Ending a Fixed-Price Contract & Give Refund

[4d8bb7ef]

Hi fellow Upworkers,

I just had a pretty bad experience with a client. After responding to my proposal and discussed about few basic things (ie. deadline) over the chat, this client offered me a fixed-price contract. I accepted and started working, but as the project went by he did lots of things that made the job was very innefficient and not even easier:
- At the beginning of a project, as always, I asked clients if they have brand guideline/references for me to follow. He said no, so I proposed a concept. It was declined bcs he said my design was 'too basic/minimal', so I offered him another concept; still 'too minimal' and sending me a document to follow (finally) that I believe it's 70% similar style like what I offered on the first concept. 
- After we agreed on the concept, I continued working and in between the project, he started adding more contents. It's totally fine for me to add more contents, but the problem here is: her new contents were all still here and there (he sent me 4 different docs that I need to read & extract the info by myself, Googling tons of partners logo by myself, make a resume of everything he wrote on our chat.)
- Overall, this project is a combination of bad remote collaborator (the client) and raw-unfinished contents (which defo not a designer's task/problem). He unfairly treated a freelancer to work in endless working hours with him in a fixed-price setup.

Finally, I ended the contract without submitting a work for payment, so he would get a full refund. My questions to you guys are:
- I left him a private feedback (low score); but I feel the need to give him a 'public' review, so that other freelancers will not get stuck in a project with him like me. Is there any way to do this? I cannot give a public review as I cancelled the project before submitting any works.
- Especially for designers, do you guys have a specific T&C that you mention to clients before accepting the contract, to avoid this kind of unfair client?

I have been almost 3 years in Upwork with >90% JSS (+Top Rated) too, clients were all kind and give me positive feedbacks (and even bonus!) so it feels hurt and hopefully this will be my last bad experience here 🙂

Thank you.

[d_samuel_udokpok · Accepted solution]

There's no way for you to leave public feedback when you didn't earn any $$$ in the contract.

[4d8bb7ef]

Thanks for your info, David. My concern here is how to let other freelancers know about it (so everybody else will not be treated unfairly), but seems like there's no way to do it.

[d_samuel_udokpok]

Yeah!! Like you rightly said there's no way. If you have earned at least $1, you would have had the opportunity to drop the public feedback you wanted. Upwork always advises to splits your fixed contract into different milestones. When you complete a certain milestone, you get paid until you complete the entire project (contract)

[4d8bb7ef]

Yes, David, I should've mentioned 'is there any other way ...'.
But good point on highlighting about milestone; very useful for freelancers especially with difficult/poor review clients 🙂 Thank you.