Contract Ended on Client Whim

[ayilad]

Recently, I was offered a contract by a client.

After a couple of days he felt that he no longer needs this job done and hence cancelled this job. I accepted his escrow return request as a gesture of goodwill.

Now this cancellation has affected my job success score and I am not at fault for this by any means! I tried contacting Upwork but they wont help. All their rules are client centric, freelancers are the minimum valued entity in this platform. I even requested Upwork to go through the messages of the contract and decide for themeselves but they are like hellbent to reduce my JSS. I just lost faith in upwork.

[yitwail]

Arindam, I guess the lesson we should learn is to hurry up and start the job and record some hours or submit a milestone request before the client changes his mind.

[ayilad]

Well, John, shouldn't the upwork administration have some minimum sense of fairness and at least go through the messages and investigate the reason? I understand they kind of like worship the clients as they are the money machine, but shouldn't we freelancers matter the same too?

I could have removed that from my JSS given that I am a top rated freelancer but that will expose me to similar client whims for the next 3 months! Such justice and hypocrisy.

[yitwail]

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@Arindam G wrote:

 I understand they kind of like worship the clients as they are the money machine, but shouldn't we freelancers matter the same too?

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You have a point; clients only patronize Upwork because they can find freelancers who offer services they need, but as long as freelancers greatly outnumber clients, clients will receive preferential treatment. What's hard to swallow is why a client who doesn't spend any money by cancelling a job should be able to leave private feedback that can affect freelancer Job Success. See, the private feedback question, how likely are you to recommend this freelancer to a friend or colleague, was originally created by a rent-a-car company, and I'm quite sure only people who actually rented a car were asked this question.