I started a contract with a client on Oct 5, 2021, and submitted my work for it on the same day, My client made a small customization request which didn't take much time so I did it and submitted work again the next day, and also because I'm new here, I have been focused on building my profile and get work.
The work has already been submitted twice based on the client's requirements and what was discussed earlier.
I requested him to pay after the second submission, then instead of approving the request, even though he said himself that my submission worked successfully for him. He set up a call and made further customization requests which are way more complicated than what was discussed before and what was in the contract. In the call, in addition to these modifications, That looked like a problem from the backend server of his team(which was not the job at all). I explained to him politely that he should speak with the backend developer in his team who's working on it. But he said he wanted it to be done further in the project.
At the time, he did agree it's additional work. I discussed with him and we both agreed there would be another milestone made with separate payment for it. After that he texts randomly sometimes in the gap of a day or two, asks for a time to have a call, I share my availability, then he disappears for some days again. Several weeks have passed since then and the contract is still open and there's no surety of what he wants and he never shows up on the meeting time.
On Oct 16, instead of adding that milestone as we discussed, He requested for modification in my last submission. I read some similar forums, It looks like if work is submitted and confirmed(he said in the chat before), then I should be paid for that. And I read that payment gets transferred from escrow after 14 days if the client doesn't take any action. But I'm not sure what happens when the Client modifies the contract without informing first and especially when it was agreed for new work to be added in new milestone.
Does it mean that if I don't submit the work again as per his new requirements(which I never accepted in the original contract), then I won't be paid? That doesn't seem fair to me and I also don't know what to do in this situation. I have been very responsive and helpful to him. Even when he didn't respond, I timely check on him if he's available or not but he is mostly offline and responds after days. I highlighted the same thing to him also, saying that we discussed for new milestone and the contract shouldn't be modified like that(he kept the payment exactly the same which was low even for the original contract), but he said we'll discuss it over call and then he disappeared again. It's highly unprofessional and unfair to freelancers and I want to know how I should approach this situation further.
