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luxmotion3d
Community Member

Goodbye Upwork.

Hello.

I'm just posting this here to say goodbye after witnessing how Upwork team has literally destroyed Elance (to which I registered to in 2008) as my (and the one of many other freelancers) main monthly income source and turned this place into the worst freelancing website ever existed in this planet.

 

I'm not leaving this place though without letting people know what has been my experience during all these years here on other places where people is already giving the feedback that this website deserves so I'm provding a screenshot of what I suffered here and another screenshot of the latest bad joke I got just today: a potential client sending me a message showing his interest in working with me and Upwork not sending a mere email notification about this message... not even showing the orange mark over the bell icon messages section. (I'm absolutely sure notification settings is set to "All Activity" and Other email notifications are all ticked) 

I'm providing the chat messages where you can see the client asking me questions and me not seeing this message until today, 5 days later because not even the orange dot over the bell notifications icon was being displayed... and I entered several times inbetween these dates... this has been too much already.

I'm out after 7 happy years of Elance full time work, and 5 years of seeing this place turning into a **bleep**ing nightmare.

 

Bye everyone and wish you good luck.

 

Eric Garcia

5 REPLIES 5
kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Eric,

 

I'm sorry you feel this way about Upwork. I understand there have been a lot of changes in the past few years since the platform continuously grows and evolves. 

I'd like to address the issue you bring up with email notifications. Generally, email notification is not sent if a message is registered as "read."  A message would register as "read," when Messages are open in a browser tab or in the desktop app. Still, we'll have a support ticket created for you to check the specific message you are referring to. 

~ Valeria
Upwork

Valeria, if at all possible, please report back on the disposition of that supporot ticket. Several months ago, I experienced several instances of messages from prospective clients being delayed and not triggering any notification at all. One message did not appear in the thread until two weeks after it was sent -- even though I was checking the thread most days, because that client and I were trying to schedule a phone interview. She gave up and hired someone else. I missed at least one other, separate opportunity in simiar fashion. The situation was sent to tech support adn they acknowledged a problem but eventually, closed the ticket because I could not provide evidence that other messages were being delayed or going astray. I can't prove a negative, so it ended there. Leaving me with no confidence it won't happen again, or maybe already has. So, please keep us apprised (without divulging OP's private business, of course.)

Thanks!

That's the thing Phyllis... we better save every conversation with screenshots because now, even the private conversation chats with prospective clients before the official project contract on Upwork becomes active,  can be edited or deleted. In our specific case for instance the only way to prove that we have NOT received any notifications is to screenshot the whole email inbox for the timeframe involved and send it to support.


Eric G wrote:

That's the thing Phyllis... we better save every conversation with screenshots because now, even the private conversation chats with prospective clients before the official project contract on Upwork becomes active, you can edit or delete messages.


I don't think I've had anything edited or deleted. What happened to me was that a client responded to a proposal and suggested a phone convo. We agreed on date/time, last message was me sending her my tel no. At the appointed time, she didn't call. I logged on to check for a msg from her and saw that my last response to her had vanished. So, I messaged her right then, apologizing and sayng I was available the rest of the day or the next day. Never heard anything. Did not trust email notification for msgs, so logged in to the Msg Ctr and checked every day for over a week, nothing. Then, two weeks later, message from her appears in the thread, date-stamped the day we missed each other, suggesting the following day. Which I, of course, missed because never got that msg. I finally stalked her on UW (which I never do, and I apologized and explained why), she had given up and hired someone else. Around the same time, I had another one respond to a proposal and request a phone intvw on certain day/time. I replied, confirmig and offering my number. Never heard from her again. I think it likely that she did not get my message, or did not get it in a timely fashion, and thought I flaked. I know she didn't hire anyone else because she re-advertsied the job weeks later. I reapplied -- explaining why I was re-applying -- but never heard anything. Maybe she saw something in my profile that turned her off. Or maybe the messages didn't go through on time.

 

I did not explain myself properly... what I mean by the new hability to delete or edit something is not that I suspected that you deleted any messages but the other way around. If you want to defend that you have been available even at sleep hours, your prospective client can say that he asked you something that you did not answered to him even if this is false and he added that question afterwards editing one of his chat posts.

 

And yeah I also experienced silence from the other side just right before what it seemed a confirmed hiring waaay too many times on what I call spiraling down into a price that you cannot afford to work for.

 

Problem goes much beyond technical issues with this matter... because prospective clients have no obligation to be responsive and can leave you in the middle of a conversation because they quickly jumped into another proposal that they found more attractive.

That's a huge problem that can happen in both directions but just think about that prospective clients ALWAYS receive dozens of our proposals simultaneously... their risk may be high when they choose the cheapest but if they are not in a rush they can just wait until they find what they are looking for appearing on their screen while we'll be spending enourmous amounts of time just trying to convince them not only that our quality is enough or even surpases their expectations but that we are the one more available, more reliable, more responsive... and in a nutshell... more ready to destroy our own quality of life, sleep hours and human dignity to deliver first.

As long as I don't depend on Upwork as my main income source anymore I stopped chasing clients that way and showing them that the only work method that worths the time spent here are hourly contracts and repeating clients hiring me automatically. (Upwork recently removed this latter option because they realized that when a strong relationship between client and provider develops in here the next step is to get out of here as fast as possible)

 


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