Encourage clients to close contracts instead of auto-pausing

[mtoro]

Auto-pausing contracts is a bad feature for contractors. Clients say they have more work for you, but it never comes; The contract is auto-paused; Clients forget about what a great job you initially did, they don't leave feedback, even if they've told you by IM/email that you did a great job; Time passes, everyone forgets. You should encourge clients to close contracts. If the job is done then it's done. If the future brings more work then a new contract is started. Contracts should represent jobs/projects and not ongoing relationships.

[the_elocutionist]

I've only done one job so far but am in exactly this situation. The original job was to proofread a few academic papers but I only got to do 2 of them. The client said I did a great job but didn't ask me to finish the other papers. The thing was, I did it very cheaply and faster than I was contracted for which meant that I only clocked up a few hours to do 2 papers and this was over a period of 3 days, so I only earned a nominal amount. This would have been ok however, if I had been contracted to do more. Now she has what she wanted, the contract has auto-paused, and it's like she doesn't feel the need to do anything else on this site and isn't responding to my messages. Please make it a requirement for clients to close the contract, as this would make it more likely that they will finalise payments and feedback at the same time.

[msayno]

Why don't Odesk simply auto-close these projects after a month of inactivity? Then, sending an email to the client that they can always hire person x anytime (with link pointing to the person's Odesk profile). Come to think of it, when people shop online and are satisfied with the product - they can't be bothered to leave a decent feedback. Only those who are wow'd by the work.. or hate the work took all the time they can to write something. How about Odesk coming up with a multiple choice of some sort of generic feedback to tick on when clients close the contract? At least, it's better than nothin'

[am001]

I've come across such situations many times.... It's almost embarrassing to constantly remind them to close the contract & kindly leave a feedback. ODesk should really step in to encourage them to close the contract if there's hasn't been any activity for, say one month....

[stephenbrightman]

I don't mind keeping contracts open as ongoing, but it does lead to a lot of clutter, and it's true if one is left to go for ages it can be hard to remember about the contract. I'm left in a situation where I've about fifteen contracts I want closed. the problem is that if you contact the client and they don't respond, you can close it yourself, but it shows on your profile as a job closing NOW, with no feedback. So imagine if I now try to do that for say, ten of them - my job history would consist of a long list of contracts with no feedback, and all the good stuff hidden somewhere under it all. I'm trying to proceed by closing one of them for every two or three good feedbacks I get - but it's painfully slow. So with the benefit of hindsight I would advise anyone not to let their stale contracts pile up, because the longer the list gets the harder it is to deal with

[am001]

Hi Stephen, That's exactly the problem. See, feedback is vital for freelancers. While I may close the contract, the client is very unlikely to leave a feedback, since he didn't even care to close the contract by himself in the first place.... and this impacts on our reputation....