds the next milestone.


Duly noted, this has been a lost case for me, but indeed a great lesson.

Thanks for your advices! I'll just forget about it for now, sit back and wait to see how this will turn out or resolve.


Mostafa O wrote:

Thanks Christine, but the thing is I already delivered everything to them with the documentation and created their production which they are testing it now, I know I should added a new milestone for the production part and asked them to activate the remaining parts which were already delivered but I didn't think it would matter, so I guess there's no way now until the production testing is finished and they approve the inactive milestones.
I did contact him to activate the milestone but he told me they will pay when everything is ready in their production.


Well, obviously I would refuse to accept this, but it's up to you if you want to continue working on a project that seems to be going horribly wrong, and potentially not get paid at the end.

Hello all again! .. you all turned out to be right, this job is affecting my health and I'm seriously considering stop working on upwork when this is all over.

I don't want anything anymore at this point. My only question is, can I give him a refund of the two milestones he paid (still he don't want to fund the other two) and this job would finished? what consequences for this? would he be able to place a review on my profile?

Thanks!

Hi Mostafa,

 

Sorry for the late response. I am sorry to hear that this contract is affecting your health. I would like to clarify that if you would like to refund a payment from a previous billing period or on a closed contract, you have the ability to issue a refund for 180 days after the payment is received. 

 

To issue a refund please follow these steps: 

 

  • Go to My Jobs › All Contracts and click the contract title. If the contract has ended, select the Include closed contracts checkbox at the top of the page
  • Click the Give a refund button from the (...) options menu
  • Choose the amount to be refunded and click Give Refund

 

You can find more information in this help article

 

Regarding your concern with how a refund can affect your profile. Please know that refunds do not directly impact your Job Success Score. However, if you refund the full amount of a contract and your client leaves positive feedback, it will not be included in your JSS. This is because contracts with good feedback but no earnings aren't considered in the score.

 

When a contract ends, clients usually leave you feedback as part of that process. As a freelancer, you also can leave public feedback about your experience with the client. You can find more information herePlease see this Community post for more information about Upwork's feedback system.

 

Thank you,

~ Nikola
Upwork
petra_r
Community Member

Mostafa, if you refund in full, the contract will not be visible on your profile. However, should the client leave poor (private) feedback, that would affect your JSS negatively.

 

If you refund in full, whatever feedback you leave for the client will not be visible on the client's profile either.

mostafa_o_anwar
Community Member

yea I agree with you all, maybe I got a bit naiive there, I try to choose my work on upwork very carefully and to have meetings with the client before starting to know them better, discuss the details of the job, send them the design and an inital proposal plan, make them into milestones and then begin working and not care much about the money except when all the work is finished. That turned out to be a mistake.

I'll stick around and try to handle the stress,I don't think there is another way for me to do it as I already sent them everything. I don't think he wouldn't pay at the end I think he's decent enough, and I do want to help them settle their production - (as they are a small startup) - but without all the hassle that happened the last couple of days.

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