Muhammad Abdullah Q wrote:
A client asked me to shoot 3 12-minute video clips of street food in my city. He provided sample videos and I went and shot the 36-minute content to the best of my ability.
After viewing the content, he is claiming that he wanted the angles to be a little skewed, and more people to be covered in the footage. Basically, bizarre wishful additions which were not made categorically clear to begin with.
As a kind gesture, I told him I have some extra footage that he might want to have a look at also. He said he wants that too. I told him to first pay the upfront amount for the initial work, but he completely demoralized me by saying - and I'm paraphrasing here: "This is upwork... you should do as the client says... don't think, just do"- he further on snarkly remarked that "you are educated and you should know better". I kept my cool, and still dealt with him politely. I ended up sending him that extra (out-of-scope) footage, too. He then asked me to merge all the clips into a single video and re-send. Now note, this is a client who hasn't paid a dime yet, has insulted me, and now has the audacity to ask for yet another revision.
I have stopped replying because I feel like it is a lost cause. I am presuming I wasted my precious time shooting the footage in the heat, and being honest. With clients like this, new honest freelancers like us, really have to face injustice.
I have told the client that video-editing is not my forte, to which he is saying "It's not a big deal. Just get it done by someone". He is clearly crossing the limits, and I feel helpless in retracting my hard-earned money.
I am heartbroken as I have sent him all the WeTransfer links, and he owns the footage... and I have nothing to claim.
Muhammad, this sounds like a quite miserable situation. My sympathies.
But normally, the freelancer would have had a series of inquiries about what exactly the client needs to see in those videos, how they should be submitted, and what in general is within-scope and out-of-scope of the job, knowing that the assignment has vague points, to begin with.
Communication + expectation management is the key.
In case the client is asking for free work, you can report him. Clients are not allowed to ask for free work.
If you know everything is going to end badly and you cannot see any way to make this project work out well for the client, just refund the money, close the project, and block the client for good. This way you don't get any nasty reviews on your work history. And then, don't look back, look forward.
You'd lose the time, though, of course, but at the beginning of your Upwork career that is a better choice than getting "killed" with the first project. The client doesn't sound like a very reasonable person and is likely to leave a bad review. If the first couple of reviews look strange, it is very hard to get anyone to hire you.
Good luck! 👍
PS. It would be better not to include details such as screenshots here. They just get edited for community guidelines... which are something you might want to take a look at soon.
