I had an hourly client with Upwork's timetracker for recording time and activity. My work was relating to coding and creating dashboards which requires thinking. This was my first time using Upwork's time tracker. I didn't realize that when I was taking some time to think about a problem or even just making schema designs on paper to visualize a bit about the problem, the tracker was probably not showing a lot of activity. That did not happen at all the times but there were some 10 minute slots my activity was lower than 5.
Based on that in less than 4 days into the contract, the client reached out to me and talked to me in a very angry tone and showed no professionalism whatsoever. He was basically asking me what I had been doing all this time when my activity showed as low. He also told me that I should not be recording any meeting time. He said that meetings are not counted as work. In the past project I had worked on we had meetings count as work. He also threatened to leave me a bad review and said that I am new to upwork so he will ruin my reputation by giving a bad review.
This was going to be a long term project and I didn't think I could work with a client who basically was very rude to me. So, I decided to finish the current task I was working on and then politely ask him to end the contract as I did not feel like working for him after his unprofessional behavior. These hours that I spent trying to finish that task were in fear of getting a bad review. I also just worked more and did not tracked as much to keep him happy before I could end the project so maybe he won't give me a bad review. He was also just bad to work with in general, I couldn't ask clarifying questions, if I did I will be given the same response again and again with no clarification.
So, we had the last conversation where he kept on telling me about things which were still left to be done while completely ignoring all the things I had completed so far. The in progress items were going to be tackled later as this was an ongoing project and the kind of work I do takes iterations. The client kept on telling me that there are no iterations and he just wants work done. Him seeming more and more difficult to work with, I asked him to end the contract as we clearly had differences. To which he again said that he will leave me a bad review and will take this to upwork and arbitration and my profile will get blocked.
Now, he is asking for a complete refund. Not only I worked for all the hours he is asking a refund for but I worked more than that. I don't want to give him a refund. What happens if I don't?
