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78b2c149
Community Member

Client doesn't pay the final payment we agreed in milestone

Is there a way my client pays the last milestone of a contract?

What is the upwork support team? How can I contact them?

 

Does upwork really care about who is working? That´s why I worked for one client, that only paid half of the total we agreed and continues to adding revisions so that the contract never ends? And in the end, upwork keeps 20% of the $$ I´ve worked for? Is this fair?

 

Is there anyone who can help me?

 

If this is true, that means upwork is really a scam for workers, is made for agencies and clients to profit from us, freelancers. And answers like, "you need to know how upwork works before you work in it." are just ignorant because that´s incompetence from upwork... they are allowing freelancer to be scammed. I worked here for clients and accepted that upwork keeps 20% of what i work because they had milestones, and escrows and they say they care about me, and their main core business is protecting freelancers and give them a secure work experience trough the world...

 

If upwork doesn't do anything about this, that means that this is a scam, and a big one!
 

 Help me please.

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

12 REPLIES 12
prestonhunter
Community Member

Tomas:

A client can not unilaterally decide to "not pay" you for a funded milestone.

 

You, as the freelancer, must approve a client's request to refund any escrow money.

 

If you are talking about a milestone that was not funded... those don't count.


Preston H wrote:

If you are talking about a milestone that was not funded... those don't count.


It is funded. The client keeps requesting changes without actually requesting specific changes. Different people involved on the client side and frankly the client appears to be a middleman waiting for their own client's approval.

 

Tomas, you may have to take this to dispute.

 

78b2c149
Community Member

Thanks Petra R,

 

I´m already disputing.

And yes he is a middleman and his client didn´t liked it after i´ve sent 12 logos...

I have more than 5 years of experience as freelance, i´m new on upwork, i know how to deal with clients and i have already a filling to spot the ones that are going to give me troubles.

Upwork is suposed to help me, not the opposite...

 

Let´s see if in dispute they can help me solving this.

 

Hello Preston H,

 

The client keeps requesting changes without actually requesting specific changes. if it continues i will never see my final payment milestone paid... Is that correct?

 

The only way to stop it is doing a dispute?

 

I´m already in dispute.

 

Thanks for your comment

AleksandarD
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Tomas,

 

I'm sorry about your experience with this contract. While I'm not familiar with the contract I can confirm that freelancers aren't required to complete tasks that have not been discussed and agreed upon at the start of the contract or during the contract, and aren't part of the contract terms. Note that we do have Payment Protection in place for Fixed Price contracts and in case the client declines the payment request that appears to have been submitted, the freelancer will be able to initiate a dispute and our team will follow up with both parties. You can find more information in these help articles, here and here.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

Hello Aleksandar,

 

What does really count as what is in the contract?

Why don´t the milestones count the most, and the clients and freelancers stricly follow them?

 

Thanks for your feedback.

Hi Tomas,

 

When a dispute is filed on a fixed-price contract, a dispute specialist will request both parties for more information about the contract and the situation. They will be reviewing the documentation submitted and any information available for the contract and in Messages that pertains to the dispute. They will be assisting both parties in reaching a mutual agreement. If the client and freelancer are unable to come to a mutual agreement, the dispute specialist may provide a non-binding recommendation as part of the process. If the recommendation is rejected, the client and freelancer may choose to proceed to arbitration for a fee. You can find more information about the process here and our dispute specialist will be guiding you through the process via the support case you already have open.

 

Thanks!

~Andrea
Upwork
kinector
Community Member

Tomas, all milestones and payments are eventually up to what you (think you) have agreed with the client.

 

Some require a lot of revisions, some are happy with what you send them in the first place.

 

Mixups happen to new freelancers and most often the issues originate from poor communication, non-existing expectation management, and other human aspects of doing business online.

 

There's no way to define every aspect of the project before a contract starts.

 

One way to avoid underpaid projects is to build in some tolerance for revisions and ask for a higher price from the beginning. This approach works for me really well even if I make pretty complicated software products and many features we need in the end cannot be even listed before getting started.

 

It's a joint journey with you client.

 

I'd recommend trying to find a more positive attitude and try to understand that this is just another match-making site. Clients meet freelancers and vice versa.

 

No site can make you a successful freelancer. It's up to you.

 

I hope the next project goes better, but by no means don't give up on this platform because of one bad client. The next one could be your dream customer!

 

There are freelancers making hundreds of thousands over here if you look around a little. This platform works very well for building online businesses.

Hello Mikko R,

 

I´m already disputing.

And this was with a middleman and his client didn´t liked it after i´ve sent 12 logos...

I have more than 5 years of experience as freelance, i´m new on upwork, i know how to deal with clients and i have already a filling to spot the ones that are going to give me troubles. I know how to work.

Upwork is suposed to help me, not the opposite...

 

He had strick rules about how i should send the work for him, i´ve done it how he asked. Now he asks for more... From the biggining he didn´t want to create milestones. Just a inicial of 50$, i told him that i dindt start working if half of the budget wasn´t guaranteed. he accepted and i started. After i´ve sent him 12 logos with full branding, color palette, images, icons... He didn´t liked them and for me was enough, so i asked him to create a final payment milestone. He created it, i´ve deliver it, the last deliver with more 3 logos. I also did some changings as he asked. After that he stopped responding, and never released the payment... 

 

You need to understand that this is not about me not knowing how to deal with a client, is about someone using the upworks features to steal or use freelancers time and money. In this case, because upwork puts the decision button in the hands of the client only.

 

If upwork doens´t solve it, it´s stupid because they are taking 20% of my revenew, (it´s a lot) and so i need to demand (a lot) from upwork too. That is what i expect.

 

Thanks Mikko 

Let´s see if in dispute they can help me solving this.

re: "You need to understand that this is not about me not knowing how to deal with a client, is about someone using the upworks features to steal or use freelancers time and money. In this case, because upwork puts the decision button in the hands of the client only."

 

This is what I have routinely referred to as the "fixed-price loophole."

 

It is one of the biggest problems with the entire Upwork system.

This is a system which I generally admire, and which I generally find to be safe and equitable for freelancers and clients.

 

But Tomas is correct in what he has pointed out:
It literally IS possible for a determined client to hire a freelancer to do work, and then just NOT PAY for that work by repeatedly clicking the "Request Changes" button.

 

This is precisely why many freelancers ONLY do hourly contract work on Upwork.

 

My personal solution for avoiding the "fixed-price loophole" is to be careful when accepting fixed-price contracts with clients I don't know. I only accept small contracts initially. Only an hour or two worth of work. So if the client ends up being somebody who can't be trusted, I can just close the contract myself, retain ownership of the work myself, and end things.


I'm not saying that's the right course of action for everybody, but I don't want to waste time with clients who ask for revisions when the work is actually done, and I don't want to spend time with disputes and the like.

 

As a practical matter, this sort of thing has happened only on extremely rare occasions. In the niche that I work in, I do work for the clients that they highly value, and they do not want to risk losing my services. So I am able to say when a task is done and tell them that they need to release payment - and not ask for revisions. Even so, there have been a couple of occasions, out of hundreds of contracts, where I closed a fixed-price contract myself rather than deal with a client who was abusing the "Request Changes" button.

OK Tomas, you have my full sympathies.

You know what you're doing, you know what is reasonable.

Some clients only want to exploit to make profit. There's little what the platform could so, really. Unfortunately!

I can understand that it is very dissapointing if your first Upwork client is this. 😬

But most people are decent, good, and honorable clients!

Please, don't let this one (even if it's the first) client affect your thinking and decision about staying on this platform. Please stay with us!

I know freelancers who have won disputes, so I think you'll be fine provided all the evidence of you doing everything you could is there. Then, you shouldn't worry.

All the best Tomas! 👍


PS. Please fix your English, it's pretty painful to read. 😉 I hope your writing to your clients is much better. 😀

I would never have agreed to work with that client in the first place. They're running a "branding agency" by underpaying freelancers here to do all the work for their clients (and no doubt charging their own clients thousands). You can tell by the reviews that they've given to other freelancers that they're extremely picky and seem to require lots of revisions; they demand "premium" and "luxury" designs while paying an average of $14/hour.

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