Client requesting refund after completed successful project

[petrapalusova]

Hello,

I need some support and guidance on a matter I’m dealing with a client.

The project at stake was about a dissertation rewrite.

Edit: It was a correction, editing and formatting of an already existing dissertation.

I successfully completed the work, she was initially very happy with the results. It was accepted with no further remarks, project was deemed successful. I was paid for this work. The only thing which was requested was reformatting of a citation style, which I did immediately afterwards.

We did not agree on free revisions or any other free work outside of the contract. This was additional work which I wanted to log in into my working diary, but the client left Upwork and requested I send the finished work via her personal e-mail, which she was not planning to pay for. I refused to send the reformatted file.

She got really mad and started insulting me via Upwork chat (I have a proof in screenshots).

I explained the reasons why I wasn’t willing to follow through — really difficult communication during the entire time of our cooperation, the contract being on hold multiple times due to the account being suspended and payments not being made, her demands and insults.

After ca. week, the client requested a refund on this project due to „very low quality and unprofessional work“. This is not true, because she initially accepted the work with no further comments.

I haven’t replied yet and seek your opinion on this. Could you please guide me further?

Thank you

Best,

Petra

[sofia2008]

This looks like:

• Academic cheating. Providing work for a student to submit under their own name for credit or taking a test on behalf of a student.

And it is not allowed.

[sofia2008]

Taking the post down might say otherwise. Work of "rewriting a dissertation", saying "the work was accepted by the client and her university", and what changes were asked by the "client's tutor". Hard to not figure out what the work will be used for.

[petrapalusova]

Yes, thank you. I didn't write it for her from scratch. It was already written, I did the editing, corrections, formatting and the liguistic polishing.

[sofia2008]

---

Petra P wrote:

Yes, thank you. I didn't write it for her from scratch. It was already written, I did the editing, corrections, formatting and the liguistic polishing.

---

Perfectly fine then.

[prestonhunter]

Petra:
If a client hires a freelancer to do a job, and then the freelancer does the job...

Then it is unprofessional, unethical, and immoral for the client to ask for a refund.

If a client asks for a refund, then you should politely say no.

For example:
A client named "Francisco" hired a freelancer named "Jetra" to draw a picture of a cat wearing a chef's hat.
Jetra drew a picture of the cat, and sent it to the client.
Then the client requested a refund.
The proper thing for Jetra to do would be to decline the request.

The client (Francisco) was a bad person. He should NOT have asked for a refund. Requesting a refund meant he was trying to steal money and time from Jetra.

Petra:
You said that you were ALREADY paid for the work.
This is good.

It is difficult for a client to get money back after paying you.

I read the details of your situation.
The client WAS asking for free work.
You were CORRECT to not give the client additional free work.

The client has ALREADY paid you.
What I did not see in your post was whether this contract is still open, or already closed.

If the contract has been closed already, then there is no way for the client to leave you feedback.
So that minimizes the impact that the client can have on you at this point.

Please answer:
Is the contract still open? Or closed already?

How long ago was it that the client released payment to you?

[petrapalusova]

Thank you, Preston.

[prestonhunter]

re: "I haven’t replied yet and seek you opinion on this. Could you please guide me further?"

Keep mind mind that time is on your side.

The more time that goes by, the more difficult it will be for the client to do anything.

The more time that goes by, the more difficult it will be for the client to get help from Upwork.

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211062088-Request-a-Refund

A client should really request changes BEFORE releasing payment.
If payment has already been released, a client should really request a refund BEFORE a contract has been closed.

However, freelancers should keep this in mind:

"Dispute assistance is available from Upwork Customer Support if the last payment on a contract was within the previous 30 days, or as long as funds are held in escrow on a fixed-price contract. "

Even if payment HAS been released and a contract has been closed, then a client can request help from Upwork if the payment was released less than 30 days ago.

So if a client requests a refund from a freelancer, it makes sense for a freelancer to not "rush" the conversation. A freelancer can tell a client "Thank you for your message. I want to really think about your question. I will get back to you with a response within five days." And then take five days to consider what the client wrote. Post about it here in the Forum. Ask for people in the Forum to help you figure out what to say.

What did the client say when she asked for a refund? Maybe we can help you figure out how to reply.

[petrapalusova]

Thank you for your engagement!

She messaged me only couple of hours ago, I haven’t replied back yet. Here is the info:

-- I submitted all finished work on December 1st, after the contract was on hold due to payments issues, but reactivated again.

-- The last payment was made on December 15th (2021).

-- Afterwards the contract remained open and I waited for the client to close it.

-- On February 14th the client contacted me again, she needed additional reformatting only (different citation style).

-- I agreed to do the reformatting, finished the work on February 17th, but the contract was again on hold. I notified her to check the issues, she did not and also did not respond.

-- On March 2nd she messaged me and demanded the work to be sent to her personal e-mail address. She did not intend to resolve the issues with her account.

Summary: Contract is still open unfortunately, she DID NOT request changes before payment.

She messaged me that „for an expert, this is a poor result for a job well paid for“ and that I should „review this immediately, as it will not be accepted as a qualified submission.“

[jr-translation]

Are we talking about an hourly job or fixed rate?

With an hourly job you are paid for your time, not the quality. Therefore the revisions are irrelevant, as long as the client pays for the time.

Tell her to send a bonus in order for you to send the file.

A refund is for a fixed rate job, and the client could request countless changes before releasing the payment. Therefore you need to limit the number of revisions.

I think no matter what you do, the client will harm your JSS.

[petrapalusova]

Regarding the JSS, yes, I'm afraid so. I just want to make sure I do the right steps.

It is an hourly job contract. I only do hourly contracts and discuss this with clients prior to opening them.

So far I have a high score and a great feedback from clients. In case of a negative feedback, I plan on requesting a removal. But I understand that it will still show on my score though.

[jr-translation]

You are not top-rated yet so you cannot use the removal perk. The only other ways to remove the feedback are a full refund or you having proof for feedback manipulation. You should flag all messages that request free work or mention negative impact on your JSS.

Once the contact is closed, leave an honest feedback.

The refund is an empty threat and you can keep the money you made so far.

[prestonhunter]

I agree with Jennifer.

The client has no real path for forcing you to refund this money.

As for the client's criticism of your work?
Totally uninteresting. Don't think about what she said, because she only said those things in order to try to get money from you.

[petrapalusova]

Ah ok, I learned something new, thank you.

Yes I thought so, she seems like really wanting to get back at me for refusing.

By "flagging the messages" you mean making screenshots from our Upwork chat? Or use the function to report the message and someone reviews it? Sorry, I don't have any experience with these functions.

[prestonhunter]

re: "By 'flagging the messages' you mean making screenshots from our Upwork chat? Or use the function to report the message and someone reviews it? Sorry, I don't have any experience with these functions."

When you communicate using the Upwork Messages tool, you can flag any message by clicking on the "gear" icon next to the message, and choosing the "Report message" option.

[prestonhunter]

Also:
It does not matter.

If a client hires a freelancer using an hourly contract, then the client pays for the freelancer's time.

The client is not paying for a specific outcome. The client is not paying for a specific level of quality.

The client pays for a freelancer's time.

If client hires a freelancer to draw a picture of a cat, and the freelancer draws the cat, and that took 1 hour of time... Then the client needs to pay the freelancer for one hour of time.

What if the client lies and says she doesn't like the picture?
It doesn't matter. She needs to pay the freelancer for an hour of work.

What if the client SINCERELY doesn't like the picture?
It doesn't matter. She needs to pay the freelancer for an hour of work.

What if the client submitted the picture to her editor and the picture was rejected, and she can't use it?
It doesn't matter. She needs to pay the freelancer for an hour of work.

[petrapalusova]

Thank you so much for all the help. Few more things:

-- Do you think it's best to reply right away/soon since it's been more than 30 days now? Or are there any advantages to postpone the conversation at this point?

-- Do you think I should be brief (e.g. "I respectfully decline your request.") or also respectfully decline + add reasoning?

-- Should I mention that I was recommended by the Upwork support to report the derogative language and free work requests to (maybe) neutralize the motivation and refrain from getting out of her way to get back at me again (via feedback)?

[prestonhunter]

re: "Do you think it's best to reply right away/soon since it's been more than 30 days now? Or are there any advantages to postpone the conversation at this point?"

The 30 days thing applies only to fixed-price contracts.

You had an hourly contract.

But as a general concept:

Time is on your side for hourly AND fixed-price contracts.

With an hourly contract, a client can manually dispute hours within the 5-day review period after a work week ends.

When a client asks for a refund for work that you actually did, it always means that the client is no longer on sound moral ground. So we need to treat the client with respect. We need to communicate in a professional manner. But we need to be aware that the client is asking for something she should not be asking for. So there is "strategy" involved in how to handle the situation in order to maximize the possibility of getting a positive outcome.

I think you should always reply right away. But don't say anything substantial.

With an hourly contract, for example, if a client request a refund, 3 days after the work period ends, then you could reply IMMEDIATELY: "Thank you for your note. I want to help you achieve your goals. I will read and re-read your request carefullyl and look at my records and get back to you in 3 days."

Three days later, you can respond: "I looked over your message. To the best of my understanding, it appears that you are requesting a refund. It is not clear why. Could you clarify?"

But by that point, the time period has passed for the client to manually dispute your hours.

This advice may seem that I am recommending that you "stall" or "waste a client's time." I am NOT advising that you or any freelancer do that. As a freelancer, you SHOULD NOT waste a client's time.

What you are doing here is responding in an appropriate way to a client who is wasting YOUR time.

Also, I am recommending that you respond in an appropriate way to a person who is trying to steal money from you.

So this advice is analagous to advising a person to lock their car doors when they park downtown because there have been thefts from unlocked cars in the neighborhood. You are not being "rude" if you lock the doors on your car in order to prevent thieves from stealing things from your glove compartment.

And you are not being "rude" when you respond politely to a client in a way that plays for time and prevents the client from stealing your money.

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

re: "Do you think I should be brief (e.g. "I respectfully decline your request.") or also respectfully decline + add reasoning?"

You should be as brief as possible.

Providing reasoning is often a mistake. Because it provides the client with something they can argue with.

If you say: "The quality of the work was high."

...Then the client can argue with you by saying why she thought the quality was NOT high.

But if you can, instead, ask the client a question, you avoid an argument.

The argument is pointless, anyway. The client hired you with an hourly contract. The only thing that matters is that you were working on the client's behalf while you logged that time.

If the client argues that you should use the British comma, but you used the Oxford comma... Who cares? It's a pointless argument.

If a client doesn't love your work, then the client should fire you and hire somebody else.

If a client doesn't love your work, it is not okay for the client to continue to use your time, and obtain work from you, and then AFTER you have spent your time working for her, ask for the money back.

If you give her money back to the client, can she give you your time back?
No.

It is ridiculous for a client to ask for a refund on an hourly contract unless you were simply not working on her project at all and doing something else, like watching movies on Netflix.

[petrapalusova]

Thank you, Preston, for your time and very comprehensive guidance. Also thanks to all who contributed. I'm actually copying all this into a document to use in the future.

Wish you a great day!

[anayyersheikh]

Hi,

I need your help, I had a job for 50$ with my client where I successfully submit my project. After the completion of the project and payment, he ended the contract and now he is asking for a Refund.

IDK what to do. Can you please help me in this regards??

Thanks!

[ArjayM]

Hi Adeel,

Thank you for reaching out. I can see that you've already raised a support ticket regarding your concern. You can access your support tickets here. Note that support requests are responded to in the order they are received. Kindly allow 24-48 hours for the team to follow up with you and assist you further.

[jr-translation]

I think, I would just ignore it. No need to justify anything and if you tell her that you reported her, she might go for maximum damage. With some luck she might even forget to close the contract and leave a feedback.

[elastella]

I'm still on the fence re academic fraud:

The job posting calls it a "rewrite" including the need for a "creative intro to set the scene for a cultural reference". It needed to be "redrafted for success and organised".

As per the posting, the client had gotten bad feedback on her version and assumed that she would get a bad grade, so she went back to the drawing board. Only she didn't, you did.

Seeing that you spent almost 100 hours working on this I'd say you did more than just lightly edit, proofread and reformat...

Anyway, the client has already posted a new job for the final adjustments to be made. So she seems willing to pay somebody else to get it done.

[petrapalusova]

It was an already written extensive research thesis with conducted field work (on a different continent), data, methodology and fixed results. I did not perform any research for her nor I contributed to any of the data, outcomes or the topic. It was also not light editing either, you are right. The problem was severe lacking of stylistics, grammar, there was no formatting whatsoever. I used existing phrases and definitions, which I organised and made sense of (and did not change!). As a researcher myself I have collagues who do good scientific work, but write with hardship. These two unfortunately don't always go hand in hand.

[petrapalusova]

Also, the intro was already written too, only poorly. She provided the information to (her native) cultural context.

And with the new posting, that is good news.

[prestonhunter]

re: "I'm still on the fence re academic fraud"

But isn't that a separate topic?

[petrapalusova]

I also want to ask the Gurus for further reference, since you are knowledgable in these policies:

I work as a specialized writer here on Upwork and I've seen many jobs asking for essays, proposals or anything academic really. Some of them are editing and consulting, but some of them are requests to write these from scratch. How is it possible that they are allowed to be posted at all? Why are the freelancers responsible, if that's the case, since there is no way of knowing how and where the finished work will be used? What if I write an analytical review as an architecture specialist for a client (which I do for companies in the industry), which will be submitted at an academic institution? Sometimes there is no disclosure, I only do the work I'm being asked to do.

Please guide me on this.

Thank you

[feed_my_eyes]

---

Petra P wrote:

I also want to ask the Gurus for further reference, since you are knowledgable in these policies:

I work as a specialized writer here on Upwork and I've seen many jobs asking for essays, proposals or anything academic really. Some of them are editing and consulting, but some of them are requests to write these from scratch. How is it possible that they are allowed to be posted at all? Why are the freelancers responsible, if that's the case, since there is no way of knowing how and where the finished work will be used? What if I write an analytical review as an architecture specialist for a client (which I do for companies in the industry), which will be submitted at an academic institution? Sometimes there is no disclosure, I only do the work I'm being asked to do.

Please guide me on this.

Thank you

---

Upwork doesn't review job posts, and relies on freelancers to report any ToS violations. If you acted in good faith and the client/student concealed their intentions to commit academic fraud, then I don't think you need to worry about being held responsible. But there have been many cases of really blatant cheating, e.g. job posts that say, "I need someone to sit a test for me" or "I need someone to write an A+ essay for me by Friday" and too many freelancers are willing to go along with this.

[elastella]

I'd say the solution is to thoroughly vet your clients. Ask lots of questions during the interview stage.

Of course, if someone blatantly lies about their intentions there's nothing you can do.

But in my experience, you get a feel for what people really are after. When in doubt, I turn down the job, no matter how much it would pay.