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sarasattar28
Community Member

Client is asking for refund, ended the contract and left with a poor feedback

Hello, I am new to Upwork. I have worked on an hourly contract. After I have done all my work, done all the corrections that the client had asked for and summited the files the client suddenly tells that my work has a lot of mistakes and she needs a complete refund. When I told her that she should have asked me earlier when I was working on the first pages and I have spent so much of my time she has ended the contract and gave me a 2-star rating. This was my second work and my reviews will block my future work. I am so depressed and I don't now what to do next. Please help.

6 REPLIES 6
martina_plaschka
Community Member


Sara S wrote:

Hello, I am new to Upwork. I have worked on an hourly contract. After I have done all my work, done all the corrections that the client had asked for and summited the files the client suddenly tells that my work has a lot of mistakes and she needs a complete refund. When I told her that she should have asked me earlier when I was working on the first pages and I have spent so much of my time she has ended the contract and gave me a 2-star rating. This was my second work and my reviews will block my future work. I am so depressed and I don't now what to do next. Please help.


If you refund the total amount, the job and feedback will disappear from your profile. Some clients will try to abuse the system by manipulating freelancers into refunding and getting free work, but this one does not look like that at first glance. They have a high hiring rate and good reviews. 

The client should had asked for revisions or should negotiate but what's the point of suddenly asking a refund and ending the contract.


Sara S wrote:
The client should had asked for revisions or should negotiate but what's the point of suddenly asking a refund and ending the contract.

That may be so. The problem is the situation you find yourself in now, which you need to deal with. If you receive a request for refund, you can always decline to refund. 

It's no use trying to blame the client; it's not their fault if the work you delivered was poor quality. It's best instead to focus on doing a better job next time. 

Regardless, they're free to leave whatever feedback they like and there's nothing that can be done about it now. Except for refunding, which will remove the feedback from your profile but your JSS will still be affected if the client left poor private feedback (which they almost certainly did). 

prestonhunter
Community Member

Not every client/freelancer pairing is a good match.

 

As a client, when I hire a freelancer, I should evaluate her work, especially early on.

 

If a freelancer's work is not what I need for my project, then the correct thing for me to do is to communicate with the freelancer and explain what I need, or end the contract and work with other people.

 

Sam needed to hire a voice actor to use a Scottish accent in providing narration for an instructional video. Sam hired Tara. Tara spent many days recording all of the narration. When it was all done, Sam said that Tara's Scottish accent was not authentic enough. He asked for a full refund!

 

This is NOT OKAY!

 

If Sam didn't like Tara's voiceover work, he should have ended the contract as soon as he heard the first sample that came in.

 

Sam left a very bad review for Tara and pressured her to refund all of the money.

This means that Sam is a bad client, and a bad person.

 

What could Sam have done differently?
After Tara logged just one hour of time doing voice recording work, Sam should have listened to the audio files. If he didn't like the work, he could have asked Tara if she could adjust the accent. Or he could have decided that she just wasn't going to work out for this project. He could have left good feedback, or tepid feedback. He even had the option to leave bad feedback. He could have commented feedback: "Tara tried to do a Scottish accent but it did NOT sound very authentic to me!" Maybe that's a bit mean, maybe not. But that would have been acceptable. If Tara didn't like seeing that feedback on her profile page, she could have issued a refund. That would have entailed refunding only one hour's worth of work. That is much different than facing the proposition of refunding many days' worth of work.


Sam also shot himself in the foot with this approach. Because even though he asked for a full refund, he never received it. All of the work was covered with Upwork Payment Protection. He didn't get any money back, even though he didn't use any of Tara's audio work.

 

Sam's feedback remained on Tara's profile page, along with over 100 other very positive reviews. Other clients seeing Sam's review simply assumed that he was a dobber.

iamart_agency
Community Member

Hi, 

 

I'm sorry that you had that experience. I've been designing for a little over 16 years now and have learned over the years to include clients in each step of the process. This helps to reduce the number of requested revisions and unsatisfied customers. I find that providing questionnaires to clients related to their requested projects and mood boards based on their feedback helps everyone be on the same page. This process allows the clients to feel more involved in the design process and provide feedback which lets you know if you're on the right track and eliminates unnecessary time loss on your part. I hope this helps. 

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