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rafsun_ug
Community Member

How to end a contract without giving feedback?

Hello Upwork Experts, 

Take my best regards. It would be very helpful if someone could tell me that is there any way to end a contract without giving Feedback to the client? 

I have successfully completed two videos of a client and she was very happy with that but after that, the contract had suspended for long time! I have messaged her several times to end the contract before suspension. Also I have mesaged her many times to end the contract after suspension! But she is not totally responding my message! I want to end the contract but I don't want to give her a feedback, I also don't want to give her a negative feedback and I am sure that I will also not recieve any feedback from her for the contract! I am not getting a way to end the contract without giving feedback. But I have seen many contracts without giving feedback from the both sides in many clients job history. Could any one please help me out!

Thanks in advance!

RAFSUN SAZID

ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Tiffany is right.

 

Those contracts where there is no feedback showing from both sides are either not closed long enough (feedback shows when both parties have left feedback (!) or 14 days have passed) or when a contract has been idle for 90 days with funds in Escrow (!) and Upwork closed the contract for inactivity (which only happens if funds are in Escrow and it has been idle for 90 days.)

 

At any time one party ends a contract, that party must leave feedback, as Tiffany said. There is no way around it.

 


Rafsun S wrote:But when the contract was suspended from more than two months and I am not getting any response from her, It is not feeling good to me and this suspended contract might effects on my JSS!

it will not and does not have any effect on your JSS. Provided (some) money was paid under the contract and you don't have a sackful such contracts it has no effect, open or closed.

 

And contracts with suspended clients are excluded from the JSS calculation anyway.

 

View solution in original post

18 REPLIES 18
tlsanders
Community Member

No,the person who ends the contract must leave feedback.

 

Why are you so reluctant to leave honest feedback?

Thanks Tiffany for your reply! 

I have seen many job without giving feedback from both (clients and freelancers) in many clients job history. Please see the screenshot. My question is how this happened and this is very common! How come those contacted ended without giving feedback from both sides!   Capture.JPG

Yes, definitely I want to leave an honest feedback to her. It was a satisfaction when we worked together! But when the contract was suspended from more than two months and I am not getting any response from her, It is not feeling good to me and this suspended contract might effects on my JSS! I had never ended any contract before! Usually, the client did always. But this time, I had to end this contract! And to me, the honest feedback would be "No Feedback", if I could do this! And if there is no option to end the contract without giving feedback, then how come those jobs ended with "No Feedback Given" from both sides? 

Tiffany is right.

 

Those contracts where there is no feedback showing from both sides are either not closed long enough (feedback shows when both parties have left feedback (!) or 14 days have passed) or when a contract has been idle for 90 days with funds in Escrow (!) and Upwork closed the contract for inactivity (which only happens if funds are in Escrow and it has been idle for 90 days.)

 

At any time one party ends a contract, that party must leave feedback, as Tiffany said. There is no way around it.

 


Rafsun S wrote:But when the contract was suspended from more than two months and I am not getting any response from her, It is not feeling good to me and this suspended contract might effects on my JSS!

it will not and does not have any effect on your JSS. Provided (some) money was paid under the contract and you don't have a sackful such contracts it has no effect, open or closed.

 

And contracts with suspended clients are excluded from the JSS calculation anyway.

 

Thanks Petra,

Really appreciate that. I am now clear on "No Feedback Given" and also thanks for informing about "no effects" on JSS of a suspended contract . thanks!

I agree with Rafsun, there should be a way to end the contract without feedback. I am in a situation where there seems to be a communication barrier between me and my client. She is unable to communicate in a way that I understand what it is that she needs. I don't want to leave positive or negative feedback as we did not progress the project far enough to make an impression 

re: "there should be a way to end the contract without feedback."

 

It is always possible to end a contract without leaving written feedback.

 

Just leave the free form text box blank. You are never required to leave any written feedback at all.

 

Nor are you required to consider the six skill areas for star feedback. Just click on five stars without thinking about them. Don't even look at the skill names.

 

This is the ethical equivalent of not leaving any feedback of any kind.

I just ran into this issue on a contract so I found this thread. This, unfortunately, is exactly what I did--5 stars across the board with no written feedback for a project that I considered a failure. I wanted to weigh in on this thread because I agree that there should be an option to leave no feedback. I've hired freelancers on 5-6 projects now on Upwork. I've had some very successful results and some abject failures. On the successful projects, I made sure to write some comments. In only 1 of the failures, I wrote comments and left "honest feedback". In that one case, Upwork appears to have removed my honest feedback. Why? No idea. It was a fixed priced writing project. It was cheap, as many fixed priced contracts are. I wasn't looking for cheap, but it was my experiment in using fixed-priced contracts to see if the product met the offer. It didn't--by a stretch. I'm becoming quite concerned that Upwork, at least in some categories, has worthless reviews. So, why did I follow the 5-star/no comment approach. I've found that as soon as you run into an issue with a contract, the freelancer goes to a stance of combative, mainly around the issue of feedback. And, to some degree, I understand this. Freelancers need good feedback, and I am loathe to leave negative feedback that would hurt any individual. But it seems that feedback has suffered from grade inflation on Upwork. That leads me to question whether ratings can be relied upon at all, and severely undermines the value of this platform. For now, I'm avoiding it on one category altogether for this reason. At minimum, adding a "skip feedback" feature might open up some measured level of reality that can be used somewhat to filter the otherwise "over-rating" trend here.

I agree, there should be an option not to leave feedback. I have worked both sides of the platform and it should go both ways, freelancers and clients not to leave feedback. Some projects last less than an hour and it is difficult to even judge what level of performance was accomplished.


Mike C wrote:

I just ran into this issue on a contract so I found this thread. This, unfortunately, is exactly what I did--5 stars across the board with no written feedback for a project that I considered a failure. I wanted to weigh in on this thread because I agree that there should be an option to leave no feedback. I've hired freelancers on 5-6 projects now on Upwork. I've had some very successful results and some abject failures. On the successful projects, I made sure to write some comments. In only 1 of the failures, I wrote comments and left "honest feedback". In that one case, Upwork appears to have removed my honest feedback. Why? No idea. It was a fixed priced writing project. It was cheap, as many fixed priced contracts are. Fixed price contracts are cheap if the client and FL agree on a cheap price.  I wasn't looking for cheap, but it was my experiment in using fixed-priced contracts to see if the product met the offer. It didn't--by a stretch. You get what you pay for, regardless of the contract terms.  I'm becoming quite concerned that Upwork, at least in some categories, has worthless reviews. So, why did I follow the 5-star/no comment approach. I've found that as soon as you run into an issue with a contract, the freelancer goes to a stance of combative, mainly around the issue of feedback. Another way in which you get what you pay for. Real professionals do not behave that way but their services can't be had on the cheap. And, to some degree, I understand this. Freelancers need good feedback, and I am loathe to leave negative feedback that would hurt any individual. But it seems that feedback has suffered from grade inflation on Upwork. That leads me to question whether ratings can be relied upon at all, and severely undermines the value of this platform. For now, I'm avoiding it on one category altogether for this reason. At minimum, adding a "skip feedback" feature might open up some measured level of reality that can be used somewhat to filter the otherwise "over-rating" trend here.


The rating system is far from perfect but it's better than nothing. I've also encountered dilemmas about how to leave candid but fair fb in situations that didn't fit the standard model. But allowing either party to "skip feedback" would definitely render the whole thing worthless and there needs to be some kind of framework for FLs and clients to see how each other behave and perform.

 

BTW, a Top Rated FL can remove client feedback on one contract every three months/10 contracts. Pros hoard that perk like the priceless gem that it is, and don't use it lightly.

 

f4f2be6b
Community Member

Too bad. I have a contract that's been open for 2 years because of this asinine Upwork requirement. If I don't want to leave feedback, I'm not going to - this is broken by design, apparently.

I didn't have a particularly good experience with a contract and I'm not going to besmirch the contractor if I don't wish to - it's simple as that.

So, the contract shall remain open indefinitely which seems quite silly.

If the client is the one who ended the contract (because job completed), does the feedback always have to be public feedback, or can she just leave private feedback?

Hi Karen,

When a client closes a contract they will be prompted to leave both public and private feedback. Please see help article.

Public – Comments and star ratings that are shown on the freelancer’s Work History. Requires minimum net contract payment of $1 to be visible.
Private – Used by Upwork to assess the freelancer’s Job Success. This is an opportunity to provide information to Upwork that you may feel uncomfortable sharing publicly.

Let me know if there's anything else.

~ Riri

That is none of your business. You are here to help people no to analyse not judge what they do.

Why have you assigned me (a complete stranger) the duty of "helping people"? 

 

Why do you interpret a simple question as judgment? 

 

Why do you feel that I have no right to "judge" what others do, yet you have a right to judge what I do? 

 

Most especially, why have you dredged up a 3.5 year old comment to attack me over?

<<Why are you so reluctant to leave honest feedback?>>


1. Because I live in a free country and I should not be forced to do something I do not want to do.

2. I don't want to deal with the contractor whining back at me about how my feedback was unfair, and how it will destroy their future work, etc.... just take it that if I have nothing to say, that means I have nothing nice to say - and that is me being nice.


omar k wrote:

<<Why are you so reluctant to leave honest feedback?>>


1. Because I live in a free country and I should not be forced to do something I do not want to do.

2. I don't want to deal with the contractor whining back at me about how my feedback was unfair, and how it will destroy their future work, etc.... just take it that if I have nothing to say, that means I have nothing nice to say - and that is me being nice.


You can a) tell the freelancer to close the contract, in which case you don't have to leave feedback; or b) give them honest feedback and then block them so that you don't have to listen to any complaining.

198849e0
Community Member

I vote for being able to close a contract on UpWork without giving feedback. I hire a lot of writers and writing style is very subjective. Someone whose style doesn't work for me might be perfect for someone else, but for example, someone who for my level of requirements might only get 3 stars might be a 5-star writer for someone with different requirements. But I know that if I leave a 3-star rating, even if I explain in the comments that it was a style issue, the freelancer will get hurt and maybe mad, and the lower rating might keep him from getting business from more appropriate clients. I think that if you have a bad experience with someone or a good one, it's good to leave feedback, but if the "bad" part of the experience is only due to the job's specific requirements not being a good fit for the project, then there is no way to reflect that in the star rating so I think we should be able to leave it blank.

Hi Michele, if you ask the freelancer to close the contract from their end then you won't have to leave feedback as a client. Additionally the star feedback doesn't impact JSS, but the private feedback. You said you would recommend them to someone who might use that style. So on the private feedback question "would you recommend" you could give them a 9 or 10 (it's 1-10, with 10 being best) honestly, and they would still maintain a high JSS despite leaving 3 stars. But also, you are not referring to quality but about style. So why would you mark down quality if it's the style that is not right? You could leave 4 stars instead of 3 and say the quality is high but the style wasn't the right fit for what you wanted. You could also say exactly what you said "for a client who wants this style, John Doe would be a perfect fit! Thank you for trying this out and best of luck."  

 

You can leave constructive feedback for a freelancer without destroying their profile. OR, as I mentioned, you can ask the freelancer to end the contract on their side so you aren't forced to leave feedback. 

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